Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (83 page)

Jenna cupped the stone in the palm of her hand. Meriel stared down at the stone: vibrant green crenellated with white. She could feel its pull. “You’d be a better Holder than me, Meriel,” Jenna continued. “You would put it to good use, and perhaps . . .” Jenna shrugged. “Perhaps you’d succeed where I failed.” Again, her gaze went to the destruction in the city, and she shuddered with a deep, throbbing sob, her eyes closing as if she couldn’t bear to see any more. “Perhaps you can make up for some of what I’ve done here.”

Meriel stared at the stone, at her mam’s drawn, lined face, carved by years of holding Lámh Shábhála, of being Banrion. Of loss and pain. “I love you, Meriel,” Jenna whispered. “I always have. I wish I’d said it more; I wish I’d shown it.”

“I knew,” Meriel told her. “I always knew.” Meriel reached out and closed her mam’s fingers around Lámh Shábhála. Bending down, she kissed her mam’s hand. “I know you, Mam. I was with you. I know you make the offer, but I also know that Lámh Shábhála’s so entwined with you that losing it would kill you. And I can’t do that. I don’t
want
to do that. Keep the stone,” she said. “I have a cloch that’s better suited to me.”

Doyle closed his hand around Snapdragon. The cloch was dead and empty, though he could still feel the connection with it. It was as if he’d exhausted all the power within the cloch. From the expressions on the faces of those around him, it was the same for all of them. Somehow, his sister had snatched the sky’s power from all of them and sent it hurtling back to where it had come. The clochs na thintrí were drained, all of them. They would have to wait for another night when the mage-lights returned to refill the crystalline wells within the stones.

Taking Edana’s arm, he walked with the Ríthe, O Blaca, and the other cloudmages down from the Old Wall to where the Inishlanders had gathered around the body of the Saimhóir. They were staring at the scene, all of them: Riocha; the gardai with their swords and shields; the townspeople peering fearfully from hiding places in the rubble.

But Doyle stared only at Jenna and the small, seemingly insignificant stone around her neck. “No,” he heard Edana whisper to him. “We gave the Banrion our word.”

“There are only five of them. Five,” he answered. He gestured around them. “Their clochs are as empty as ours, and we have an army of gardai. She can’t stop us now, can’t do anything to prevent it. Our swords are all we need, Edana. We’re hundreds against five.”

“No,” she told him again.

He wanted to sweep his arm around, to the Ríthe, the other Riocha mages, the gardai, the people.
“Rí Mallaghan, Rí Mas Sithig, Shay, my friend, don’t you see? Lámh Shdbhala is ours for the taking, here in front of us and unprotected!”
he wanted to shout to them.
It should have been mine . . . it would have been mine if she hadn’t killed Da. It’s my
right
to have it, and I
will
take it!”

“Your niece brought me back to you, as she brought her mam back from insanity here,” Edana said quietly, as if she could hear his thoughts. Her hand stroked his arm. “She saved your life when the gardai would have killed you. You owe her for that if nothing else.” Edana’s hand turned him. She looked up at him, her face serious and stern. “Enean’s gone because of Lámh Shábhála. I don’t want to lose anyone else I love. But you need to choose, Doyle. You can’t have me and also have Lámh Shábhála. Not anymore. You have to choose.”

She let him go, stepping back to where the rulers of the Tuatha stood, and her hand touched the torc around her neck. “I say the same to the Ríthe,” she said. “With Enean dead, I claim the torc of Dún Laoghaire. I am Banrion Dun Laoghaire, and I
will
make war on any Tuath that breaks the truce we have made here.” She glared at them. Rí Mallaghan seemed to almost smile; Rí Mas Sithig snorted but also shrugged. Rí O Seachnasaigh of Tuath Connachta started to sputter a protest, but Rí Mac Baoill touched him on the shoulder with a nearly imperceptible shake of his head.

“Not now,” Mac Baoill said. “Not here.”

“But Mac Ard is right,” O Seachnasaigh protested, but his voice trailed off as Doyle moved toward the Inishlanders. Edana felt her heart seem to dissolve in her chest. “Doyle . . .” she whispered.

Mahon lifted his bloody sword as Doyle approached, stepping deliberately in front of Jenna; Mundy lifted his hand as if he were ready to unleash a spell of slow magic. Doyle stopped two strides from Mahon. The man’s stare bored into Doyle’s. Doyle silently showed the man his empty hands and finally Mahon stood aside, though the sword never left its ready position.

Doyle stood in front of Jenna and Meriel. “I’ll never like you or trust you, Sister,” he said to Jenna. “This is not ended between us. That’s the only promise I’ll make to you. This is not over.” Then his gaze went to Meriel. “Edana’s right,” he told her. “I may hate my sister, but her daughter . . .” He bowed to her, as he might to one of the Ríthe. “I wish you’d taken the stone,” he said.

Stepping alongside Meriel, he crouched down and took hold of the board on which Dhegli’s body rested. “Let me help you with this,” he said.

Out in the dark night of the harbor the hulks of the fleet smoldered, listing and burning, their sails ragged. The Saimhóir had all come ashore, and their shining black eyes watched as Meriel and the others approached with the makeshift bier holding Dhegli’s body. Challa was there on the shingle with the waves lapping white and phosphorescent around her. The seal grunted and coughed furiously, and Meriel didn’t need to know the language to understand the anger and hostility in the words. “I’m sorry,” she said, knowing Challa couldn’t understand her but hoping that the emotions came through. “I know you loved him, too.”

They carried the bier forward until they were knee-deep in the choppy water, Challa swimming next to them. Then Meriel nodded to the others and they set the plank down in the water. For a moment, nothing happened, then Meriel saw a silver, glowing form flash out from Dhegli’s open mouth. Challa moved more quickly than Meriel thought possible, her tail and flippers thrashing water. She dove, and then nearly immediately surfaced again. They could see the bright fish in her mouth. She flipped it up once, and swallowed.

Bradán an Chumhacht had come to a new Holder.

Challa swam back to them, swimming fluidly alongside Meriel. Her flipper touched Meriel’s leg; when she spoke, Meriel could hear her words in her head.

“Dhegli had stone-walker blood in him. I do not. He could love a stone-walker. I will not. I tell you now: Bradán an Chumhacht will never come to the aid of a stone-walker again, not as long as I hold it within myself. Tell your mam that the Saimhóir no longer serve at Lámh Shábhála’s whim. I will make it my task to warn the Saimhóir against your kind. You may come to the sea, but you’ll never swim with me, Meriel, or with my milk-kin. You had Dhegli’s love, but you only have my loathing, and I will never, never forget. That is my promise to you.”

With that, the touch was gone, before Meriel could reply. Challa moaned once to the others and with a flip of tail, curved quickly away from Meriel. The Saimhóir gathered around Dhegli’s body, pushing past the humans and shoving the corpse farther out in the water. They moved away through the surging waves. “No, wait . . .” Meriel started to say, but Owaine held her back. She let him, leaning back against him. The water was cold and frigid around her legs and she told herself that was why she shivered.

Her mam took her hand. Together, she and Owaine led her out of the water.

The Ríthe watched from the shore as the Saimhóir’s body was offered back to its kind. They saw the bright flash of Bradán an Chumhacht and its passing to another. “We offer the Banrion and her people a ship to return to Inish Thuaidh,” Edana said to Jenna. “But you must leave now.”

Rí O Seachnasaigh gave a muffled croak at that. “And by what right do you order the Ríthe to do anything, O Liathain?” he asked. “Even if you claim Dun Laoghaire, this is Tuath Infochla, and even if you can uphold the claim to Dún Laoghaire, you are
not
the Ard.”

“Perhaps she should be,” Torin Mallaghan said softly. “She has Enean’s lineage, she has proved her worth here tonight, and she had her da’s blessing.”

“You can’t be serious,” O Seachnasaigh sputtered. He looked around at the other Ríthe. “Surely none of you are listening to this man’s ravings?”

“I am serious,” Mallaghan said. “None of us trust each other well enough.” He lifted his chin toward Edana. “I would trust
her,
” he said.

“It’s not for you to decide,” O Seachnasaigh retorted. “That’s for the Óenach.”

“Aye, it is,” Mallaghan agreed. “And when we call the Óenach together again, I will propose Edana O Liathain for the Rí Ard.” Edana heard a mutter of agreement from Mas Sithig, though Mac Baoill remained silent, rubbing his bearded chin with a thumb. “What do you say, Banrion O Liathain?” Mallaghan asked. “Do you think you’d make a good Ard?”

Edana saw Doyle watching her, saw the Inishlanders also huddled close by. “There are those who
can
be Ard through blood and kinship, or through the spoils of battle,” Edana said to them. “And there are those who
should
be Ard. Those are sometimes different things.”

Meriel remembered Edana’s words at Falcarragh. That day now seemed ages ago, the memories dimmed by a month and more at home in Inish Thuaidh: with watching her mam slowly return to herself and take the throne seat before the Comhairle in Dún Kiil; with seeing Inishfeirm again; by the joy of being with Owaine, and with their quiet marriage ceremony in the Weeping Hall; by the bittersweet melancholy that came over her every time she saw seals swimming in the sea.

By the knowledge that she had missed her last two moon-bleedings. She’d told no one that, not even Owaine. She would wait for the quickening or the bleeding, whichever came.