Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (8 page)

“And I, you,” she answered with a smile. “I’m off, though—Da’s asked that I interview a new healer from Airgialla. Till tonight.” She kissed him again, quickly this time, and went rushing off with her maidservant. Doyle watched her until she turned left with a smiling wave, and then he turned back to the Rí Ard’s chamber as the garda opened the door for him. He entered.

The chamber high in the Keep of Dun Laoghaire smelled of corruption and stale urine that the perfumed candles seemed to enhance rather than mask. As Doyle Mac Ard leaned forward, he caught a whiff of the Rí Ard’s foul breath and had to force himself not to show his distaste as he kissed the man’s grizzled cheek and brushed back the stiff, gray hair from his brow. The golden torc around the man’s neck looked as if it would slip off the wasting flesh of its own weight.

“You look well, my Rí,” Doyle said as he straightened, then sat on a stool next to the bed. One did not stand above the Rí Ard.

Nevan O Liathain, ostensible ruler of the Seven Tuatha, grimaced and coughed wetly, spitting out a blob of green phlegm into a small silver urn alongside his bed. A chamber servant hurried forward to empty it. “Don’t flatter me needlessly, Doyle,” O Liathain said, his voice rough and broken. “I know exactly how I look and I’m sure Edana’s already given you her opinion. I can feel the crows gathering outside my window, and I hear the human ones cawing in the hallways. Damn this disease, and damn all the healers who have tried to cure me with their wretched potions.” O Liathain coughed again, a series of rattling, lung-scouring hacks. When the spasms passed, he lifted a blue-veined, thin hand on the finely-brocaded bedclothes, gesturing, and a man only a few years older than Doyle hurried forward from a seat near the window. A long and deep scar furrowed the left side of his face, running high into his skull. Where the jagged scar ran, the brown, wavy hair was interrupted by white skin.

“What is it, Da?” the man said in a childlike voice, slurred by the scar that twisted his lips. “Look! One of the ships is coming in the harbor. It’s flying red and white, so it must be from Airgialla, and there’s another flag below that I don’t recognize at all. Can I go watch it dock?”

“Aye,” O Liathain told the man, who was kneeling alongside the bed. He tousled the hair as he might a boy’s. “Go ahead, Enean.”

“I’ll go with him, Rí,” Doyle said, starting to rise, but O Liathain waved him back down.

“No, let his keeper watch after him,” O Liathain told him. “Enean, make sure that MacCamore is with you. Do you understand?”

“I will, Da,” Enean said, and bounded toward the door already calling for MacCamore, waiting patiently in the corridor outside. O Liathain sighed, watching him.

“Sometimes,” he said after the door had closed, “I wish that the boy had died with his stepmam. That would have been more merciful.”

Doyle remembered that day as well as the Rí Ard, even though Doyle had been only twelve summers old at the time. The Rí Ard had been in Tuath Gabair, staying at the capital of Lár Bhaile along the banks of Lough Lár. The Banrion (the Rí Ard’s third and last wife), seventeen-year-old Enean (just named as Tanaise Ríg the year before) and Enean’s newly named fiancée Sorcha were following a few days after the Rí Ard. The Rí Gabair’s Keep had been flung into a sudden uproar when the bloodied and lame remnants of the Banrion’s escort rode up the long hill of Lár Bhaile a few mornings later, bearing the corpses of the Banrion and Enean’s fiancée as well as a badly-injured and unconscious Enean. The gardai hurriedly gave the Rí Ard the tale of bandits along the High Road from Dun Laoghaire. Enean had taken a severe blow to the head from a highwayman’s sword while defending his mam and his bride-to-be, and he would never be the same again: feeble-minded, childish, prone to seizures and fits.

Vaughn Mac Ard, Doyle’s uncle and commander of the Rí Gabair’s army, had immediately sent troops from Lár Bhaile in pursuit of the attackers, largely suspected to be raiding Inishlanders—no one believed they were mere bandits, then or now. The highwaymen fled west along the High Road pursued by a squad of gardai, retreating into the haunted and feared depths of the ancient oak forest of Doire Coill, dark and trackless. None of them, attackers or gardai, ever came back out. Three days later, where the northern edge of Doire Coill touched the High Road, the heads of both the bandits and the squad of gardai were found in a field amid a black flock of feasting crows. Doyle, as squire to his uncle, had ridden with the Rí Gabair and the Rí Ard to see the sight. He still could recall how the crows took flight, reluctantly, as Nevan O Liathain rode toward the gory sight, shouting. The heads had been stripped of much of their flesh by then, the eye sockets just raw bleeding holes and the gaping mouths tongueless . . . Some would say later that they’d noticed Bunús Muintir watching from under the shadow of the oaks, but Doyle hadn’t seen them, the Old People who supposedly lived there.

No one ever knew for certain who had sent the murderers. Many, including the Rí Ard, would continue to believe it was the Inish, but Doyle never believed that—it wasn’t Jenna’s style to be covert. But there were factions enough among the Tuathian Riocha, families who wanted to advance their own fortunes and who wouldn’t be troubled over stooping to hired murder.

Doyle would say afterward that this was the day he gave up his childhood and took up his da’s legacy, at once and early, driven by the awful vision in front of him. Doyle knew who the Rí Ard blamed and they were the same people who had taken Doyle’s da away from him. He would take allies where he found them, justified or not.

“What Enean did was incredibly noble and brave,” Doyle said to the Rí Ard. “The Mother-Creator saved him for a reason. He still has a destiny to fulfill.”

“Then I wish She would whisper Her secret to me, for I don’t see it,” O Liathain answered. He groaned as he shifted in the bed. “And I fear that I never will.”

“Don’t say that, my Rí.”

“Why not? For the last many months, I’ve been thinking this is the last summer I will see, the last Festival of Gheimhri I’ll ever celebrate, the last harvest. One thing I’ll
never
see is the face of the person who will take this torc from my cold body and put it on their own, but I know that will be soon.” For a moment, O Liathain closed his eyes and Doyle wondered whether he’d fallen asleep. Then the gray, rheumy eyes opened again and he licked dry lips. “What of Inish Thuaidh and your sister?”

“News came from Tuath Infochla this morning—that’s why I asked to see you. The rumors we’ve heard are true: the northern Stepping Stones have gone over to Inish Thuaidh, and the Ards of those clans are now sitting in the Comhairle in Dún Kiil. We bleed in the north, Rí Ard. The Banrion refused to see the delegation Rí Infochla sent in protest. She wouldn’t even accept Rí Mas Sithig’s letter. She defies us all.”

“Damn that woman!” The effort cost O Liathain another spasm of coughing, his face going red then gray; he spat again, and again the servant hurried forward. When he’d recovered his breath, he shook his head. His voice was much fainter. “We should have moved against her before now. We shouldn’t have let her recover after Dun Kiil—I should have renounced the oath I made to her, should have gathered together
all
the Tuatha and clochs na thintrí and come against her with an army even Lámh Shábhála and the Inishfeirm cloudmages couldn’t resist. But my father and the Riocha were all afraid after our first defeat and I couldn’t get them to agree, and I
had
given the Mad Holder my word. My word . . .”

O Liathain went into another fit of coughing and Doyle waited patiently, leaning over to press the cloth against the Rí Ard’s lips when he’d finished. “So we waited and waited and now we pay for our cowardice,” the man continued, “and it will be that much harder to pry her out and remove her.” He stopped, his eyes closing again. Doyle waited, and he stirred a few breaths later. “I need you, Doyle,” O Liathain whispered. “As I needed your da long ago: a strong and loyal hand, a strong and loyal mind, someone fit to hold a Cloch Mór. That’s why I’ve given you my daughter, that’s why I gifted you with the stone you hold.”

These were words he’d heard many times before. O Liathain’s mind sometimes wandered along old paths now, and it was best just to nod and pretend you’d never heard the words before. “You have my hand and my mind and my loyalty, Rí Ard,” Doyle said. “You know that. You treated me as a favored son when the others . . .” He stopped, remembering the mingled shame and anger he’d felt since his childhood every time he heard the taunts:
“There’s that bastard child of Padraic’s . . .” “Useless offspring of a tiarna’s whore . . .”
He bloodied himself frequently in those first years, and as he’d grown, the taunts had come less frequently. But he still saw them in people’s eyes sometimes, unspoken.

“Jenna could have been my Banrion, long ago,” the Rí continued, his mind still drifting back. “I offered her that, when I first met her, but she refused me. It was not long after Enean’s mam had died, when I was still Tanaise Ríg. She could have been my second wife. All this trouble would have been avoided had she accepted. But she went mad with Lámh Shábhála.”

“I know. My mam told me that tale. Jenna is a murderous fool, Rí, and too proud for her own good.”

A faint nod. “Your sister is an abomination and must be destroyed before she destroys us. I’m sorry, Doyle, but that’s true. Still, I hate to ask you to plot against your own sister.”

“Oh, I have no problem with that, Rí,” Doyle answered easily. He fingered the Cloch Mór around his neck. “Someone else needs to hold Lámh Shábhála. Someone whose loyalty to the Tuatha is unquestioned. Perhaps the Rí Ard himself. It would look good around your neck.” Doyle’s hand went to his own neck, and in his imagination it was not Nevan O Liathain wearing the cloch.

There was no answer. The Rí’s chest rose slowly; his breath labored and loud. Doyle rose from his stool. “Rest, my Rí. Don’t worry, Jenna will be weakened, and very soon. Edana and I will see to that.” He touched the man’s cheek and went to the window where Enean had been sitting. Far below, he could see the Rí’s son and his entourage just emerging from the keep’s main gates and riding toward the harbor. He glanced at the ship coming toward the docks. Enean was right; on the mast flew the banner of Tuath Airgialla, and below was another: a stylized dire wolf on a field of blue—the banner of the Concordance of Céile Mhór.

Doyle’s eyes narrowed at that, wondering why Céile Mhór would be sending unannounced someone whose rank demanded the banner. He thought that perhaps Enean had the right idea, after all.

“Make certain the Rí sleeps comfortably,” he said to the chamber attendant. “If he wakes and wants me, I’ll be with Enean at the docks.”

My Dearest Lucan:

I’m alone now.

Well, in truth I’m
never
“alone” here—that’s impossible. My mam left three days ago with Nainsi and I’m now in my rooms with Faoil, who I told you about in the last letter. Doors are not locked here in the White Keep—no, that’s not quite true.
Many
doors are locked here, some with metal and some with magical wards. But not the doors for the acolytes’ rooms; anyone can walk in on us at any time and the Siúrs seem to often do so. Faoil’s usually here when we’re not together in classes or doing the duties assigned to us. She’s here right now as I write this, and has already asked me who I’m writing to. I told her “a friend.” She didn’t like the answer but she’s too uncertain of me to ask any more questions. Maybe she’s afraid of what I’ll say to my mam, and how that might affect her family.

There are always other people around; the Bráthairs and Siúrs; visitors and supplicants from Inish Thuaidh; people from Inishfeirm; even Riocha from Talamh an Ghlas come to inquire about putting their sons and daughters here—though not too many of those. I’ve heard from the other acolytes that the Rí Ard has created his own “Order of Gabair” based in Lár Bhaile and he wants none of the Riocha taught the arts of the cloudmage by “vile Inishlanders.” I’ve been told that several acolytes from the Tuatha left here in the last two years to go to Lár Bhaile and the new Order, and there are empty rooms in the keep’s dormitories. Still, I can feel people watching me, all the time, even though they think I don’t notice. Máister Kirwan seems to be around every other corner I turn, especially. There’s one Bráthair—Owaine Geraghty—who also seems to go out of his way to be around wherever I am. My mam knows him somehow; knows him well enough that she gave him a clochmion even though he is of totally common blood, if you can believe that.

And my mam seems to think that some of them may be watching me for other reasons. She warned me before she left: “Be careful. Not everyone is your friend, and because of who you are, you are always going to be in some danger.” I wanted to ask her why in the Mother-Creator’s name she is leaving me here if she felt that way, but that would have just made her angry.

I’m treated like a servant. I’m expected to wash dishes, to wait on the cloudmages and visitors at meals, to tend to the gardens. The acolytes are little better than slaves. You should see my hands, my love—they look worse than Nainsi’s, all red and splotched and scratched, the nails hopelessly broken. Not the soft hands you used to hold at all. Tomorrow morning, before my first class in slow magic, I have to go out and help bring in the breadroot crop from their easy beds in the High Field, a good half-mile trek, and we’ll be getting up before dawn to start.

And the classes themselves: dry, boring material droned at us by dry, boring teachers, mostly. Histories, lists of names and dates and events; catalogs of clochs na thintrí, both Clochs Mór and clochmions and their names and reputed powers and current mage-holders; all the past Holders of the Clochs Mór and Lámh Shábhála; the skill of letters—which many of us already know but that doesn’t matter, we still have to attend the class; the clan names of the Riocha and their genealogies. Máister Kirwan’s class, once a week, is the worst waste of time, since we do nothing but sit silently with our eyes closed and “think of nothing.” An impossible task, of course, since the moment you try to think of nothing your mind is filled with everything. We can’t even sleep while we’re sitting there—anyone caught actually sleeping gets extra chores. And I can’t neglect telling you about the slow magics of water and earth, the most boring and insufferable classes of all—nothing but memorizing long chants and lists of ingredients to make little or nothing happen.