Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (70 page)

“The sweetfish are running in the outflow current. Come swim with me.”

Dhegli heard Challa’s call, but he didn’t immediately respond. He was standing in human form on a foamy shingle of beach, staring inward at Winter Home. He and Challa had been three days moving down the Great Sweetwater from its northern lakes to its long, widening mouth well in the south, and then more days moving up the coast of Winter Home. They were as far up the coast now as they would go, ready to make the crossing across open water to Nesting Land. They were both weary from the travel and the thought of sweetfish made Dhegli’s stomach growl, but yet . . .

He could still feel Meriel in his chest. He could sense her, somewhere deep in Winter Home’s hard interior, moving. No longer where she’d been, near the north pool of the Great Sweetwater, and not too distant from where Dhegli stood now. He could feel the determination and fire in her, and the fear. Meriel was going to where Lámh Shábhála, the great sky-stone, burned. He knew that the First Holder no longer held the stone; he’d felt it in the mage-lights. And now Meriel was moving to the stone, and he could sense the danger, could feel it as clearly as he saw the foretellings that Bradán an Chumhacht sent to him.

“Dhegli?”

He did turn then, letting his human form go, so that it was another Saimhóir who looked back at Challa, hauled out on a rock in the white surf. “I hear you, sister-kin,” he said.

She warbled her acknowledgment, but her gaze went past him to the stones of the Winter Home. “You made your choice days ago, brother-kin,” she told him. “You can’t be thinking of returning to her.” There was pain in her voice, and sadness, and—aye—disappointment and even anger.

“She goes into the heart of danger with little help and little hope. Bradán an Chumhacht—”

“Bradán an Chumhacht is for the Saimhóir, as the sky-stones are for the stone-walkers. Why do you persist in helping them when they don’t help us in return? Why do you listen to the stone-walker in your blood instead of the Saimhóir that is your true being?” Her muzzle lowered and she slapped her tail on the wet rock. “You have love
here,
Dhegli, right in front of you. You have love that you can share for more than a few hours a day. You’re Water-snared, Dhegli, or you couldn’t have swallowed Bradán an Chumhacht. Your duty is to the Saimhóir and our needs.”

“I know that.”

“Then come with me and eat the sweetfish so that we’ll be strong enough to reach Nesting Land tomorrow. We’ve both been too long gone from the families. They’ll be wondering if Bradán an Chumhacht swims free again.” She paused. “I need to return to Nesting Land, Dhegli. There is new life within me.
Our
life.”

“Ahh . . .” For a moment, Dhegli felt the pall lift around him. “Challa, that is so wonderful. I didn’t know.”

“You should have known,” she chided him, but it was a gentle thrust and her deeper affection for him showed in the shiver of her blue-black fur and the deep night of her eyes.

“You’re right. I didn’t, and I should have. It makes me wonder, though . . .”

She knew his thoughts. “You wonder if Meriel also has new life.” There was no jealousy in her voice, not as the stone-walkers would have understood it—that wasn’t an emotion the Saimhóir understood or felt. Dhegli would undoubtedly mate with many of the cows and Challa with many of the bulls. Sexual fidelity simply didn’t matter. But there was still friendship and there was still love and Dhegli heard that concern.

“I do,” he admitted.

“You can’t be with her, not the way the stone-walkers would do it,” Challa told him. “And any child that you have might not even carry the blood of the Saimhóir and be able to change. It might not be able to follow you into the sea.”

“Our child would carry the Saimhóir blood,” Dhegli said.

“You
know
this?” Challa asked, emphasizing the word. “You’ve
seen
it.”

“There’s no certainty in Bradán an Chumhacht’s visions of the future,” he answered. “Only glimpses, possibilities, and choices. But as much as anything in the future can be known, I know that if it
would
happen that Meriel carries my child, then that child would have a destiny for both Saimhóir and stone-walker.”

“And now?” Challa asked. “Where do we go now?”

“I don’t know,” Dhegli answered truthfully. He looked out over the gray, white-tipped waves to where—just over the horizon—the Nesting Land lay in fog and rain, and he could feel the pull. Bradán an Chumhacht was a magic of the WaterMother, and to risk it to help the stone-walkers seemed somehow wrong, when he could use the power for his own people. Yet . . .

He could feel her, also, and in the visions of Bradán an Chumhacht, he had seen her die—die because he wasn’t there to prevent it.
The waters were bright with magic. He could taste the energy in the salty currents as he swam among the floating islands of their ships. Meriel was above him, the magic of the sky-stones flaring around her, defenseless. He swam up, up, holding the power of Bradán an Chumhacht ready, and releasing it as he broached the water, deflecting the bolt that would have killed Meriel. But he had been seen, too, and one of the cloudmages turned his attention to Dhegli and searing red light tore through him, shattering his body. As he sank senseless back into the water, Bradán an Chumhacht swam from his open, bleeding mouth into the sea, free again. . . .

He didn’t know if that was a cost he could pay. He didn’t know if it was a cost he
should
pay. As if she sensed the pattern of his thoughts, Challa spoke again. “Any debt Bradán an Chumhacht may owe to the stone-walkers for returning it to life has been paid, many times over,” she said.

“I know that,” he answered. “That doesn’t concern me. But I also owe Meriel.”

“For showing her what was inside her?” Challa scoffed. “For coming for her when she called? For returning her love? For bringing that stone-walker cloudmage to find her? I would say the debt is on her side.”

“I hear you,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.” He snorted, looking again at the shore and feeling Meriel’s presence. “For now, let’s swim out to find the sweetfish and eat, and then we’ll see. We’ll see.”

T
HEY WALKED the rest of the day, and Meriel noticed that Jenna grew slowly more tired and less communicative as the day went on. By the time that the sun was painting long shadows across the rolling landscape through which the River Donn meandered, Jenna, with Meriel beside her, was trailing well behind the rest of the group. Meriel heard the low drumming of horses’ hooves on the roadway, past the curve they’d just rounded. They’d met other travelers on the road that day and had stayed on the road, exchanging greetings and the normal civilities, and attracting no more attention than any other group.

But riders meant Riocha, and they were coming from the south, which meant they might be from Kilmaur and pursuing them. “Mam, we need to get off the road,” she said. Jenna stared back at Meriel dully, her gaze listless, her mouth half open. “Mam, come with me,” she said more urgently, pulling at her. She could hear the brighter jangling of livery now, and a faint laugh. She half pulled Jenna to the side of the road and over the low stone wall that bordered it, both of them hunkering down in the brush between the stones and the riverbank. She hoped that the others ahead of them heard the riders as well, but it was too late to call to them.

There were half a dozen Riocha in the group, all male, laughing and joking as they walked past, their great steeds sniffing and blowing and tossing their heads. Through the brush, Meriel could see that the livery was in the green and brown of Tuath Gabair, and at least one of the men had a cloch na thintrí around his neck. They wore leathers and had swords ready at their sides: these were not Riocha on a jaunt, but going to war.

“. . . If I remember, there’s a village just ahead. We’ll stop there for the night,” she heard one of them say as they passed. “We’ll be at Falcarragh soon enough tomorrow. The Rí Ard has said that he wants all the Clochs Mór there before we take ship. The Inishlanders will be squashed like bugs under a rock.”

Low laughter followed, flowing out over the river. The riders passed on, and after a time, Meriel helped Jenna back onto the road. They found the others not too long after, waiting for them. Owaine pointed northward. “I went on ahead a bit. There’s a village around the next bend, and those riders are in the inn at the edge of town. I think we should camp here, up on the hillside in the trees, rather than going on. The Riocha may have heard about us in Kilmaur.”

No one objected, and they made their way through a boggy meadow and up the slope until the road was hidden behind the screen of foliage. They sank down gratefully among the leaves, tired and sore. Owaine started a small fire and Meriel fixed andúilleaf for Jenna, who went to sleep almost immediately after drinking the brew. Meriel watched her, brushing back her mam’s hair and tucking a blanket around her. She fingered Treoraí’s Heart, feeling the cloch’s desire to be used.

“You can’t,” Owaine said behind her. His hand touched her shoulder; she didn’t move. “Not after the last time.”

“I know,” she told him. “But she hurts so much, all the time . . .”

“You already know that you can’t do anything about that. The best thing we can do for her is take Lámh Shábhála back,” he said.

She almost laughed, looking around them: her mam moaning in her sleep; Edana hanging a small cook pot over the fire on a makeshift tripod of branches to make a stew of dried herbs and some of the smoked meat they carried; Doyle watching her, his own pain reflected in the gray cast of his skin and the dark blotches under his eyes. “Aye, we look fierce and dangerous,” Meriel said. “If I were the Rí Ard, I’d be trembling inside the walls of my keep with all my armies and all the Clochs Mór around me, if I knew we were coming.”

Owaine did laugh then, and his fingers tightened on her shoulder. “ ’Tis true it sounds foolish, but sometimes fools do great things.”

“Name one who did,” Meriel said.

There was silence behind her.

“Usually fools fail,” Doyle’s voice commented, but when Meriel glanced over, he was watching Edana. “Maybe I can snare a coney or squirrel,” Doyle said. He’d yet to shed his pack, standing over her. “It’d taste better than this dried stuff.”

“How are you feeling, my love?” Edana asked him.

Doyle shrugged. “Awful. Worse than ever. But sitting here won’t help. Not me, not us, and not that stew.”

“Doyle?” Edana rose from the fire, going to him, but he shook his head.

“I’m as fine as I’m going to be. Just . . .” He seemed to shiver. “I need to be by myself. I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, and strode off.

“Mac Ard!” Owaine called after him, but Doyle never turned or responded.

“Let him go,” Meriel said to Owaine.

“We don’t know what he’s going to do or where he’s going, Meriel,” Owaine protested. Edana looked carefully away. “When those men passed us, the riders, I thought Doyle might know them.”

“He did,” Edana said softly, without looking at the two of them. “They were from the Order of Gabair, and one of them was Shay Ó Blaca, the head of the Order.”

“Then he could be betraying us, right now.”

“Not without betraying me also,” Edana answered. Her face lifted, and she looked at Owaine as she might have at an insolent Tiarna, back in Dún Laoghaire. “As well as losing any chance he has to gain back the Cloch Mór he lost.”

“She’s right,” Meriel agreed. “We can’t worry about him, Owaine. Not at this point.”

Owaine sniffed, staring into the gathering twilight where Doyle had gone, but he said nothing.

Doyle stood cloaked in the darkness under an oak tree near the inn, though he could hear the voices inside and see the yellow light of the fire and candles through the half open shutters. A boy of perhaps thirteen summers wandered down the street from one of the village houses and Doyle called out to him. “Young sir! I have a favor to ask of you.”