Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (32 page)

Thady blinked into Doyle’s flat, unblinking stare. Slowly, his fist loosened, dropping back to his side, and his face changed. Doyle saw a bland and careful subservience slip over his features, the familiar mask the boy must have worn all his years. “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Tiarna Mac Ard,” he said. “I lost control of myself.”

“Good. It’s forgotten.” Doyle looked past Thady to the road. Edana and four other riders had come into view again, dust rising from under their horses’ hooves. They were riding hard and fast, and that caused Doyle to wonder. “Go see Tiarna Salia; he also has holdings in Locha Lein and will be accompanying you along with his gardai. You’ll leave within a stripe’s time, as soon as we break camp.”

With that, Doyle strode away from Thady, ignoring the mutter of veiled protest. He lifted a hand in greeting to Edana as she rode into the encampment. He watched her jump lithely down from her sorrel gelding, unconsciously acrobatic, and he smiled, feeling the affectionate, eager glow that seeing her always created in him. Doyle had no illusion that love was necessary in a marriage, but when it was there, such a union was at its most powerful, and he had long ago found that he enjoyed power.

“Maidin maith, my sweet,” he called out in greeting, holding out his hand for her to take. “What a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you until we returned to Dún Laoghaire. But I’m glad you came; it will make the rest of the trip much more pleasant.” She took his hand, but though she smiled at him there was something in her gaze that made him stop. “What’s wrong, Edana?”

“Come look at the falls with me,” she said. “Away from the others.”

He led her away from the encampment and up the path to the overlook, passing Thady on the way without a glance. With the spray moistening their faces and beading in their hair, he heard Edana sigh. “I came to bring you back to Dún Laoghaire as quickly as possible, Doyle,” she said. “It’s Da. The news isn’t good, I’m afraid. He’s taken a sudden turn and his health is failing quickly. The healers are thinking that he is now lying on his death bed. It’s possible he may already be gone even as we’re speaking here. I would have sent a messenger to tell you, but I wanted . . . I needed . . .” Doyle heard the break in her voice. She was crying now, openly, the spray from the falls mixing with her tears.

“Edana . . .” He took her in his arms, holding her close. Of the two children of Nevan O Liathain, she had been the closest to her da, especially after Enean’s accident. He could feel her tremble, then take a long, shuddering breath and lift her face again. When he looked, tears still glistened in her eyes but her mouth was set firmly.

“I know what he’d say,” Edana told him. “He’d tell me to grieve later and do what I need to do to take his place,” she said. “And I will. We need to hurry back to Dún Laoghaire. This changes everything—all the plans we made. Your niece . . . ?”

“She’s safe for the moment—where I can find her when I need her. And by now, my sister should have received my note. As to what she’ll do then . . .”

Edana shuddered. “That’s exactly what scares me, Doyle. Everything’s different now. We thought we had months yet to play this game and we don’t. We thought we would have the Rí Ard’s authority behind us and now we may not. Only the Mother knows how the Ríthe will react if Da does pass, and we’re not ready. All the old alliances and agreements die with my da . . .” She didn’t need to finish the thought; they both knew. When the Rí Ard died, the bloody clawing and fighting among the claimants to the throne would begin, and it could easily spill into physical bloodshed—that had happened far too often in Daoine history.

“This will work out. It’s our time. It’s
your
time,” Doyle whispered to her. His lips brushed the nape of her neck, gently kissing there. “Just remember that. It’s your time. No matter what Jenna does or what the Ríthe think or who else wants to be Ard. We can handle all of that and my sister too. Together, we can handle it all. . . .”

Máister Kirwan started to hand the roll of parchment to Jenna, but she shook her head. “Read it aloud for me, Mundy.” A small, wry smile touched her lips. “One thing the Order never could quite drum into me was my letters.”

“It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying,” Mundy answered. He pulled at the ribbon and the wax seal broke. He unrolled the parchment on his desk and smoothed it down, placing an inkwell and blotter at the top to hold it down. “It’s from Doyle Mac Ard,” he said.

Jenna grimaced. “I guessed that much. This whole situation has the Mac Ard smell about it. Go on. I’m ready.”

Mundy took a breath. He began to read:

Mundy looked up from the parchment. Jenna was standing near the window, her face nearly as pale as the thin white clouds masking the sun. Her scarred right hand was clutched around Lámh Shábhála, the knuckles white with tension. She stared outward, unblinking, hardly seeming to even breathe. When she did draw in a breath, it was half sob. “Doyle’s right,” she said quietly. “I knew. I knew what he would say.”

“Today’s the twenty-third of Wideleaf,” he reminded her. “That means he intends to meet you at Inishdúan in twelve days.”

She stared.

“What are you going to do, Jenna?”

She turned to Mundy. He saw her face, ashen and almost skeletal, and the agony and interior struggle written there frightened him. She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she told him. “May the Mother-Creator help and forgive me, I truly don’t know.”

Jenna walked along the shore, her thoughts as jumbled and chaotic as the stones and boulders scattered there, not caring that the steady hard rain seemed to find every crease in the oilcloth she wore over her clóca. The voices of the long-dead Holders of Lámh Shábhála assailed her like the rain and salt spray that licked her face, a thousand contradictory wails of advice. She tried to block out the chorus, but her own doubts made it impossible to hold them back. The dead voices pounded at her head, yammering and shouting, and she pulled the cowl of the oilcloth close around her ears as if she could blot them out that way.

The tears came then: hot, racking sobs that she had held back while she was with Mundy, not wanting him to see her weakness and uncertainties, and they mingled with the cold rain. She sat on a boulder in the brine-laden wind off the Westering Sea and let the sorrow and terror and guilt wash over her.

I hope you can live with yourself afterward . . .
Doyle had written. And yet she knew that to tear Lámh Shábhála away from herself would be like ripping out her heart. She didn’t know if she could survive that with her sanity intact.

Once, she had tried to keep Lámh Shábhála and yet save Ennis—her lover and Meriel’s da—at the same time. She’d failed and lost Ennis. His death had nearly shattered her, and the cracks in her soul were still there, unhealed. She didn’t know if she could stand the guilt of knowing she’d also killed the living result of the love between Ennis and her, all that was left of him left in the world.

The greeting sounded in her head, louder than the voices of the ancient Holders, and at the same time she heard a grunting cough and, through Lámh Shábhála, felt the nearness of a familiar power. She lifted her head and blinked away the tears to see a naked man standing knee-deep in the surf, his body scarred in a familiar pattern, his eyes the unrelieved brown-black of the Saimhóir, his hair plastered tight to his skull with the rain. He held his hand out to her in greeting. “I felt you here with Bradán an Chumhacht,” he said. “It’s been a long time since Bradán an Churnhacht and Lámh Shábhála have met. I am Dhegli, milk-son of Garrentha.”

Jenna closed her hand around Lámh Shábhála and let a trickle of energy flow outward, changing her words as she spoke so that he could understand her. In the cloch-vision, she felt Dhegli open himself to her and allow Lámh Shábhála’s energy to surround him; at the same time, she let Bradán an Chumhacht’s power sweep around her, though she kept all the inner barriers up. “I knew your milk-mother well, and Thraisha before her, who was the First of the Saimhóir. I owe them both my life, more than once.”

Dhegli nodded at that, taking a step forward. “And I,” he said, “know your daughter well.”

“Ahh . . .” There were undercurrents in his words that made Jenna clench her jaw. “So it was you . . .”

“That she swam with, and more?” Dhegli finished for her. He opened himself fully to her, and she found herself looking through his mind and his memories, and Meriel was there. “Aye,” Dhegli said. “This is how it was with us.”

Jenna gasped at what she saw and she pulled herself away from him. Dhegli stood complacent and confident in front of her in his nudity. “How dare you . . .” she began, then snapped her mouth shut.

“It was Meriel’s choice to make,” Dhegli told her, his voice calm. “Not yours, First Holder.” For a moment, he smiled, then his face went somber “Not even mine. You and I share the same pain and concern right now, First Holder. We both want Meriel back. That
is
what you want, isn’t it?”