Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (74 page)

The two of them snuggled together as the flames guttered low in the room’s hearth, Meriel enjoying the feel of lying close to Owaine. His finger trailed down the flank of her body and she shivered, half in delight and half at the tickling feel of it, and caught his hand as it reached her hip. She nestled her head on his chest, the chain of his Cloch Mór under her hair, the jewel itself large in her sight, only a hand’s breadth away. Treoraí’s Heart was a warm pebble caught between her breasts—neither of them would ever be entirely naked, not by choice. Their clochs would always be with them.

“What we’re doing—it’s not likely to work.” The words came low and warm out of the twilight of the room and she felt the fear in them. “If anything happened to you, Meriel, especially now . . .” She heard his breath, felt him swallow.

“I know,” she told him. “I’m terrified, too.”

“Thank you, at least, for giving me last night, and this.”

“Is that what you think it is? Some kind of gift? A reward?” She lifted her head to look at him. “Owaine, I would never do that. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us.” She stopped, knowing that he still doubted her feelings for him and wondering how she could tell him, how she could make him understand. “Mam . . . when I was inside her with the Heart, I could feel all her memories, and I saw how it was with Ennis—my real da—and her at first, how she didn’t realize for a long time what she truly felt for him. When she finally let herself open to him, they only had each other for a short time before she lost him. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. To us. Mam never recovered from that loss, Owaine. Not really. All these years later, she’s still grieving for him. I always thought . . . I guess I just believed that most marriages were like hers: cordial and friendly but without any real passion. I thought that was what Mam wanted, thought she was happy with it. But . . .”

She took a breath. Another. She stroked Owaine’s cheek, sliding fingers through the wiry softness of his beard. In the dimness, she could see the marks of Treoraí’s Heart on her hand. “She lost the person she loved most, but then she shut herself off and never allowed herself to love that way again. My da—Kyle—is her friend but he doesn’t want more, either. But I look at Máister Kirwan and the way he watches my mam and talks to her, and I wonder if he doesn’t feel more for her even if he can’t or won’t show it. If Mam would open her eyes, if she’d see it too.”

“Mundy Kirwan? And your mam?”

“Is it stranger than you and me?”

He made no answer. Finally, in the quiet, she continued. “I wish I could show you, make you feel what I feel ...” She could feel Treoraí’s Heart: warm, so warm, and she knew. She found the clochmion and took it in her hand. She opened it in her mind and at the same moment she kissed Owaine. In the cloch-world, she fell into him, as if he were smoke and fog, finding her wrapped in soft layers of blue affection and red lust and black fear. She saw the white nodules of his doubt and she gathered them to herself.
Here,
she said to him with her cloch-voice.
Here I am. Become me, Owaine. Become me and feel what I feel . . .
She opened her mind to his, felt him touch her in surprise and delight. She held herself out to him.
This is what I feel,
she told him.
All of it. I hide nothing from you . . .

She let him look at it all, holding none of it back: the ugliness of her reaction to him on Inishfeirm; the cold ungratefulness in Doire Coill after he rescued her; her joy at seeing Dhegli again; the slow, halting change as she began to see him anew.

Her feelings now.

“Ahh,” he breathed. She saw the moisture in his eyes and she let go of the cloch. She kissed him again, more urgently this time.

And then, for a time, she thought of nothing at all.

“W
HAT!?”
Enean roared. The man before the Rí Ard flinched, hands up, with the sound of ringing metal as Enean drew his sword. Even Ó Riain took a step back. Enean in a fury was dangerous, with the sleek and powerful muscles of a warrior and a child’s lack of control. Ó Riain had no interest in making himself the target of a blind temper tantrum, but he also didn’t want Enean hacking this man to pieces before they had all the information from him.

“My Rí Ard,” he said as soothingly as possible, staying a careful few steps away from the raised weapon. With the sound of Ó Riain’s voice, Enean’s eyes flicked toward him, angry and wild. “Please,” the Regent Guardian said soothingly. “This man did nothing. He came here as a loyal subject should. Let us hear him out, so we can take appropriate action and keep Edana safe. We need to know more. For Edana, Enean. For your sister. We need to listen to the man.”

Slowly, Enean lowered the sword, though he didn’t sheathe it. The tip clattered against the stone flags as Enean’s shoulders relaxed, and Ó Riain permitted himself a small, brief smile.
So like a child . . . It will be good when I’m rid of him. Soon . . .

“Now,” Ó Riain purred, turning to the frightened man in rags. “Tell us your story again, and leave nothing out.”

The man was quivering so much that Ó Riain wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d lost control of his bladder during the confrontation. The man ducked his head to Ó Riain, though he kept glancing back at the glaring Enean. “Regent Guardian, it was as I said. A man dragged me aside near South Gate. I don’t know the man; I’ve never seen him before. I swear that by the Mother-Creator, Regent Guardian. He was big and rough, like a garda, though he was dressed no better than me.” The man opened his arms, displaying his ragged clothing and torn and dirty tunic. Ó Riain could smell the man: the stench of the streets and poverty, the same malodorous air that sometimes wafted over the keep when the wind blew in from the city. “The man put a knife to my throat, he did. Look—” He pointed to his neck below just at the larynx, where a black-red spot beaded on his skin. “See? The point pricked me there. He told me that I had to come here or he’d kill my family, and then he stuck the parchment I gave to your gardai in my hands. He turned me around, pushed me, and when I looked back again, he’d vanished, as if he’d never been there at all.” The man gulped, his throat convulsing. “That one was worse than a Black Haunt, he scared me so much.”

Ó Riain could easily believe that; the man’s face blanched with the memory. “So you came here . . .” he prompted gently, and the man nodded furiously.

“Aye, I did. Ran here right then, I did, and gave the paper to one of the Rí Ard’s gardai, and they brought me here.” The man spread his arms wide. “I swear to you both, I don’t know any more than that. I can’t read, so I don’t even know what the paper said, though I can see that it upsets the Rí Ard greatly and I’m sorry for that.” That last was said with a beseeching glance at Enean, who still gripped the hilt of his sword.

Ó Riain smiled at the man. It was obvious that the man was just a messenger, and a frightened and unwitting one at that, but it was probably best to be certain. “Thank you for coming here,” he told the man, opening the door to the chamber. The gardai in the hallway straightened quickly. He nodded to them. “See that this man has food and a reward for his efforts,” he said, but he grabbed the shoulder of the second garda as they started to escort the man away. “Peader, take him down to the donjons and determine if he’s telling the truth, and send me word. Don’t hurt him permanently, but make certain that he’s not hiding anything. Let me know what you determine.” Peader nodded, his face carefully neutral. “Aye, Regent Guardian. I understand.”

Ó Riain clapped the man on the back and shut the door once more, turning back to Enean, who was standing at the table near the window, staring down at the paper the man had brought. Though he already knew every word by heart, Ó Riain found himself reading it once more around the bulk of Enean.

The note was unsigned and a golden ring chased with geometric designs had been enclosed—a ring that had caused Enean to wail when he’d seen it. He was holding it now, turning it in the fingers of one hand and gazing at it. Ó Riain didn’t believe the note for a moment—Edana had been taken into Doire Coill along with Doyle Mac Ard, and the Bunús Muintir wouldn’t write ransom notes asking for mórceints. No, the note was undoubtedly a ruse—but Enean didn’t know that, and that was something Ó Riain might be able to use to his own advantage.

“She’ll be safe, Enean,” he said. “They won’t dare harm her.”

“If they do, I’ll hunt them down,” he growled. He opened his fingers, the ring clattering to the table, and lifted the sword again. “I’ll gut them and hang them by their entrails until they rot.”

“I know you will, and it’s only what they would deserve,” Ó Riain said. His voice was calm though his mind seethed with the possibilities. He was certain it was no coincidence this would come just as the invasion fleet prepared to sail for Inish Thuaidh. Everything about the note had the smell of a trap about it, and the smell of the Inish as well: Ó Riain remembered his history well and he knew that nearly five hundred years ago, it was at Sliabh Bacaghorth where Lámh Shábhála was taken from Rowan Beirne in an Inishlander ambush, and the cloch removed to Inish Thuaidh. Ó Riain was confident that the choice of locale was no accident; after all, some Inish blood ran in his body, even though his ancestors had chosen to leave the island. No one whose direct ancestor was Peria Ó Riain could fail to know the history of Lámh Shábhála. He could even hear her voice now, whenever he touched the stone.

No—this had the odor of Doyle and the Mad Holder about it. Ó Riain remembered all too well the reports of Doyle being rescued by Inish cloudmages and Bunús Muintir at Doire Coill. Ó Riain was certain that the intention was for Enean to be nicely feathered in arrows from an ambush. With Enean dead, Edana could advance her claim to the throne of Dún Laoghaire, and Doyle as her husband would have her ear. She might even make a play to become the Banrion Ard.

That scenario made sense. After all, that was what Ó Riain would do in the same circumstances, and Doyle was easily as ambitious as he was himself.

This was good, Ó Riain decided. Whether it was an Inish trap or one set by Doyle or both, Ó Riain would use it himself. This was exactly what he needed. It was difficult to keep a smile from touching his lips as he read the letter once more. Traps were far less dangerous for those who saw them, and they could be turned to other uses. Enean dead
and
Doyle and Edana dead—now that would be delicious. There would be no obstacles at all in his path then. The Holder of Lámh Shábhála would also be the new Rí Ard.

“I will come with you, my Rí,” he said to Enean, who was glaring out at the panorama of the city as if his burning gaze could find the ones who had sent the note. “I will come with you, and we will recover your sister
and
have our revenge.”

Meriel had never seen streets like this. She knew they existed, even back home in Dún Kiil, but the daughter of the Banrion was rarely allowed to mingle with the poor or to wrinkle her nose with the smell of corruption, filth, and unwashed and unperfumed bodies.

Meriel had been too tired and too fearful to have noticed much of the area the day before, rushing through Falcarragh’s streets behind Mahon and constantly glancing behind to see if they were followed. Now, in the unrelenting sunlight, Meriel found herself recoiling inwardly.

“Oh—” Meriel bit back the curse that wanted to follow her exclamation, instead covering her nose with her sleeve.

“I know,” Owaine said as he stepped out alongside her. “It’s . . . not what I expected.”

The street outside their door was little more than an alleyway. Though it was straight enough, receding away in a line in either direction, the houses leaned against each other and crowded the paving stones, occasionally bowing toward their neighbors across the street as if nodding to ancient acquaintances. There were vacant places along the lane, like empty sockets in a gum line where rotten teeth had been pulled, where buildings had succumbed to fire or age or gravity. The street was no more than three strides across, and the central gutter was foul with the contents of emptied chamber pots. Enormous black flies buzzed lazily, biting where they landed, and the air was thick with the odor of rot. There were no crowds of servants here to sweep the pavement clean, to wash away the night soil, to scrub the grimy stones. Here, things lay where they fell and only the rain cleaned the streets.

Children were running through the streets and around the houses, an entire noisy herd of them. They nearly ran into Meriel and Owaine as they stepped off the curb, Meriel lurching backward as a grimy-faced girl struck her leg and caromed off with a shout of apology as she fled.