Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (31 page)

Sevei had crouched down in front of her. She felt the woman’s thumbs brush away the tears that had started from her eyes. “You have a good heart, Cailin. The heart of a True Healer—I’d say that the cloch chose a good Holder for itself. Look at this as a chance to use it for people who ordinarily don’t have access to this kind of resource. Not for the Riocha, not for the privileged ones who hold the clochs and power but the ones who get their hands dirty and who live short lives full of toil and poverty.”

“And in return you take what little they have.”

Sevei shook her head. “Even we Taisteal have to make a living, and we take no more than they can afford. When we get to a real town, when the Riocha and the céili giallnai and the rich landowners come around,
then
see what Nico charges.” She brushed away Meriel’s tears again, softly, and stood. “Who do you want to see? I need to know now.”

There was no good choice, yet she remembered the look on the young woman’s face, the sorrow and grief that aged her as she spoke about the unborn children she’d lost. If the cloch could help her, then it would also bring new life to the world. “The one who miscarries. I think I—the cloch, that is—can help her.”

“I’ll send her to you.” The woman’s gaze was full of empathy. “There was a reason you were given the clochmion, Cailin. There was a reason you were placed here. Maybe this is the reason—so you’d start to use the stone.”

“Is that what you saw in the cards last night?”

Sevei’s face went guarded. “Aye,” she said. “I saw that.”

“And what else?”

“You don’t believe in the cards. You saw what I do with them; there’s no magic there.”

“Tell me what they said. Afterward. Will you do that? After I use the cloch. Please.”

After a moment of silence, Sevei sighed. “All right,” she said. “I’ll send the young woman in.”

Sevei fiddled with the cards, sitting across the table from Meriel. She gazed at the colorful pasteboard. “I’m a fraud,” Sevei told Meriel. “Now my mam . . . she was a true reader, when she wanted to be. Oh, she rarely did that with our customers; for them, she did exactly what I do—she gave them the reading they wanted to hear and no more. But when she took the cards in truth and placed the array . . .” Sevei sighed. “The cards would tell her things, things she couldn’t otherwise know.”

“The future?” Meriel asked. “Truly?”

Sevei shook her head. “Only Fiodóir the Fate-Weaver truly knows your future. The cards—if you believe in them—can show the shape of what’s possible and what’s likely. They can indicate where the path you’re treading is likely to lead and act as a guide or a warning, but you can still choose to change your direction and your fate. Mam could see clearly through the cards, though. Nico says she was better with them than anyone he’d ever known. Sometimes she scared people with what she told them; I know she did me, more than once.” She set the card down and placed her hands on top of them, looking at Meriel. “I don’t have her gift.”

Meriel waited. Sevei licked dry lips and her forefinger prowled the ragged edge of the cards. “I know what it’s like not to share your mam’s gift,” Meriel told her. “I understand that very well.”

Sevei smiled sadly at that. “I suspect you do. Yet sometimes, every once in while . . .”

“Like last night?”

A nod. “Like last night. I touched them and . . . and the cards seemed . . .” She lifted her hands, let them drop again. “. . . right,” she finished. “I can’t explain it any better than that. I could feel the truth of them
here.
” She shook black hair away from her eyes and touched her hand to her forehead. She gave Meriel a fleeting smile. “Or maybe I was just tired and influenced by what I’d seen you do. You told me that you don’t believe in the ability of the cards, so why should you care what I think I saw?”

“I
shouldn’t
care,” Meriel answered. “But . . . I’m curious, that’s all. No, I don’t believe it, but I still want to know. And you promised.”

A laugh. “Aye, I did.” Sevei took up the cards. “Here,” she said, and spread them out as they had been last night. She touched the card in the top of the array: a red-haired young woman surrounded by several unsheathed swords held by skeletons. “That’s you: in the midst of strife, surrounded by forces you can’t control. There, next to you—that’s the Tiarna Mac Ard, your uncle; you see, he’s also sword-caught and the coin cards flank him also, the needs of the rich. Toward the center of the spiral is the Clannhra—what you would call a Banrion. One of the most powerful of the cards and, I think, your mam. She sits by the Traveler, which means she is closer to you than you believe.” She pointed to the line of cards above the spiral. “These are the forces who would help you: the Blind Man, along with three cards which are all staves—those represent natural forces. That influence is unusually strong, and I don’t quite know how to interpret it. And these”—Sevei touched the lower line of cards, “—are the forces that you see as opposing you: the Mage and the Single Sword wielded by the king.”

Meriel was already shaking her head. “How is this any different than what you did for those who came here last night? You could say the cards mean anything you want them to mean and I can’t say differently.”

“That’s true,” Sevei agreed, nodding. Her gaze came up from the cards and found Meriel, challenging. “Do you want me to stop?”

Meriel looked away. “No.”

A nod. Sevei’s finger touched the cards at the center of the spiral. “This is the heart of it,” she said. There were three cards in the center of the array, two placed side by side, the last placed horizontally across the others. The bottom cards were obscured; on one, Meriel could see the face of a dark-haired woman holding a card with a strange symbol aloft over her head. A skeletal figure in a cowl dominated on the other, the skull grinning obscenely. And the top card ... On the painted surface was a seal—a Saimhóir, with azure highlights in the ink-blackened body, but as Meriel looked more closely at the card she realized that the face of the seal was that of a human woman and she was pulling herself onto the rocks with arms and hands rather than flippers.

“The Changeling,” Sevei said. Meriel felt her face go hot. The scale of Bradán an Chumhacht in her head seemed to burn on her forehead. “The Changeling sits atop the place of sacrifice, and that alters the meaning of everything else in the reading. You believe that the ones set against you are your uncle and the Rí Ard, but the Changeling says that you look the wrong way. The reading indicates that it’s those you love you should fear the most, for they hold the greatest danger for you.”

“That makes no sense.”

Sevei’s face seemed to close up, her lips tightening and eyes narrowing. “It’s what the cards say. I didn’t choose them; you cut and shuffled the deck.”

“And that’s all? What of these?” Meriel pointed to the two cards underneath the Changeling. The dark-haired woman holding the card, the grinning skeleton leering at her . . .

Sevei shook her head. “I won’t talk of them. They don’t concern you.”

Meriel stared at the woman, who gazed steadily back at her, almost defiantly. Yet, somewhere underneath, there was something else in those eyes . . . “How can they not concern me if this is my reading?” Meriel asked. A sudden realization struck her then. “The woman with black hair . . . That’s
you,
isn’t it?”

In answer, Sevei swept up the cards and shuffled them quickly so that the array was lost. “I shouldn’t have done this,” she said. “I told you I don’t have my mam’s skill. I’m just what you suspect: a charlatan.”

“Sevei.” The Taisteal stopped shuffling the cards and looked at Meriel. “What happened to your mam?”

Sevei took in a breath that whistled slightly between her teeth. “She died,” she answered curtly. “A long time ago.”

“How?”

“That’s none of your business.”

A glimmering suspicion came to Meriel as she watched Sevei handling the cards . . . an inkling born in the obvious reverence she had for them. “I can guess,” Meriel said. “Your mam saw something in the cards . . . a foretelling . . . an event that concerned you.” Meriel watched Sevei as she spoke, watched the way the muscles along her jaw slid under the skin, the way she breathed, the slight widening of the eyes. “Or something that concerned
both
of you. That’s why you say you don’t have your mam’s skill with the cards—not because you don’t, but because you’re afraid that you do.”

Sevei’s face had gone stiff, her eyes almost angry. “You’ve learned my tricks far better than I expected, Cailin. You’re good at this. A natural. Maybe I’ll just let you read the fortunes for the fools in the next town.” The woman put the cards back in their box and shut the lid. “We need to get ready to leave here,” she said abruptly, getting up from the table. “We have a long ride yet today.”

T
HE FALLS of the Duán roared with white rage, the water foaming and spraying on its way down to Lough Lár far below. Rainbows shimmered in the mist. The lough stretched out blue in the distance; as Doyle turned to watch Edana’s entourage approach, he could see the checkerboard pattern of fields near the High Road and beyond them, the somber presence of Doire Coill, one of the ancient woods.

Tuath Gabair: this was the home of his ancestors, the land where his da had been born and lived, the land where he’d been conceived. Every time he was here, he thought he could feel the very soil calling to him. He felt content but for one minor annoyance . . .

“I hear them talking about me behind my back. I hear what they call me,” Thady MacCoughlin said loudly.

Doyle arched an eyebrow as he watched Edana’s entourage disappear behind the trees at the last bend approaching the falls. He could hear Thady shuffling his feet alongside him. He forced himself not to look at the boy—that’s all he was, Doyle had decided; a stupid boy, even if he was actually a year older than Doyle. Thady had become increasingly tiresome on the long, hard ride across half of Talamh an Ghlas and what little patience and gratitude Doyle had for the young man had long since evaporated. He would be glad to get rid of him. “And what is it that they call you?” he asked Thady, although he knew perfectly well. He just wanted to watch Thady’s face as he said the word.

Thady’s lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. He looked as if he’d just swallowed a fish bone. “Oathbreaker,” he spat out. “ ‘Oathbreaker MacCoughlin.’ They’d stop saying that if you told them.”

“Would they?” Doyle asked gently. “These are my peers. My friends. Not my servants. Why would they listen to me?”

“Of course they would,” Thady answered. “You’re the fiancé of the Rí Ard’s daughter. They
have
to listen to you.”

“And now
you’re
a tiarna, just as you wanted,” Doyle responded. “You’re one of them. Why don’t you tell them yourself? Inform them that you take offense at the name and demand satisfaction for your honor if they don’t immediately apologize. If you’d like, I’ll lend you my own sword.”

The expression on Thady’s face was impressive: horror mixed with a slowly-dawning comprehension. His lower lip trembled. “This isn’t what I wanted. You said I’d be a tiarna, that I’d have an estate. . . .”

“And you have the scroll from the Rí Ard that names you as Tiarna MacCoughlin, and you will have your own land: on the Outer Island of Tuath Locha Lein. In fact, you’ll be leaving for there today.” Doyle nodded to the approaching riders. “This is where we part ways, Tiarna—you to your new home and me to Dún Laoghaire.”

“Locha Lein? The Outer Island?” The protest was a squeal. “But that’s so far away, and the Outer Island’s nothing but stones.”

Doyle glared at Thady, his hand brushing his cloch, and the boy shrank away. “Aye, ’tis far away, and you’ll have to work hard to pull a living from the stones and pay your bóruma to Rí Locha Lein, and the people you rule will call you ‘Oathbreaker’ behind your back and maybe even to your face until the day you die and forever afterward.” Doyle snorted mocking laughter. “Did you think being Riocha solves everything? Didn’t you see that a tiarna might wear better clothes and eat better than the common rabble, but there are still struggles and responsibilities in our lives? If you manage to prosper, MacCoughlin, maybe your children or their children will lose the ‘Oathbreaker’ part of your name. But you . . . you will always be MacCoughlin the Oathbreaker and no Riocha will ever trust you completely because of what you’ve done.”

“You didn’t tell me!” Thady half-shouted. His face contorted, he reached out toward Doyle, twisting a hand in the cloth of Doyle’s clóca. “I didn’t know it would be this way!”

“No, I didn’t tell you,” Doyle agreed quietly, glancing down at the fisted hand, then to Thady’s flushed, angry features. “But you
would
have known it if your greed had let you think at all. So listen to me now. You will let go of me and apologize, or you’ll be forever known as MacCoughlin the One-Hand, as well.”