Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (55 page)

Owaine was there when Meriel emerged from the lough before dawn. When he saw the black heads of two seals creating twin wakes in the still surface, he turned to stand with his back to the water near the pile of her clothing, staring stolidly away from her. He heard Meriel’s voice and the coughing moans of a seal, then the splash of water again. He heard the quiet shush of bare feet on the grass as Meriel approached.

Hours ago, after she’d entered the water, he’d gone back to Keira’s cave and returned with a soft blanket, which he’d laid next to her clothing. He imagined Meriel’s nude form bending down to pick it up, wrapping herself in its warm folds. . . .

“Thank you, Owaine,” she said. “That was kind of you.” There was something wrong with her voice, a somberness that surprised him.

“I thought you might be cold when you came out,” he answered, still staring out into the night. “That’s all. I know you didn’t want me to come with you, but I thought someone ought to be here to watch in case one of the patrols came by. Not that I could do anything if they did but hide. I mean, I’ll bet that Keira has some of her crows watching and she’d be here quickly if there was trouble, or maybe the dire wolves would come. The trees were still singing, too, or at least they were a while ago—” He was babbling and knew it, but it was better than silence. Meriel evidently realized it as well. Her voice interrupted him, without responding to anything he’d said.

“You can look now. I’m covered.”

He turned. He studied her for a moment as she stood there, shivering a bit, her lower lip trembling with cold. He wanted to go to her, to hold her close and warm her with his own body. He shifted his weight from foot to foot but stayed a careful few steps away from her. The look on her face in the false dawn’s light wasn’t what he expected. He thought she’d be weary but ecstatic, illuminated with the joy of being with Dhegli again. Instead, her mouth was drawn down and her shoulders sagged. In the lough behind her, he saw a seal’s head staring back at the shore, then it vanished under the water. “How’s Dhegli?” he asked. “I’ll wager he’s happy to see you again. Did you enjoy your swim?”

A shrug.

“Meriel, what’s the matter?” he asked. “I mean, I know it’s none of my affair and I shouldn’t pry, but—”

Meriel blinked. Water dripped from the curled strands of her hair. “I didn’t tell you the last time. There’s another Saimhóir with him,” Meriel said flatly.

“Aye? I’m not surprised he brought someone with him. It’s such a long way from Inishfeirm up the Duán—”

“A female,” Meriel interrupted and the tone of her voice told him the rest. Owaine didn’t quite know how to respond. Meriel shook her head, her chin lifting slightly. “You don’t have to look quite so pleased with the news,” she said.

Belatedly, Owaine stirred and forced his mouth into a frown. He could feel an exultation stirring in his soul and it was difficult not to show it. “That doesn’t mean anything,” he said, blinking. “The seals . . . well, I don’t know about the Saimhóir, but the others, they always travel in packs and probably don’t have the same kind of relationships with each other that we . . .” He stopped, seeing the confusion and pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Meriel. I am.”

“Dhegli said . . .” she began, then had to stop to wipe at her eyes with an edge of the blanket. She glanced at the lough. “He says it doesn’t change anything about the way he feels about me. Maybe it doesn’t. I want to believe that. I want to so much, but she’s out there now with him, in the form that he prefers, and the way he talks about her and swims with her . . .” Her voice broke; she sniffed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It’s so
stupid
.” Owaine felt the urge again to hold her and this time he did, going to her and putting his arms around her. She stiffened at the touch, then relaxed, letting him embrace her.

“Does it change the way
you
feel?” Owaine asked, and regretted the words even as he spoke them: he could hear the hope buried under the surface in his voice and wondered if she could as well. But she only shook her head against his chest.

“I don’t know. I still love him—” the hope in Owaine’s heart sank like a stone tossed in the lough, “—but now I don’t . . . don’t know . . .” Her hands clutched the blanket tighter to her, hiding her face when he looked down at her. “I don’t know what to think right now.”

“You don’t have to think now. Let’s just go back to Keira,” Owaine told her. “We don’t want to be out here in the daylight for the gardai to see, and you need to warm up. Keira said she sent another crow out to your mam, not long after we left; she expects the Banrion will be here soon.”

“Mam?” He could feel her tense in his arms. “I’d nearly forgotten about that. Dhegli said he talked to her and told her about us, and that she wasn’t pleased. He also said that the ransom Doyle Mac Ard wanted for me was Lámh Shábhála and that she wouldn’t give it up for me. She nearly killed herself and Dhegli, too, rather than do that.”

“She
couldn’t
do it,” Owaine said. “At Inishfeirm, I was taught enough about the history of Lámh Shábhála to know that. She
couldn’t
give it up, Meriel, not without destroying herself. That has nothing to do with how she feels about you. She loves you. I know she does. I’ve heard her talk about you, I know what she’s done for you. She loves you more than anything.”

“Than anything?” Meriel repeated, scorn burring her voice. “What about the cloch?”

“That’s not love,” he told her. “That’s something embedded so deep in her that Mac Ard might as well have asked for her to rip out her heart and give it to him.”

Meriel nodded again. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe that’s true. Or maybe if he’d just asked for her heart, she might have given it to him.” She glanced back at the lough, and he knew what she was hoping to see. But Dhegli was gone. When she turned back, she was shivering under the blanket.

“Let’s leave here,” she said.

Rí Torin Mallaghan refused to see Doyle when he and the cloudmages returned to Lár Bhaile. Doyle announced himself to one of the heralds at the doors to the audience chamber, who nodded and went in. Doyle then stood outside in the hall for three hours, the dust and filth of the road on his clothes and face, waiting. The doors remain closed; the herald never returned. People passed by and none of them spoke to him. He seemed to be invisible, standing there.

Finally, when Doyle was considering breaching etiquette and leaving, one of the court underlings emerged, a young stripling whose name Doyle didn’t even know and whose smug face showed a decided glee at Doyle’s discomfiture. “The Rí requests that you give
me
your report, Tiarna Mac Ard,” he said, holding out his hand.

“It’s important that I speak to the Rí himself,” Doyle persisted. The boy’s smile was irritating, especially in someone who was at best lesser nobility—he was probably the son of some distant cousin of the Rí, sent off to court in hopes that he’d marry better than his station or gain the favor of some Riocha. Doyle decided that he’d actively work against those dreams—the boy enjoyed his current task far too much. “I’d prefer to give Rí Mallaghan the report myself.”

The smile widened. “The Rí was quite clear about his wishes, I’m afraid, Tiarna Mac Ard. Unless you’d prefer that I go back to the Rí and tell him that you refused . . . ?”

It was obvious Doyle could not win this argument unless he wanted to open his Cloch Mór, have the dragon trample this upstart underfoot and push past the gardai at the door, at which point it would be doubtful that he’d reach the throne alive. Doyle set aside the delicious thought of the boy’s broken body and plunged his hand into the pouch at his side, pulling out the report he’d carefully composed the night before. He’d tried to stress the untenable position in Dún Laoghaire and emphasized the fact that the Toscaire Condordai was still their ally. He put the best spin possible on the circumstances, but knew that there was no concealing the fact that he’d lost and that Ó Riain was now effectively the Rí Dún Laoghaire with Enean as his puppet.

He’d lost completely.

Doyle slapped the papers into the underling’s hand, taking a small pleasure in the cloud of road dust that rose and caused the youth to sneeze and brush in annoyance at his clóca. Doyle spun on the balls of his feet and strode off to his chambers in the Order’s keep to brood. He was surprised later that evening by the knock on his door. He opened it to find the same underling as before standing in the hall with two servants, each holding a cloth bag that sagged heavily. “Rí Mallaghan asked me to deliver these to you, Tiarna Mac Ard,” the boy said. “He said to tell you that it’s in your best interests to do something with them, and quickly.” He gestured to the servants, who placed the bags just inside the door. The boy grinned, bowed at Doyle, and left.

Doyle hefted one of the bags—it was heavy, and he could feel a dead weight at the bottom, as if sand had been poured into it. He opened the tie-string.

The smell hit him first; the distinctive odor of decaying flesh. Doyle covered his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his léine and peered in. A heap of black feathers lay at the bottom of the bag: he was staring at the body of a large black crow. Doyle retied the sack and took both of them outside. In the bailey, with a few curious acolytes trying hard to appear as if they weren’t watching, Doyle dumped out the contents: four crows, two in each sack, each with at least one arrow through it. Lying on the ground, as well, were hollow cylinders of wood about the size of his little finger. He plucked one of them from the dirt. Inside, a piece of parchment had been rolled and placed inside. Doyle pulled out the parchment—there was writing on it. He read the words, read them again.

“Martin!” he called to one of the acolytes. “Go find Tiarna O Blaca and tell him that I need to see him in my rooms. Quickly, boy! It’s urgent!”

Jenna listened as Kyle read to her the Comhairle’s schedule for the next morning’s session. “. . . the clan heads of Baile na Oiléanach want to define the limits of fishing from the Northern Stepping Stones to be the Foaming Shoals. That’s been under contention even before the Northern Clans came over to us, and it’s unlikely either side is going to want to budge. Then there’s the issue of the annual fees due to Inishfeirm from the townlands. I’m hearing muttering from the Comhairle about the increase over last year.”

They both heard a strange
pop
from the sill of the window overlooking Croc a Scroilm, followed immediately by a flutter of heavy wings. Jenna turned her head to look: a crow was perched on the sill. It dropped something from its beak onto the wide polished marble, cawed loudly, then flew off. Jenna glanced at Kyle, eyebrows raised, then went to the window. A narrow wooden tube lay there; Jenna plucked it up.

“What is that?” Kyle asked. He set the Comhairle’s schedule on a table and rose to his feet.

“I’m not sure,” Jenna answered. “A piece of bog reed, I think; I used to see them around the fens in Ballintubber. I don’t—” She stopped, her breath frozen. Turning the reed, she could see a slip of parchment rolled up inside it, with a bit of colored string attached to one end as a pull. “Kyle?” She showed it to him and tugged on the string. The parchment came out in her hand. She unrolled it; saw the writing there. Wonderingly, she handed the note to Kyle, who scanned it with an intake of breath. “Kyle? What’s it say?”

“By the Mother-Creator, Jenna,” he said, gasping with sudden laughter, a grin splitting his round face, “it’s from Meriel. She’s alive in Tuath Gabair, in Doire Coill!”

Jenna nearly staggered. She closed her eyes as Kyle’s arms went around her, and she sobbed, the relief surging through her and releasing a tension she’d been holding for weeks. “Alive!”

“Aye,” Kyle said, “and Owaine with her. The note says: ‘We’ll meet you at Knobtop mid-moon night.’ That’s two nights from now. Where’s Knobtop?”

“At Ballintubber, in Tuath Gabair,” Jenna answered. She stared at the reed, rolling it with her fingers. “Near Doire Coill. It’s where I found Lámh Shábhála. Two nights from now . . .”