Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (24 page)

Meriel glanced up at the mage-lights, curling bright and low below the cover of massed thunderheads, their brilliance illuminating both ground and cloud. The smell of rain was in the air, still distant but approaching quickly.

Meriel took a breath and held it. She was alone. The night seemed to be waiting.

She took a step toward the wagon where Nico snored, closest to the trees. She slid past the rear of the wagon, the night under the trees beckoning. She didn’t run, afraid that the pounding of feet would awaken someone, but she walked as quickly as she could toward the trees without daring to look back, the skin at her spine crawling as if waiting for a call, a shout, the stab of a blade. . . .

A shape moved from behind the nearest trunk, just to Meriel’s left. In the darkness, the apparition seemed huge and forbidding, and eyes glittered menacingly in the shadows of its face. Meriel stopped with a gasp, recalling tales of Black Haunts, of Blood Wolves that walked upright. “It’s not safe to be out here,” a voice said. The specter moved out from the trees into the mage-lights: Sevei.

“I just . . . just needed . . .” Meriel began and stopped.

“There’s a chamber pot by your bed for that.” Mage-light curled over her face. In the depths of the woods, a long shuddering howl echoed and the sound of the trees moving in the stiffening breeze sounded like low voices. “I should just let you go,” Sevei continued. “It would be a lesson for you—a final one, I’m afraid. But then Nico would be angry with me and I’d lose my tent-mate. So . . .” She crossed her arms under her breasts. “I suppose I have to be understanding again.” She looked up at the sky as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. “I sleep light, and you already know I’m faster and stronger than you,” she said. “Like the last time, I probably would have tried this myself, the first night. But after two unsuccessful attempts I would have learned my lesson. Have you? Someone who accepts the name Cailin would understand her situation very well, and turn around now and walk back to the tent all by herself, and I wouldn’t have any trouble with her again. Meriel would
make
me bring her back and I’d have to become the most awful teacher she’s ever experienced until I broke her of all her bad habits. So who are you: Cailin or Meriel?”

It was starting to rain in earnest now and the mage-lights were fading. Rain hissed on the leaves and Meriel blinked away droplets from her face. Sevei stood unmoving, waiting.

Meriel shivered. Dropping her head, she turned and started walking back toward the camp. “Cailin,” Sevei called. Meriel stopped and glanced back at the woman. “This was the final chance. You can’t try anything like this again or you’ll force me to take actions I really don’t want to take. Do you understand that? Do you
really
understand that?”

A sheet of cold rain washed over them and Meriel blinked into the droplets. Faintly, thunder grumbled in the west.

“I understand,” she said.

“Good.” Sevei stirred, striding quickly toward her. “Come on, then. Let’s get out of the weather.”

She walked on past Meriel without looking back. For a few breaths, Meriel stood there, looking at the forest. Then she followed.

T
HE MESSENGER peregrine that Mundy Kirwan sent to her found her already on her way to Inishfeirm aboard the
Uaigneas,
and the spellbinding on the bird spoke the horrible news of the attack on the Order: one Bráthair dead, three other cloudmages seriously injured, and two acolytes missing—one of them Meriel. Jenna shouted her impotent fury to the sky as the peregrine, startled, took to the air. She ordered the captain of the ship to put on all sail they could and to have the crew unship the oars as well. They reached Inishfeirm the day after the attack.

“Where
is
she, Mundy? That’s the only thing I care about.”

Jenna found it difficult to control her rage. The fury burned inside of her, throbbed in her heart and her blood and whetted the edges of her sharp words. She paced the floor in the Máister’s chamber while Mundy watched her from behind his desk. Bráthair Geraghty and Siúr Meagher pressed against the wall nearest the door as if they would flee at a run as soon as they were released. Jenna couldn’t stand still; she needed to be in motion. She yearned to use the cloch around her neck, to have one of those raiders who had stolen her daughter standing in front of her—half a dozen of the invaders had remained behind, but all were killed during the attack. She rubbed at her scarred and disfigured arm; it ached today, ached worse than it had in years, making her long for the treacherous relief andúilleaf had once given her.

Guilt gnawed at her, as well as anger.
If you’d listened to Kyle, if you’d come even a day earlier, you’d have been here when the attack came, and it all would have gone much differently with Lámh Shábhála against them . . . .

“We don’t know where she is, Banrion. Not yet,” Mundy answered.

“You told me Meriel would be safe. You told me you would protect her.”

“I know.” Mundy himself had a burn scar mottling one cheek and a long gash across his forehead now scabbed with brown. His left arm had been broken and was bandaged and bound across his body. “I thought we could.”

“You’ve done a wonderful job of guarding her.” She saw Mundy swallow the words he might have said. He composed his face in careful stoicism. “I’d taken all the precautions I’d told you I would take when we first discussed this in Dun Kiil. Then, you also thought it would be adequate. No one believed they would dare to use this much force. Not even you, Jenna. If you look at your heart instead of your anger, you’d realize that.”

She felt the heat rise in her face as if he’d slapped her, and she very nearly closed her hand around Lámh Shábhála and tore at him with the cloch’s power. The voices yammered at her: “. . .
kill him for his insolence. That’s what I would have done
. . .” A familiar voice arose out of the babble: Riata, whose ghost had befriended her.
“The man is your friend and your ally. You can’t hurt him more than his failure already does . . .”
Mundy waited, patient and solemn as he looked at her. She could see the pain in his eyes, the self-flagellation, the guilt.

Jenna felt her pulse slow. She bit at her lower lip, forcing herself into the same calmness. “You’re right, Mundy. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize—I understand how you feel, and believe me, I’m furious with myself for not having anticipated this. Jenna, they came at us with at least four Clochs Mór and a full squadron of gardai. We had the islanders watching the sea; we’d slow-spelled the gulls around the island to warn us of approaching ships, but none of them came to us to tell us about the ship in West Bay until after the attack began; the raiders must have another cloch that can hide such things. We had wards set around the White Keep’s grounds; that’s why we were actually able to strike at them first with at least a few breaths’ warning. But none of us, not even you, thought they’d attack with this many clochs. One or two, perhaps, and after Doyle Mac Ard’s warning to you, we were watching for someone being sent in by Quickship. I only have three Clochs Mór here, Jenna. Even so, we were winning—with the clochs, with the clochmions, with the slow magic we’d prepared. We’d stopped them at the keep’s gate when they fled as quickly as they’d come, abandoning the attack. The whole encounter was no more than a quarter of a stripe, and it took a while to find that Meriel was missing. Bráthair Geraghty saw Meriel and Thady MacCoughlin last.”

Jenna swung around to the Bráthair. “Owaine?”

He blinked owlishly at Jenna, his mouth open. He sputtered, then licked his lips and began again. “They were together,” he said. “I told them to stay there, in the field, but Thady MacCoughlin insisted that Meriel should follow him. I tried to stop them, but MacCoughlin . . . he’s stronger than me and I couldn’t stop them, and Meriel wanted to go with him . . .” Owaine stopped. “I’m sorry, Banrion. It’s my fault.”

Jenna forced herself to stop, to smile. “No, Owaine,” she told him. “It’s not your fault. You did what you could.”

Owaine shook his head in miserable disagreement, and Jenna felt the last of her fury dissolve, leave behind a cold lust for revenge against those who had done this.

“Bráthair Geraghty believes that Thady’s responsible,” Siúr Meagher said. “For everything.”

Owaine shrugged. “I don’t know that, Banrion. But I know that he was around Meriel all the time and that he’d gained her trust. I also know that he was unhappy here, feeling that he was looked down upon by the Riocha acolytes—which was true.” Owaine sniffed, glancing once at Mundy as if for confirmation. “I know how that can be myself.”

Jenna could hear the hurt in his voice and she nodded, remembering how she and her mam had themselves once been treated by the Riocha. She could imagine how difficult it had been for Owaine here, with nearly all the acolytes the sons and daughter of tiarnas and bantiarnas or at least the minor nobility. Being the offspring of common fishing folk as well as having such poor sight, Owaine’s treatment would have been harsh even with Jenna’s patronage and Mundy’s support. The Order of Inishfeirm might declare that its gates were open to any who had the talent and desire to be a cloudmage, but the reality was that it was rarely anyone but the rich who walked these halls.

“You may be right, Owaine,” Jenna said. “Thady would have been a good inside contact for the Tuathians.” She looked back at Mundy. “Was my brother here?”

“Doyle Mac Ard? I don’t know,” he answered. “If he was, then he didn’t use Snapdragon in the attack—no one saw any sign of his Cloch Mór. One of the clochs was Bluefire, the one Árón Ó Dochartaigh held years ago, which we know was given to one of the Tuathian tiarna after he died. Another was the one called Weaver that fought against us at Dún Kiil, and Tornado and GodFist. So these were definitely Tuathians, and judging from the way they handled the clochs, probably mages from the Order of Gabair. We broke Bluefire and emptied Weaver, though we didn’t recover either stone. Whether Doyle was actually involved . . .” He sighed. “There’s no way to know. Jenna, I think the attack was a feint, something to cover the real danger. Owaine may be right—MacCoughlin may have been the one to take Meriel away.”

“And you’ve searched everywhere? Meriel’s not on Inishfeirm?”

“If she is, she’s well hidden,” Mundy said.

“She’s not here at all, Banrion,” Owaine interjected. He lifted the stone around his neck. “I . . . I would know, with this. It finds lost things; people as well as anything else. I would have to be close to feel her, but I’ve walked all over the island yesterday and earlier today. I would
know
if Meriel were here, and she’s not. She was taken.”

Again, Jenna smiled at the young Bráthair. “Thank you for your efforts, Owaine.” She heaved a long sigh. “Then there’s nothing we can do now but wait. If she was taken, she’s now over in Talamh an Ghlas. The ransom demands will follow soon enough, and we’ll know who’s responsible and what we might be able to do about it.”

Her hand closed around Lámh Shábhála, tightly enough that she could feel the pulse of the cloch’s power. “And I swear that if they’ve hurt her, they’ll pay a hundredfold.”

Tiarna Shay O Blaca, using the Cloch Mór Quickship, brought the news to Edana. Even expecting his appearance, it was startling to hear a
phoomp
of air and see him standing near her. The knot that had been in her stomach for the past few days tightened viciously at the somber look on his face. “Doyle?” she asked him immediately. She couldn’t trust her voice to say more than his name, afraid of what Shay might say.

“He’s fine,” Shay answered, and Edana breathed a long sigh of relief as the knot loosened and vanished. “He said to send you his love.” But Shay went on to tell her the rest, and her relief at hearing that Doyle was safe was tempered by the losses they’d suffered. “We knew that we couldn’t hide the Order of Gabair’s involvement in this,” Shay said as he paced the common room where, for propriety’s sake, they’d agreed to meet. It was well past the evening supper, and the balcony near where they stood showed a sky that was nearly fully dark, already gleaming with stars. A few other Riocha were there, gathered near the massive fireplace at one end of the long room, but all stayed politely out of earshot. “But we didn’t expect the losses we took or that level of resistance. We almost failed; we
would
have failed if we hadn’t had the inside help. Even so, we nearly lost more Clochs Mór to the Inish.”

“But we didn’t,” Edana reminded him. “And now we have the Banrion’s daughter and we can play out the rest. Shay . . .” Edana placed a hand on the burly man’s arm. “The Order of Gabair will have what we want. Soon. And once we have that . . .”

Shay still looked worried, though that was a normal expression for the man. “You’re ready for the protests from those Riocha who think this was an unnecessary and dangerous provocation of the Mad Holder? By tomorrow, Rí Connachta and Rí Éoganacht will know, and you can expect the delegates to be presenting their formal protests to the Rí Ard.”