Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (58 page)

Doyle opened his mouth to protest, but no sound came out. He couldn’t lift his hand or stir; it was all he could do to cling to consciousness, to watch as Ó Riain, holding Lámh Shábhála, moved away and the half-hidden face of the Toscaire Concordai took its place.

The bear grinned; Rhusvak grinned. “I should thank you, Tiarna Mac Ard,” the man said. “You’ve given the Concordance what it wanted and more. Lámh Shábhála will come to Céile Mhór with an army for our aid, and we’ll have a Cloch Mór of our own in the battle against the Arruk. Tiarna Ó Riain has promised to teach me how to use it. A dragon to fight against the Arruk . . .” Doyle felt hands under his head and the chain holding Snapdragon was lifted from him. At the moment it left him, a wave of searing, awful loss—physical, agonizing—swept over him and this time he did cry out, a wail of distress and grief.

Doyle had been taught that to lose his cloch was the worst trial a cloudmage could ever endure. Now he
knew
the truth of that lesson, knew it to the marrow of his existence. It was as if Rhusvak had plunged his hands into Doyle’s abdomen and ripped out his entrails. He moaned: a whimper and sob. Rhusvak looked down at him, almost sadly. “So it hurts that much? A pity . . .” The man’s face came close to Doyle, whispering. “I’m a merciful man,” Rhusvak said, “and when I hunt, I never let my prize suffer.” Doyle heard the ring of steel leaving leather. He waited for the strike, for the feel of the blade slicing between his ribs or slashing across his throat.

It never came.

He heard wings in the rain. He heard thundering and felt the ground tremble underneath him. He heard the howl of wolves, somewhere down near the base of Knobtop. He heard Rhusvak call out and Ó Riain answer, then running footsteps and the sound of horses in flight.

He tried to rise, to see what was happening, but he couldn’t. He lay there lost in misery.

A
FTERWARD, the inhabitants of Ballintubber would call it the “Night of Visitors.” They were first awakened by the sound of rain on their thatched roofs, and they peered from their windows at a display of strange and colorful and silent lightnings on the bare high slopes of Knobtop. Some would swear that they saw a dragon there, limned in golden, spectral light as it belched flames. It was as if the mage-lights that curled and swayed in the sky most nights had come down to earth near them. Knobtop was lit in an awful fury for several minutes, then went dark again.

And as it did, they heard the sound of low thunder, the howling of wolves and the beat of unseen wings. They gaped at the sight of monstrous crows, so many (they would say later) that they blocked the very sky and stopped the rain as they flew past at the level of the rooftops. Then came the thunder itself: the fia stoirm, the storm deer, their antlers so high that they tore the very clouds, their hooves shaking the earth so that pots and pans clattered and fell from their hooks and sparks shuddered up from banked fires. There were three of the storm deer, they said the next day, though some later remembered six, or perhaps it was more, an entire herd of them that left the fields pockmarked and all the crops for the village trampled underneath. Some would later say that the fia stoirm had riders: cloudmages from Inishfeirm, clad in robes of white and shrieking imprecations and spells as they went. Others claimed that there were Bunús Muintir with them, the wild people of Doire Coill, an army of them howling in their guttural, strange tongue and wielding staffs that glowed in the night and ensorcelled hammers and axes.

But all agreed that after the fia stoirm came the wolves, gigantic dire wolves that snarled and slavered over the fields in the wake of the deer, their red eyes like pinpricks of fire in the night and their teeth gleaming, and the villagers slammed their shutters and barred their doors as the man-high wolves rushed past. The count of them would grow from a hand to a dozen to a hundred to a thousand as the tale was told and retold over the years.

They all—crows, deer, mages, wild men, and wolves—rushed through the village in the direction of Knobtop, though no more lights were seen there. Afterward, in the morning, the curious and brave few who went up to the mountain found the stones charred and broken, with pits and craters everywhere, as if some vast and unimaginable battle had been fought in the high pasture. . . .

Meriel, Owaine, and Keira were seated astride three storm deer. Keira had called them from the valley of Riata’s tomb and they’d ridden through the forest at an impossible speed, Meriel simply holding on to the creature’s neck in desperation, closing her eyes as limbs and branches lashed at her as they rushed along and the low booming din of their hooves nearly deafened her. Somewhere, she realized, two dire wolves began running with them: Arror and his mate Garrhal. Their presence made the storm deer shiver and quicken their own pace, and Meriel could feel her own mount shake its head, snorting at the smell of their enemies. But Keira shouted something in her own language and flung a powder from one of her pouches into the air, and the storm deer settled once more, seeming to ignore the wolves.

A half dozen or so crows swept by her, staying close to Keira before swooping off ahead as the strange group left the shelter of the old oaks and came out into thinly-wooded rolling land just as the rain began to fall. She could see, faintly, a few points of yellow light in the distance that must be Ballintubber.

“Look!” Meriel shouted to Keira and Owaine, pointing to the east and south. They’d come out of Doire Coill farther north than Meriel had expected; over the roofs of the village they could see lights flickering on Knobtop, as if the storm that now soaked their clothes had decided to spend all its fury there.

“Go!” Keira shouted, and the storm deer answered with their high, bleating voices. The wind threw rain hard into Meriel’s face as they redoubled their pace. They came through and passed the village in what seemed a moment, tearing across fields, road, and fen, pounding over a bridge and rushing up the flanks of Knobtop. Arror and Garrhal howled, leaping over rocks as they climbed. They entered a small stand of trees, emerging from the other side, Meriel saw men fleeing on horseback, several of the crows diving futilely at them as the riders headed through the high grass at an angle. The wolves started to pursue, but Keira called to them and they returned, red tongues lolling over white teeth as they panted.

“Let them go! There are too many for us, and they have Clochs Mór,” Keira told them. “We’re needed here.” She nodded her head upslope, where through the darkness and rain Meriel could see two figures in the wet grass. There was a disturbing familiarity to one of them. . . .

“Mam!” Meriel leaped from the storm deer and ran, Owaine following. She sank down on the grass next to her, stroking Jenna’s cold cheeks with her hands. With relief, she saw her mam’s chest rise with a wheezing breath. Meriel lifted Jenna’s head onto her lap and the woman’s eyes flew open, feral and strained. Her mouth opened in a wide “O” and she wailed, a wordless, bottomless grief that seemed to shake the rain from the clouds. Her hand, the arm scarred white to the elbow, clutched desperately for something at her breast, and Meriel saw then that the chain holding Lámh Shábhála was gone.

“Oh, Mam . . .” Meriel found her own breath caught in empathy. She looked around, hoping desperately that Lámh Shábhála had only fallen off somehow, that she would find it in the grass. “Mam, I’m here. I have you; Keira’s here, and Owaine. You’re safe, you’re all right . . .” Jenna continued to scream, long and distressed, pausing only to take a breath, her eyes open but unseeing. Meriel was sobbing with her, a panic rising. “Mam, please . . .” Meriel pleaded, looking up bleakly at Owaine. “Lámh Shábhála’s gone,” she said to him, and he grimaced as he nodded.

“I know.” He stared at Jenna’s madness, flinching as another ragged scream tore from her ravaged throat. Keira had come over also, crouching down alongside Meriel. Arror and Garrhal padded about the meadow, growling.

“Please help her,” Meriel said desperately to Keira. “Listen to her! You must know something . . .”

Keira shook her head, her soft brown eyes watching Jenna’s agonized face. “She’s beyond anything I can do,” she said. “But perhaps not for you, if you can stand the pain, too.”

“Oh.” Meriel clutched at Treoraí’s Heart around her neck. She could feel the energy within it aching to be released. She hugged Jenna to her. “I’m here, Mam. Let me try to help you . . .” She closed one hand around the azure facets and opened her mind to it, still holding Jenna.

She found herself lost.

Before, it had been difficult enough to keep herself separate from the person she was trying to heal until she could send the clochmion’s power through them. Meriel had learned how to use the clochmion to explore the body she touched and find the source of the injury; she’d learned to accept the linkage of her personality with that of the person she was healing. But this . . . this was more, and worse . . .

Meriel found herself caught in a maelstrom from the first moment. Her mam was the center of the storm, a vortex of blood-red and black that immediately engulfed Meriel. Jenna’s wail was the world-voice of the Mother-Creator, a deafening sound beyond sound, a thousand needles driven hard into Meriel’s flesh. The emotional matrix of her mam’s torment caught her up and swept her inward, and she found herself screaming in concert, lost.
Lost, lost . . . I need it. I can’t live without it . . .
Meriel flailed out even as she screamed, trying to pull away from the darkness inside Jenna that clutched at her with fingers of misery and loss and anguish, dragging her back to the midnight core like some great swallow-hole of the sea.

Meriel was drowning in this misery. There were no other thoughts in Jenna/Meriel but this awful pain, this terrible mind-grief.
Lost, lost . . .
Fleeting images of years past flitted by, but they were colorless and stretched, the faces skeletal. She saw herself once, much younger, but her face was that of a corpse, and maggots wriggled in the sockets of her eyes. Meriel/Jenna screamed, thrashing out with her fists at the apparitions. Meriel could barely hold onto herself and remember that she held Treoraí’s Heart. This was no broken leg, no simple injury, no ordinary illness. This was a madness of mind and soul. Lámh Shábhála had driven its roots all the way to the core of Jenna’s being, and having that connection torn away had left great wounds that were beyond anything Treoraí’s Heart could heal. Meriel knew in the midst of her coupled pain that if she stayed here longer, the agony radiating from those lesions would consume her as well. She tried to feel her own hand and could not; she might as well be trying to lift a phantom limb.

“Mam, I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help you. I have to go.” The words were submerged in the wailing. Meriel searched for herself in the nightmare inner landscape, forcing herself to focus through the shared pain. She couldn’t heal what the loss of Lámh Shábhála had done, but she could perhaps give her mam some temporary solace. She found the thread of memory, followed it deeper. She found Jenna, huddled frightened in the midst of the storm . . .

She tried to find her own thoughts, a whisper against Jenna/Meriel’s linked cries....
Once you use Treoraí’s Heart, your own protection is gone. If you can’t release quickly enough, you’ll be trapped here . . .

“Mam?” In her mind, she saw her mam’s face lift toward her, recognition dawning in her tortured face. “I’m here with you, Mam.” Meriel took a breath, bracing herself for the full impact of the pain she knew would come. She took the cloch’s power in her mind, gathering and holding it. In one inner motion, she placed it around her mam like a clóca; in that instant of total connection, the waves of deep, endless loss swept into her. She took the grief, hearing her own voice screaming, her own throat scraped raw with the sound, the pounding surf of red and black dragging her under, sucking her back into the well of agony.

She willed her fingers to open, to break the connection . . .

Meriel gasped, the world snapping back into focus around her as the sound of a scream seemed to echo from the summit of Knobtop. “Meriel!” Owaine was shouting, his face very close to hers. Meriel gasped, the pain still throbbing inside her. If she closed her eyes, its insistent grasp would still drag her back. She could feel the connection, pulling even as it began to dissolve. “Meriel!”

“I’m—” she started to say, but her throat ached, and her hand burned cold where she had been holding the cloch. She looked down to see the faint, curled lines of white scars on her arm had reached nearly to the elbow, fading slowly back to flesh “—here,” she finished with a gasp, swallowing hard. “I never thought—” She looked down at her mam’s face, still cradled on her lap. Jenna’s eyes were closed now, and though the face reflected the pain, she was no longer thrashing in Meriel’s arms. She seemed to be only sleeping, perhaps snared in a nightmare. “That was awful. I can’t . . . couldn’t . . . It was too strong for me.”
Lost, lost . . .
She shivered, the memory of the interior horror receding slowly. Her body ached, as if she’d been pummeled and bruised.