Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (8 page)

Without looking, he could imagine the scowl twisting the garda’s face, the thick white scar that ran from the corner of his left eye to his chin standing out against flushed skin. “Oh, it’s my business,” Harik answered. “I may not be Riocha, Tiarna Kayne, but I
am
your da’s Hand, as you say, and what concerns your da’s relationship with the troops also concerns me. The way you question Tiarna Owaine’s decisions—that hurts the morale of everyone with us. Gardai shouldn’t be going into battle with doubt in their minds—if they do that, they hesitate, and that’s when we lose battles and lives.”

“Are you accusing
me
of being responsible for the loss of our men, Harik? Are you saying that I’m disloyal to the Tuatha or to my parents?” Kayne asked in fury, wheeling around with his fists balled. The man’s impertinence burned at him.

“No,” Harik answered placidly. He stood his ground in the face of Kayne’s anger and his hand stayed carefully away from the hilt of his sword. “I’m just telling you what you need to know, because one day it will be
you
at the head of the gardai and then you can’t afford to be as ignorant as you are right now.”

“You
dare
!” Kayne exploded and stopped at the look on Harik’s face.

“Aye, I dare: out here where it’s only the two of us to hear. You’re a man, Kayne Geraghty, but you’re still a boy, too. I’m not a Riocha who has to be concerned with my holdings and keeping my place with the Ríthe. I’ve spent my whole life with the gardai, Tiarna, and I
know
how to handle troops. You know it, too, if you’d listen to your head instead of your heart and your wounded pride. You think we’re slinking home defeated and broken. You think that your da didn’t do all he could have done. But I tell you this: none of the men with him believe that. They saw that all the great armies of Céile Mhór haven’t been able to stop the Arruk. They saw that they had a commander who cared about them, who wouldn’t throw them needlessly into a hopeless situation for his own glory.
They
are coming home proud, because they’ve kept their word and their honor when others chose not to answer the Banrion Ard’s call. So, aye, I dare. And don’t
you
dare to dishonor the soldiers you’ve served with because you wanted your da to be some legendary hero, and you to be one, too. Tiarna Owaine’s a good man and a decent one, the best of the Riocha, as far as I’m concerned. I’m honored to have served with him; you should feel the same. I don’t care whether you’re his son or not, or whether you’re Riocha or not; you’ll be as respectful to him as any garda with us or you’ll answer to me the next time.”

Kayne blinked. Harik was a man of few and simple words; he’d never heard him utter more than a few sentences at a time before. He wondered how long he’d been composing this speech in his mind. The presumption and unfairness of it made Kayne clamp his mouth shut. “Have you said everything you’ve come to say, Hand MacCathaill?” he asked.

The man’s eyes glittered. The muscles in his neck flexed and the scar on his face pulled at his skin. “Aye, Tiarna Kayne. I’ve spoken my piece.”

“Good. Know that if you ever speak to me that way again, you
will
need to defend your words. I tolerate your impudence only because of the service you’ve given Da. Do you understand?”

Harik’s eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. “Aye, Tiarna. I understand very well.”

“Then this conversation’s over. I’d suggest you return to the hall and your commander.”

Harik’s mouth snapped shut and he turned. Without another word, he strode quickly back toward the town gate, leaving Kayne in his cold wake.

Kayne stood outside, watching the sky darken and the first stars appear to the east. He stayed there for a half-stripe until the mage-lights came—earlier than usual, just before the last of the sun’s light left the western sky—snarling their bright tendrils around the zenith and touching the few clouds with color.

The wind sprites lifted from the grass, drifting in a stream of glowing light around the keep and past the balcony where Meriel stood. She heard their high, thin voices calling and felt the plucking of tiny fingers and the brush of small wings. She laughed and brushed at the sprites with a hand, and they went spiraling off in a chattering of high protest, the wavering lines of them sliding down to flow along the slope of the twilight-wrapped mountainsides that bordered the harbor of Dún Laoghaire, their summits still brushed with the dying sun’s light. The wind sprites wound among the green hillocks that were the barrows of the most ancient Ríthe, back in the time when Talamh an Ghlas was broken into hands upon hands of tiny warring Tuatha, each controlled by a single clan. The barrows now were nothing more than shapes in the grass, the deeds and the names of those who slumbered there long forgotten. The flickering lines of the wind sprites flowed down the flanks of Cnocareilig, the Grave Hill, where the tombs of the more recent Ards lay—where, Meriel knew, her own body would one day rest.

“See,” Meriel said to Ennis. He was staring, wide-eyed, at the last of the wind sprites as Meriel lifted him a bit so he could see past the balcony’s rail. As she looked at him, smiling, she saw again the lines of Owaine’s own face in Ennis’. Like his older siblings Tara and Ionhar—both of them currently away in fosterage with relatives—Ennis was undeniably Owaine’s child. He had the same hair: wavy, and so dark brown that it was nearly black, and pupils the color of the richest soil.

Sevei and Kayne, though, they were red-haired and green-eyed like Meriel, and the shape of their faces . . . They were not like Owaine at all.

She smiled again and kissed Ennis’ brow, brushing back the hair from his forehead. Ennis was all the more precious for being so much younger than all the rest of his brothers and sisters, coming to her when she thought that perhaps she would have no more children.

“They’re pretty, Mam,” Ennis said, “but I want to know how they fly.” He reached out with a hand as if he could touch them. Together, they watched the sprites vanish around the headland at the edge of the harbor. Ennis’ attention slid to the flickering lights of the city below them as it prepared for night, then to the sky’s drapery of sunset-touched clouds.
Serious. His face is always so serious, like he’s trying to make sense of everything, like he sees something none of the rest of us can see . . .

The sky brightened, a wash of red and searing orange flickering from the west and snaking overhead. “Mam, the mage-lights are coming.”

“Aye, I see them,” she said to him, surprised.
So early tonight . . .
“Do you want to watch while Mam catches them?” Ennis nodded solemnly and she put him down near the doors to her chambers. “Stay there, then,” she told him and lifted Treoraí’s Heart on its necklace, sliding it from under the torc of the Ard. She closed her hand around the stone and lifted hand and stone toward the sky.

Instantly, she felt the connection with the crackling energy contained within the mage-lights. She saw not only with her eyes but with the perception of Treoraí’s Heart. She was encased within its rough facets; she could feel its yearning and need to be filled with the mage-lights, and she and the stone called to them. A tendril of purest yellow light shot through with blue sparks responded, curling down from the sheets and flares of color overhead and wrapping around her upraised arm, touching the faint pattern of scars around her wrist. “Oh, Mam, they’re so bright tonight . . .” she heard Ennis say in wonderment behind her, and she laughed.

“Aye,” she told him, gasping with the cold touch of the mage-lights, barely able to hear him through the hum of the mage-lights in her body. “Maybe one day you’ll do this, too.”

“Will you send me to Gram, like you did with Sevei?”

“Maybe.”
He’ll be a strong one, this one . . .
Meriel could believe that. She would be surprised if Ennis weren’t well suited to being a cloudmage. But not yet . . . He was still her baby, even if he were looking older with each passing day, even if she knew that the time was fast approaching when he’d be sent out to fosterage like his siblings.

“When will Sevei and Gram be here? I want to see them.”

“Not too long now, Ennis. The message bird your gram sent just came yesterday, and the note with it said that they would be leaving in another few days, but we’re still a long sail from Inish Thuaidh.”

“Do you think Sevei will remember me? I don’t remember her, not really. What does Gram look like?”

“You’ll know what Gram looks like when she gets here. And aye, your sister will remember you, I’m certain, though she’ll be surprised at how much you’ve grown. Now be quiet, darling, and let me do this . . .”

It was difficult to concentrate on the boy’s conversation; the rush of energy swept into and through her, warm and comforting, nearly sexual in intensity and as insistent. She held the power, embracing it with her mind, letting it seep into every part of her and the stone. She sighed, holding the mage-lights. She’d used Treoraí’s Heart again today—it was a rare day when she did not—this time to cure a woman from Tuath Locha Léin with a growth in her belly, a fetus that was not a child but her own tissue gone mad. There were always far more supplicants every day than there was power in the stone to cure them: Dún Laoghaire sometimes seemed full of no one else. Over the past several years, Meriel had added a staff of a dozen retainers to the Hand of the Heart’s staff, whose task it was to help Siúr Martain evaluate those who came here to be cured of illness or injury, of defects physical and mental. Once filled with the mage-energy, Treoraí’s Heart burned to be used, filling her with an aching need to empty it once more.

Sometimes it seemed that her only role was that of Healer Ard, that she neglected the rest of her duties as Banrion Ard. She knew that many of the Riocha felt exactly that way, especially since she made little distinction between Riocha, the half-blooded céili giallnai, or the common tuathánach when she used Treoraí’s Heart. At least, that was what she told herself, but she sometimes wondered if she
did
make distinctions, if she wasn’t more likely to help the tuathánach because they had so few chances to help themselves. She had to admit the truth of what Edana had said to her yesterday—she’d felt it without being told. Much of the progress made following the debacle of Falcarragh had been unmade in recent years.

The common folk might call her the “Healer Ard” with affection, but it was becoming a term of derision among the Riocha.

She knew it. She knew that she should pay less attention to Treoraí’s Heart and more to the politics in which she was necessarily embroiled, but it was difficult. The cloch didn’t want that, and the stone was more a part of her every day.

She forced her thoughts away from politics, concentrating instead on the web of energy that flowed above her, letting her awareness drift upward through the mage-lights and outward, searching. She could feel Jenna with Lámh Shábhála—still far distant, her great cloch sucking greedily at the power above. Meriel let her mind drift eastward and smiled. Aye, there was Owaine with Blaze, and closer than she could have hoped. She felt the touch of his mind through the mage-lights, faintly, and for a moment the image of his face came to her.
My love,
she thought, wishing he could hear the words, wishing she could hear him . . .

“Look, Mam—over there at the other tower.”

Treoraí’s Heart was nearly full now. Meriel opened her eyes, allowing herself to withdraw from the cloch-sight. Ennis was pointing to where two more tendrils of mage-light snaked down to a balcony on the tower across the courtyard, snarling and fuming around each other. The mage-lights there were exceptionally luminous, far brighter than the remaining sunset glow, and Meriel knew they replenished Clochs Mór. One of the clochs would be Demon-Caller, held by Edana as the Banrion Dún Laoghaire. The second cloch with Edana must be Snapdragon in the hands of her husband Doyle.
Her husband . . .
Meriel always thought of Doyle that way: as Edana’s husband, not as Meriel’s half uncle—the latter wasn’t a relationship she cared to contemplate often. So Doyle had returned from the Order of Gabair in Lár Bhaile.

“That’s Auntie Edana and Uncle Doyle,” Ennis burst out with the same realization. “Can we see Auntie Edana tomorrow, Mam? She promised me that Enean would show me what his Weapons Máister has been teaching him.” Ennis clenched both hands around the hilt of an imaginary sword and chopped earnestly at a foe only he could see.

“You’re too young for that yet,” Meriel told him.

“The blue ghosts show me that I’ll need to know how to fight,” Ennis replied.

Meriel frowned at that—
blue ghosts again
—but Ennis pouted, his lower lip sticking out dramatically, and she finally had to laugh. “All right, I’ll have Isibéal take you over there tomorrow, if you like. But you mustn’t bother Enean if he’s busy with his studies or doesn’t want to see you. He’s a young man now, not a child.”

“He’s not as old as Kayne,” Ennis insisted. “He still plays with me. Well, sometimes. Not as often as he used to,” he amended.
Always serious. Always wanting to be right . . .