Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (5 page)

“I’ll take care of your daughter as if she were my own, Jenna,” he said. “I promise you that. With the help of the Order, Meriel will find the strength that’s inside herself and bring it out.”

T
HE ONE, the
only,
good thing about the trip to Inishfeirm was the three days at sea it would take to get there.

Meriel had loved the sea instinctively from the time she first remembered seeing it: the smell of the brine; the delicate changing colors of water under the sky, from slate gray to foaming green to cobalt blue; the aching vastness and sheer weight of the ocean, extending unbroken out to the limits of her sight and hiding unguessed treasures underneath; the raw, seething power of the storms that often swept over Inish Thuaidh from across the Westering Sea. Whether at Dún Kiil or at her da’s estates at Dun Madadh, Meriel spent as much time as she could at the shore or in one of the currachs, watching the cavorting seals and the wheeling gulls.

A year ago, she’d spotted a family of blue seals just off Little Head at Dun Kiil: the Saimhóir who had their own language and who her mam claimed could also harness the energy of the mage-lights. She’d watched them lolling on rocks a few hundred strides out in the water, the sunlight striking sparkling emerald highlights from their black fur. Their craning heads noticed her watching them from the shore and they seemed to call to her, honking and moaning in their odd tongue before finally slipping back into the water and moving down the coastline. Meriel had watched for them for several weeks afterward, but never saw them again.

As much as was possible on the
Uaigneas,
the royal ship with its double masts, Meriel stayed away from Máister Kirwan and her mam, who had also accompanied them on the trip. Instead, she dutifully wrote a long letter every morning to Lucan, placing it in an envelope and sealing it. That’s what she and Lucan had vowed they would do during that last unhappy (and too well-chaperoned) meeting before the ship left: they would write to each other each day. She would send the first packet of envelopes back to him via the captain of the
Uaigneas
once they reached Inishfeirm, and she hoped the first of Lucan’s letters was already on its way to her.

She also prowled the decks with Nainsi, who seemed singularly unhappy to be at sea—or perhaps her gloomy face was more due to the fact that this was the last time she’d accompany Meriel. Unlike the children of most other Riocha, Meriel had never been sent away to foster-age. No, Jenna had wanted her near—“For your safety,” she said curtly when Meriel had asked why—but while they lived in the same keep, Jenna rarely spent much time with her daughter, leaving her in the care of a succession of nurses and teachers and caregivers. Nainsi had been Meriel’s attendant/guardian since she was ten summers old: a dour, plain girl five years older than Meriel, the daughter of a minor tiarna from the townland of Rubha na Scarbh. Meriel knew that Nainsi enjoyed the reflected glory of being in the Banrion’s household, and after the severe tongue-lashing she’d received from the Banrion in the aftermath of yesterday, Nainsi was afraid that she’d be dismissed entirely.

“Your mam says that she’ll try to find something for me within the keep, but after what’s happened she could order me away. Then what happens to me? My da and mam would be furious, and they’ll marry me to some flatulent, pig-farming céili giallnai from Tuath Éoganacht. Promise me you’ll talk to her, Meriel. After all our time together . . .”

Meriel tried to ignore Nainsi’s whining, finding some small pleasure in talking with the sailors, listening to their rowing songs and their rough jests, though Nainsi pretended to be horrified and tried to lead her away. Meriel also spent a lot of time simply standing at the ship’s prow, watching the waves break white against the carved image of a sea serpent. She pretended that the voyage would never end, that she would see Lucan coming after her in a ship of his own, and she would leap over the side of
Uaigneas
to him and they would sail off on an adventure to some far, unknown shore, perhaps as far as Thall Mór-roinn. Or if not Lucan, then a storm that would hurl
Uaigneas
before its fury and drive them into the rocks somewhere else, anywhere else but Inishfeirm. But Lucan’s ship never came, nor the storm, and by evening they were rounding the long arm of An Ceann Caol and beginning to slip westward.

Meriel took her supper in the cabin she and Nainsi shared. When she came back on deck, she saw her mam standing at the rail of the ship. She started to turn back, but her mam caught sight of her. “Meriel, come here . . .” she said. With a sigh, Meriel went over to her. Jenna pointed down at the water. “Look,” she said. “The seals have come to say hello.”

Around the ship, several large seals were skimming through the wake of the ship, occasionally jumping from the water. “Those are blues,” Jenna said. “Saimhóir.”

“I know,” Meriel told her. “I’ve seen them before, out near Little Head. I go out there sometimes just to see them. I think they’re fascinating and . . . beautiful.”

Meriel could feel Jenna’s gaze on her, and when she turned her head, she found her mam staring at her appraisingly. “You just . . . watch them?” she asked, and Meriel frowned.

“Of course, Mam. I tried to go up to them a few times, but they’d just go in the water and honk and wail at me, like they were trying to talk to me.”

Jenna nodded, slowly, and her attention went back to the seals in the water. “I love them myself. Especially the blues. But I never knew you liked them also.”

“There’s lots you don’t know about me,” Meriel answered, too sharply.

Meriel thought her mam would react angrily. She saw Jenna’s fingers grip the railing tightly in the last of the sunlight, but Jenna only took a long breath. “I know,” she said. “That’s my fault, Meriel, and I admit it. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I can’t change the past. All I can do is try to be more of a mam to you from now on.”

Then don’t banish me to Inishfeirm,
Meriel wanted to retort, but she bit her lips, watching the seals. They were falling behind the ship now, turning back to the shore. They watched them depart as the sky darkened and turned red on the horizon ahead of them. “My own mam . . .” Jenna started, then paused. “Your great-mam Maeve . . . I’ve learned that she died. I’m sorry you never had the chance to meet her, Meriel. She was a good person and she would have loved you.”

“Then why didn’t you ever bring me to see her or have her come to us?”

Meriel saw her mam’s lips tighten. Her eyes shimmered in the sunset. “It’s a long and complicated story, and—” She sighed. “I’ll tell you someday. I
want
to tell you. Maybe when we get to Inishfeirm and can sit down for a long chat. But the short version is that we both, Mam and I, made the choice to stay apart because . . .” Her voice became softer than the hush of the water against the hull.

“Because you killed Padraic Mac Ard.”

Meriel saw her mam’s eyes close with remembered pain. “Aye. Because of Padraic Mac Ard. I wrote to her, oh, once a year or so. I told her about you. I told her lots of things, but she never responded. After a while I stopped writing. We’re both—well, we’re both too proud for our own good. I know that was a mistake, now—and I hope the Mother-Creator will forgive me for it.” Jenna turned her head to look at Meriel. “It’s a mistake I don’t want to make with my own daughter.”

She couldn’t hold back the retort this time. “Then tell the captain to turn the ship around. Don’t send me to Inishfeirm.”

Jenna was already shaking her head before she finished. “I can’t, Meriel.”

“Why not? This isn’t what I want, Mam. How does it help us to get closer if I’m
there
while you’re in Dún Kiil? Tell me why you’re doing this to me.”

Jenna had turned away from the ocean. The seals had vanished, and only the edge of the sun was still visible. In the dusk, Meriel could see her mam’s eyes glistening. “There are things you shouldn’t know, Meriel. Not yet. This is one of them.”

“Fine,” Meriel said, snapping her mouth shut with the word. She slapped the railing with her hand, the sound loud. “You treat me like I’m still a child, Mam, but I’m not. I suppose that’s something else you didn’t notice.”

With that, Meriel pushed away from the railing and left. She heard her mam call her name behind her but she paid no attention. She went to her cabin and shut the door, causing Nainsi, still in her bunk, to glance up startled.

Meriel expected any moment to hear a knock and her mam’s angry shout.

She heard nothing at all.

The next day, a small island lifted from the sea ahead of them.

Inishfeirm was a fog-wrapped, steep-walled mountain thrusting out from the waves five miles from Inish Thuaidh. As they approached, Meriel could see houses and buildings scattered up the slopes from the small harbor sheltered by a tall rock (“Inish Bideach, that rock’s called,” one of the sailors told her. “Tiny Island.”) Smaller white dots moved along the green-cloaked, steep hillsides: grazing sheep. High up on the mountainside, a large, towered structure gleamed as if it had been molded from snow: the White Keep, home of the Order of Inishfeirm and Meriel’s intended residence for the next several years.

It looked a gloomy prospect, indeed.

The sailors furled the twin sails and took to the oars, rowing
Uaigneas
into the harbor as Jenna and Máister Kirwan came up from their tiny cabins. They flanked Meriel and Nainsi. Jenna greeted Meriel with a “Maidin maith,” but said nothing else to her. Those on the shore had noticed the Banrion’s insignia fluttering on the forward mast, and a crowd gathered quickly around the wharf where they tied up.

“Most of the island’s turned out,” Máister Kirwan commented, smiling and waving to the people. “Everyone wants to see the Banrion and First Holder again.”

Meriel refrained from comment: if this was “most of the island,” then there weren’t many people here at all. She’d seen larger crowds on nearly any day at the market at Dún Kiil, and during the Festivals the streets there were so full that this pitiful group waving back at them would have been utterly lost. They seemed to be fisherfolk or farmers mostly, with plain clothing and plainer faces, hands stained dark with work and toil. Here and there among them were a few men and women in white clócas like Máister Kirwan, some with a white léine underneath, others—mostly younger than Meriel—with red. A man all in white came forward as the lines were secured to the pilings and the planking laid from deck to wharf: slightly built, with hair so dark brown it verged on black, and eyes the color of freshly-turned earth. His beard was still downy and short, patchy on the cheeks, and to Meriel’s mind he looked to be no more than four or five years older than she was. He also seemed to be rather nearsighted, for he leaned slightly forward and squinted heavily in their direction, his nose wrinkling. He wore a glittering stone around his neck “Máister! And Banrion MacEagan! Welcome!”

“Owaine Geraghty.” Jenna’s mam was smiling. “And in a Bráthair’s colors finally. It’s good to see you once again—you’re taking good care of the clochmion I sent you, I see.”

Owaine smiled, touching the stone. “Thank you again for the gift, Banrion. It was unexpected and very much appreciated.”

“You and your family helped me once; that’s just a small return of the favor.”

“It was far more generous than that,” Owaine answered. “I never expected to actually hold a cloch na thintrí.” He gestured toward the buildings near the docks. His squinting eyes found Meriel. “So this is our new acolyte. Welcome, Bantiarna MacEagan. I have a carriage for you—we saw the ship from the keep. There’s a supper waiting above . . .”

Meriel found the White Keep depressing despite its bright outward appearance. The stonework was ancient, with a central tower that appeared far older than the Keep at Dún Kiil. The stones were a pale granite coated with layer upon layer of whitewash. Inside, the structure was huge, drafty, and cold—a maze of corridors and passages, all of them seemingly added to the existing structure at various times over the centuries. The architecture varied wildly, from plain work around the oldest portions that might have been crafted by the ancient Bunús Muintir race; to ornate, fancifully ornamented archways that belonged to the Before, back when the mage-lights had last gleamed in the sky; to the stark, utilitarian lines that Meriel associated with the Great Hall of Dún Kiil; to a colorful geometric style of decoration that she didn’t recognize at all. A flagged corridor might end suddenly, going down two abrupt steps to a marble-tiled hall built a century later that jutted off at an angle. Corridors never seemed to intersect at right angles, or several corridors would meet all at once in a strangely-shaped room, and a few of the halls they walked were so ancient that the feet of countless people had worn double hollows in the very stones. The entire population of the island could have lived here easily, with room left over for every last goat, sheep, and chicken.