Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (41 page)

Meriel could see nothing at first. Then she saw what must have once been the corner of a house, the stones now tumbled down but for this one section with weeds and trees filling the interior. “I asked at the inn,” Sevei said, answering Meriel’s unvoiced question. “I talked to a man there who said he was the son of the Tara on the sign, and he told me where the Aoires had lived.” She pointed at the stones. “Here.”

“Here,” Meriel repeated wonderingly. She slipped down from the horse. “So it started here.” She gazed around, stunned, trying to visualize what it might have looked like a few decades ago and failing—she couldn’t see it, couldn’t even imagine her mam at Meriel’s own age, walking down this lane with a flock of sheep, with Meriel’s great-mam Maeve standing in the doorway of the tiny house. She couldn’t think of her mam and great-mam coming out to stare at a Taisteal clan like the rest of the Ballintubber residents. The Jenna Meriel knew was too distant from here, too changed.

Meriel walked over a low jumble of stones into the small rectangle of the house. A piece of an old cooking pot lay in the remnants of the hearth, brittle and thin with encrusted rust. Jenna might have once touched this same piece of metal. Meriel stooped to scoop it up; the metal nearly disintegrated in her hand, pieces of it flaking away.

The horse nickered and a chill breeze came in from the west, swaying the tops of the high grass. Meriel shivered. She went over to Sevei, who stood watching from horseback. The older woman smiled down at her. “The old places are never as you remember them,” she said. “That’s why we Taisteal are always traveling, because the places you leave won’t stay still.”

Meriel wanted to cry, not knowing why. There was a melancholy here, a deep sadness that grasped at her like a hand from a barrow grave. “Thank you for bringing me here,” she said to Sevei. “I needed to see this. But I want to leave now.”

Sevei nodded to Meriel, reached down with a hand, and pulled her up.

Jenna stood at the window of the High Chamber of Dún Kiil Keep, staring out at the Croc a Scroilm, the Hill of Screaming where soldiers from Tuath Infochla had long ago massacred women, children, and old men. It was a foul day, with sheets of gray rain pounding the earth and hiding the dawning sun.

She wondered if the weather would be the same on Inishduán.

“Jenna?”

She turned at the call. Kyle had entered the chamber, accompanied by Mundy Kirwan. Kyle came up to her as she turned, giving her a brotherly hug while Mundy went over to stand near the hearth, holding his hands out to the fire and shivering. Kyle MacEagan might have softened over the years, his hair gone gray and sparse, his body full and round. But his smile had remained the same. She wondered, strangely, how Ennis might have aged. . . .

Ennis
. She blinked away the tears that still threatened whenever she thought of her long-dead love. She’d never told Meriel about Ennis, never told her who her true father was. She wondered now if it was too late. She might never have the opportunity if she failed today.

If Kyle guessed at her thoughts, he gave no indication. “You’re certain this is what you want to do?” Kyle asked.

Jenna nodded, taking a long slow breath. “Aye.”

“The Comhairle wouldn’t agree with you,” Kyle told her. “Even Aithne would be furious at the risk for Inish

Thuaidh. If Lámh Shábhála were to go over to Doyle Mac Ard and the Order of Gabair ...” Hedidn’t need to finish that thought. They all knew what it would mean: Inish Thuaidh would fall. The Rí Ard in Dún Laoghaire, whoever that person might be, would rule all.

“That’s why I haven’t told any of them, especially Aithne,” Jenna answered. “And I appreciate your silence, Kyle.”

“I’m your husband and you are the Banrion. You have my affection and my loyalty.”

“I know,” she told him with a faint smile. She hugged him once more. “Mundy? You’re quiet this morning.”

Mundy turned from the fire. She saw him try to smile at her and fail. “Nothing needs to be said. Words don’t matter now.”

Jenna did smile at that. “No, they don’t.” She closed her right hand around Lámh Shábhála, feeling the cloch’s strength throbbing within her with the surging power of the mage-lights. “If you don’t see me here again in a few hours, know that you both have always had my love and appreciation, no matter how rarely I ever told you.”

She opened the cloch without waiting for a response. The fury of the mage-lights rose around her and took her away.

Inishduán was a flyspeck in the ocean, a piece of rock barely poking above the waves. A few wind-bent trees and grasses clung to the thin veneer of soil. No one lived on the island, which had been claimed by first Inish Thuaidh, then Tuath Infochla, and now Inish Thuaidh once more.

In truth, no one really cared much on which side of the island the imaginary boundary lines were drawn.

Jenna imagined Inishduán as she’d last seen it. Mage-lights whirled around her, a searing rainbow, and swept away again. She was standing on the rocky shore not three strides from where waves pounded against black rock. Rain and wind pelted her, making her blink, and she was almost immediately soaked through, though whether it was the fault of the rain or the salt spray was difficult to tell.

A currach was pulled up on the shingle, its anchor tossed farther up on the beach. Out in the gray waves, half-hidden in the squall, a ship waited. Just upslope, a tent sagged under the assault of wind and sky, the flag of the Rí Ard hanging tattered from the central pole. Jenna recognized the spot; once, nearly two decades ago, she’d been the one sheltering in a similar tent as she waited to give her mam the body of Padraic Mac Ard, Doyle’s da. Jenna touched the cloch and let a wisp of the power spread out, feeling within the shell of energy for the presence of other people.

There were four, and all four had Clochs Mor. At the touch of Lámh Shábhála, she felt them all wake. A moment later, the tent flap opened. Doyle stood there, backlit by the glow of a lantern.

“Sister,” he said. “Won’t you come in out of the rain? You’re looking all bedraggled.”

Jenna shook her head. “We’re not here for talk,” she told him.

A quick, half-amused smile flitted over his lips. Again, she was struck by how young he was: a bare year older than Meriel. Yet she could see the man he had become in the faint lines of his face. “No, we’re not,” he answered. He glanced out over the water. “You didn’t come by ship as I suggested,” he said.

“No.”

His face told her that he understood the implications of that. He held out his left hand; his right hand was conspicuously closed over the Cloch Mór called Snapdragon. Jenna knew the other three as well, had felt their unique energy-shapes before: Sharpcut, Weaver, and Demon-Caller. The last was the Rí Ard’s cloch. She wondered at that: why would Nevan O Liathain himself come here, as old and frail as he was? After Dun Kiil, he’d taken an oath to never come against her again and had kept his word over the intervening years. Had he decided to go against it now?

“You shouldn’t be foolish here, Sister,” Doyle said. “Give me Lámh Shábhála and I’ll send word that Meriel is to be released and sent back safely to Inish Thuaidh. I’ll make certain that you’re returned to Dun Kiil as well.”

“I can’t do that, Doyle.”

A genuine sadness pulled at his features and sagged his shoulders, but there was also concern in his eyes, and she knew that he’d hoped not to fight, that he wasn’t entirely as confident as he appeared. “I thought you might say that. Jenna, you must have felt the Clochs Mór that are here with me; you can’t defeat us all alone and I warn you that you condemn your daughter by trying.”>

“This isn’t about Meriel. It’s about you and me. And about Mam’s ghost.”

His posture stiffened. He shook his head. “I’ll ask you one more time, Jenna. This is your last chance to save your daughter. Give me Lámh Shábhála.”

“If the Order of Gabair has the knowledge you claim to have, then you’ll understand that I can’t do that, Doyle. Not willingly.”

“Then I’m sorry,” he answered. He half-turned, glancing back into the tent.
“Now!”
he called, and his fingers tightened around his cloch.

Jenna barely opened Lámh Shábhála in time. The first assault was tremendous, battering at the shield she hastily erected in front of her. Her vision was suddenly doubled: in the cloch-vision, she saw the yellow-and-red dragon form around Doyle and rush at her. The tent ripped apart, fabric flying into the gale: a thicket of bright yellow spears hurled toward her; a snarl of curling force lines gleamed as they flowed toward Jenna. And behind them, a creature rose from the wreckage: brick-red and immense, with leathery bat wings sprouting from a muscular back and talons scything at its fingertips, fire spewing from its mouth—the mage-demon.

They came at her at once.

Jenna snarled defiance at them and lightnings crackled from her hand, slicing through the energy spears and scattering them. She sent her own twisting strands of power to entwine the constricting mass around her; she threw raw mage-power at the dragon and saw the radiance smash against golden scales, hurling the creature backward even though her counterblow was weak, her attention and power diluted.

Nor could she be everywhere at once: the mage-demon roared and its wings beat as its hands raked across and through Lámh Shábhála’s power, and Jenna felt the blow as if the talons had gouged her own skin. She screamed in pain, staggering back and nearly falling in the uncertain footing of the stony beach.

The others saw her weakness. “Again, together!” she heard Doyle call, and the clochs gathered themselves, surrounding her in her cloch-vision like columns of patterned, aching light. She knew that she couldn’t resist this next attack, that this time one or more of them would get entirely through.

As they charged toward her, she opened Lámh Shábhála fully in desperation, the coruscating energy of the cloch flooding away from her. The spears tore at her wall; the curling flails of Weaver ripped it open. The mage-demon snarled and its fisted hand sent her gasping backward; the dragon roared and sent flames that seemed to boil Jenna’s skin. She screamed with the pain; blood-mist filled her eyes. The dragon’s mouth arced forward and closed around her upraised hand, shaking its head savagely so that she was lifted from the ground. Her right arm felt as if it were tearing from its shoulder socket.

She could not stand, not against them all.

“I’m here, as I promised . . .”
The words whispered in her head and in the same moment, another force—in Jenna’s cloch-vision it was the blue of the sea—sent a tidal wave of power at her assailants. None of the mages were prepared for the unexpected attack: both Weaver and Sharpcut vanished under the foaming crest; the mage-demon roared as it was tossed away; the dragon was hurled backward yet again, its teeth scoring Jenna’s arm as it left her.

The wave washed past. “Edana and I will take the Holder,” Jenna heard Doyle shout, and she realized that it was the Rí Ard’s daughter who now held Demon-Caller, not Nevan O Liathain himself. She had less than a breath to wonder at that. Through Lámh Shábhála, she felt the attention of the Tuathian mages shift: Sharpcut and Weaver turned to face Dhegli as the Saimhóir hauled out from the sea onto a rock just offshore. Jenna could pay little attention to her ally, though, for the mage-demon and the dragon stalked her, both of them hovering about her in the cloch-vision, wings drumming against the air. Her arm ached from the dragon’s attack, true hot blood pouring out to soak her clothing; her mind ached with the mental wounds of the first two attacks and she knew that she’d done little to hurt them as yet.

But
two
Clochs Mór she might be able to handle, even wounded as she was. She gathered Lámh Shábhála’s remaining energy, watching the world mostly through her cloch-vision. Edana, she could tell, was by far the weaker of the two—new to her Cloch Mór and unused to handling the full energy of the mage-lights. She might one day be a formidable opponent if she lived to become as practiced as Doyle, but not yet. Not yet. Both of them had thrown up walls against Lámh Shábhála, but Edana’s shimmered uneasily, thin and uneven.