Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (4 page)

“They won’t find us. Not in Talamh an Ghlas. There are lost valleys there, and the old forests. We could hide there and an army couldn’t find us.” His voice was desperate and deep and the urgent certainty in it made her shake her head.

“They wouldn’t need an army. They have the clochs na thintrí, Lucan, and my mam holds Lámh Shábhála. You don’t know how powerful that stone is—”

“Those are folktales and myths, Meriel. Your mam doesn’t know about us, does she?”

Meriel shook her head once, back and forth. “I don’t think so.”

Lucan grinned. “There, you see? She can’t know everything. This is
right,
Meriel. Can’t you feel it? Let’s do it. Now, before we have a chance to talk each other out of it.” He leaned down to kiss her, and she reached up with one hand to touch his black beard, short and soft and still patchy on his cheeks. The kiss was long, deep, and sweet, yet when Lucan moved back, Meriel couldn’t stop the words that tumbled out.

“If they find us, Lucan . . .”

“If they find us, what can they do, Meriel? We’ll have been together. Alone. Intimate. We’re both Riocha and my family name is good enough even for the MacEagan clan: they’d insist that we marry, that’s all. And isn’t that what we want?”

“Aye,” Meriel answered, but she couldn’t summon the enthusiasm she thought she should feel. She started to speak, swallowed the words, and then tried again. “We’d be two people alone in the wild, Lucan. Only the Mother-Creator knows what walks there since the land has awakened again. There are still Bunús Muintir in the old woods, and the dire wolves are bad enough here—” She didn’t mention the threat of her uncle.

“Shhh . . .” He leaned down again, kissing her softly. “I’m good with sword and bow and I can teach you.

And we’d be together: there’s nothing in this world that could stand against that.” He laughed, and after a moment she laughed with him, wanting to believe.

Believing enough that she agreed to go with him that night, before the ship to Inishfeirm sailed tomorrow afternoon. They walked out from behind the screen of the rocks, hand in hand.

“Good afternoon.” Máister Kirwan waited with arms folded across his chest at the end of the harbor, with Nainsi standing sheepishly alongside him. The trio of keep’s gardai stood a pace behind. “A foul day to be out, don’t you think, Meriel? When I first talked to your mam, I thought perhaps she was wrong to be sending you to Inishfeirm. Now I suspect that it’s exactly the right thing to do.” Máister Kirwan glanced at Lucan, giving him a grim smile. “And young Tiarna O Dálaigh. It seems your da has sent a request to the Banrion, asking that you return home to Dun Madadh. You’ll be leaving tomorrow morning.” He nodded to the gardai. “If you’ll be good enough to accompany Tiarna O Dálaigh back to the Keep so he can begin his packing, I’d appreciate it. Meriel, let’s take a walk, you and I. Nainsi, you’ll wait here for us.”

Máister Kirwan’s tone was that of a person used to obedience. Meriel saw Lucan hesitate, but the gardai were grim-faced and moved quickly alongside him, taking him by the elbows and escorting him away. “Meriel . . .” he called, looking back as they pulled him away. She would have gone to him, but Máister Kirwan took her arm and moved her back along the path through the rocks. His grip on her elbow was gentle yet firm.

“Máister . . .”

“You’ll have a chance to say good-bye to him, Meriel. I promise you that,” he said. “And if it is love between you and not a simple infatuation, it will be strong enough to survive the separation. Come with me for now. Please.”

Meriel cast another glance back, but Lucan and the gardai were already near the street entrance, the bright tents of the Taisteal camp ahead of them. She let Máister Kirwan guide her away from the harbor, walking slowly past the hollow where she and Lucan had kissed and planned, following the rough path down to the water again, closer to the curving horn of Little Head. He didn’t say anything while they walked, nor when they reached a small, rock-strewn beach where strands of green kelp lay in the tidal foam and pebbles. He stood there, looking back toward the town and the Keep high above it, and the mountains that framed Dún Kiil Bay.

“It’s a rough beauty we have here on Inish Thuaidh,” he said at last. “Our islands aren’t soft and green like those of Talamh an Ghlas. Here, the hard bones of the land are laid bare. And we Inishlanders are like the islands themselves: we make our own way, and we prefer to be left alone—but that’s not possible. We’ve managed it about as long as we can.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meriel said, impatience coloring her voice. She found the voice she used on the servants when they hadn’t performed as she wished. “By what right are you interfering with my life this way?”

Máister Kirwan’s face twisted, as if he were trying to conceal a smile. “By the right of your mam’s orders,” he answered. “And my own advice to her, to which she occasionally listens. You’ve been kept away from most of what your mam has had to deal with; that was Jenna’s choice—
against
my advice. Because of that . . .” He stopped. Just before Meriel started to speak, he began again. “Meriel, your mam wasn’t much older than you when she was given Lámh Shábhála to hold, all unprepared, and was thrust into larger events than she ever imagined when she was a simple shepherd girl. I can understand why she’d want to protect her daughter from the same fate. I think that was a mistake, but it was Jenna’s to make. Yet now . . . it’s time you started to open your eyes.”

Impatience flared into anger. “You talk to me like I’m a child. I’m not. Speak plainly if you have something to say, Máister, not in riddles and innuendos.”

“Plainly?” Máister Kirwan reached into a pocket on his clóca and brought out a small rock. He held it in the palm of his hand as if admiring it: Meriel thought it might be quartz: a pretty thing, with transparent facets that were a faint blue in color. “Here’s the unadorned truth, then. You are privileged, Meriel. You’re even spoiled . . .” He raised a finger against her protest. “. . . even though I know you feel confined and overprotected. Because of who you are—who your
parents
are—you will almost certainly hold a Cloch Mór one day, one of the thirty great stones of magic. You may even hold Lámh Shábhála, if that’s the fate the Mother-Creator has in store for you. That’s a great burden, a heavier one than you can imagine. It’s my job to make certain that you can bear it.”

“What if I don’t
want
that?” Meriel told him. “Because I don’t.”

“Then what is it you
do
want?”

Meriel blinked. “Right now, I want Lucan. But you and Mam took him away. She takes away
everything
I want.”

A grin creased his cheeks. He put the piece of quartz back in his pocket. “Think beyond your wants of this instant, Meriel,” Máister Kirwan said. “Think beyond today.”

“Then . . .” She stopped. “I don’t know. I . . . I haven’t . . .” Her voice trailed off into silence.

His face changed, all the lines carving deeper in his flesh, his eyes flashing as he leaned near to her. His countenance frightened her: he glared at her as if he were holding back a terrible anger, and his voice was like the low rumble of an approaching storm. His left hand caught her forearm, the fingers digging deep into her flesh. “Listen to me, child,” he growled. “Listen because your life may depend on this knowledge, sooner than you think.” He let go of her arm, and Meriel rubbed at her skin where his fingers had been, blinking back unbidden tears. Máister Kirwan reached for the chain around his neck, lifting the gem at the end of it.

“Let me tell you something you may know, something you damned well should know, if you don’t. And if you think you’ve already heard it, then listen again, because it’s obvious to me that you haven’t understood the importance. There are one hundred and fifty clochmion—the minor stones of magic. Of the
major
stones, the Clochs Mór, there are thirty, Meriel. No more. Eight of them reside here in Inish Thuaidh—which means there are but twenty-two Clochs Mór in
all
of Talamh an Ghlas; between the seven Tuatha; between all the Ríthe who rule them and the Rí Ard himself; between all the Riocha there, the hundreds of tiarna and bantiarna and céili giallnai with royal blood in their veins, and the thousands who would like to be among the Riocha. The balance of power among all of us, now that your mam has opened the mage-lights to the stones once again, is largely determined by the Clochs Mór. To the Riocha of the Tuatha, if Inish Thuaidh has eight Clochs Mór, then we have
too
many Clochs Mór. We’re smaller than any of the Tuatha, yet none of them have more than four of the Clochs Mór.

“They want our Clochs Mór, want them the way a drowning man wants the sweet air, and it’s only the Rí Ard Nevan O Liathain who holds them back from coming to take them. He hesitates because of what happened the last time, here at Dún Kiil. But the Rí Ard’s health is failing—if he dies, then the new Rí Ard may not be so cautious about warring against us. Many of the Riocha have forgotten Dun Kiil or are too young to have fought in that battle, and the southern Tuatha never took part in it at all. The Tuatha look at Inish Thuaidh, and they see that we have more Clochs Mór than they like, and they think that their twenty and two are more than a match for our eight even with Lámh Shábhála also against them.”

He let the stone drop back to his chest, and he gazed at Dun Kiil, his eyes narrowing and his face pained. “I remember the battle. I remember the hundreds who died here. I remember smoke and chaos and the smell of death, the crackling of magic being used in its most destructive way.” He turned back to her, stricken.

“That war isn’t ended. It will soon break open again,” he said. “I don’t think we can stop it. And you
will
be part of it, whether you want that or not. Sometimes people don’t have the luxury of deciding what they want to be.
You
won’t have that luxury, Meriel. That’s why you’re going to Inishfeirm.”

“Did she hear you?” Jenna asked. “I mean
really
hear you?”

Mundy shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I hope so. I think I scared her, at least, and she needs to be scared. We should
all
be scared.”

Jenna
hmmed
at that. Mundy could see the worry on her face, and he saw the way she cradled her right arm with her left hand, as if the scarred arm pained her. “The O Dálaigh boy?” she asked.

“I talked with him also, after I spoke to Meriel. He’s just . . . a boy. We’ll see how long the infatuation lasts when they’re apart. I’ll wager it won’t be long. Some pretty lass will smile at him, and suddenly what’s in front of him will be more important than what’s gone.”

Jenna blinked. Mundy saw her start to protest—as any mam might protest such an offhand dismissal of her daughter’s charms—then close her mouth again. “And the clochmion? Treoraí’s Heart?”

Mundy reached into his pocket and brought out the fragment of crystal he’d had on the beach. “I didn’t give it to her,” he told Jenna. “I know you asked me to, but she isn’t ready, not even for a clochmion.” He paused, his fingers still closed around the stone. “She may never be ready, Jenna,” he said. “Not for what you carry. I think that’s something you have to consider when you’re ready to pass it on.”

“She doesn’t
need
to be ready,” Jenna answered sharply. “I wasn’t prepared for what was given me, but I struggled through.” Jenna held out her left hand. “Give me Treoraí’s Heart. I’ll give it to her myself before we go.”

Mundy looked at Jenna’s outstretched hand but didn’t respond. “Meriel’s not you, Jenna,” Mundy said. “She’s not her da either—and I mean her
real
da, not Kyle MacEagan. She’s just . . . herself.” His hand was still closed around the stone. He looked again at Jenna’s hand, then at her bitter frown. “If you want me to be Meriel’s teacher, then you also have to trust my judgment in this, Jenna. Otherwise, you can teach her yourself. Can you really handle that responsibility, along with all the others you’ve taken on?”

A grimace twisted her lips. In that moment, she looked older, and Mundy realized how much the years had touched her. “It would be nice to have a daughter or a friend who simply obeyed me when I asked them to do something.”

“A Banrion can demand unquestioning obedience from her subjects, but a
friend
will give the Banrion honesty instead, even when I tell her something she doesn’t want to hear. Which do you want me to be, Jenna: friend or subject?”

Grimace slid into scowl. The fingers of Jenna’s right hand twitched, as if she wanted to form it into a fist but couldn’t. “You sound more like old Máister Cléurach every time we meet, Mundy Kirwan. You have the same arrogance and the same stubborn belief that you’re the only one who’s ever right.”

He scowled back at her. “It’s the air at Inishfeirm,” Mundy answered. “It turns us all into grumpy old curmudgeons before our time. Evidently you stayed there long enough to be infected yourself.” He held the scowl for a moment longer until he saw her lips relax and her head shake, and he laughed into her reluctant smile. He put the clochmion back in his pocket.