Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (20 page)

“Oh,” she said, her eyes suddenly widening. Still holding the clochmion, she covered Siúr Meagher’s hands with her free one.

The pain of contact was intense and sharp and Meriel gasped in response, an involuntary cry. Opalescent power ran in a kaleidoscopic whirl around her, and the pain piercing her right hand turned it into a frozen claw and dug deep furrows in her brow. At the same time, her awareness shifted, and she found herself listening to thoughts that weren’t hers . . .

. . .
he doesn’t realize that I love him also. He never sees me the way I want him to see me. All he feels is the affection he carries for the Banrion, and I can never tell him, never show him . . . this poor girl is trapped and doesn’t realize the danger she’s in or that there’s no escape and only the Mother knows if she really has the talent or will grow up in time . . .

With the thoughts came the emotions that swaddled them, emotions she didn’t understand but she felt, stabbing as deeply into her as if they were her own. Then the pain in her hands and the thoughts and feelings were gone, swirling past her with the bright hues and Meriel opened her eyes, sitting back in the chair, her breath too fast and the clochmion clutched in her left hand, now simply a stone and emptied of any power.

“What happened?” she asked. In answer, Siúr Meagher lifted her own hands. For a moment, Meriel saw nothing. Then the woman flexed her hands, closing and opening the fingers, and Meriel realized that the swollen knuckles were smaller and no longer reddened. Siúr Meagher almost laughed. “By the Mother, I’ve not been able to do this for five winters or more.

“I felt it,” Meriel said. “The pain that you felt. Like the joints of my hands were burning and aching, and if I moved them, it was like a knife cutting through the bone. I felt it, so harsh that I wanted to cry, and then everything went away with the light . . .” For a second, she experienced the pain again, a memory, and she winced.
And I knew your thoughts. I
was
you, for the few moments we touched . . .

She didn’t tell her that.

“There’s always a price for power,” Siúr Meagher said. “Even with a clochmion. You held my pain, if only for a few seconds—I suspect that will always be the case when you use the cloch; you must bear the burden before you can remove it.” She was shaking her head, still looking at her hands. She gave a long sigh that shook as if with a stilled sob. “You’ve been given a tremendous gift, Meriel: the stones that heal are the rarest type. None of the Clochs Mór has that ability and I’ve heard of only a few of the clochmion who have ever displayed it. That Treoraí’s Heart found such a skill within you, well . . .”

She stopped. Her walnut eyes held Meriel’s. “That answers a lot of questions.”

Her newly-healed hand stretched out and found Meriel’s. Meriel looked down at their intertwined fingers, at the fine wrinkles that netted the back of her hand. Meriel’s hand was trembling under Siúr Meagher’s and she was more frightened now than she had been before.

“Now listen, Meriel—this is nothing you should tell any of the other acolytes. Some of the Bráthairs and Siúrs will know, and that’s bad enough even though Máister Kirwan will talk with them. But keep the fact that you have this cloch from the others.”

“Why?” The word was a breath, visible in the cold air and the witch-light.

“Because it’s already hard enough for you being the child of the First Holder and Banrion. What will they say if they see that you hold a clochmion despite what happened the other night? For that matter, you don’t want them to know the truth about
that,
either—and Máister Kirwan has told Thady that if he hears even a whisper of a rumor that you swam with the Saimhóir, then Thady will be gone the next day. I doubt that you’re so naive that you don’t realize that if some here thought they could raise their own status by pulling you down, they’d do it happily. There also may be people on Inishfeirm who wish you and your family harm. People have died for far less treasure than a clochmion, Meriel.”

She pushed herself back from the table and stood. “Put the stone under your léine for now. If someone happens to see it, laugh and tell them that it’s just a pretty gem and not a cloch. You’ll need to fill it with the mage-lights the next time they come, but Máister Kirwan and I will teach you that skill away from the other acolytes and any prying eyes, and we’ll arrange for you to take the mage-lights in privacy. Now, do you have any questions?”

Meriel lifted the stone on its chain, holding the cloch in the palm of her hand so she could see the cerulean facets nestled in the silver cage. She had heard, many times, how the clochs bound their holders to them, how ripping a Cloch Mór from its owner would send that person into screaming grief and insanity as if a part of themselves had been torn away. She’d always thought such reports exaggerations and myths, amusing tales to scare the populace (and to make them less likely to want to hold a cloch themselves). But now . . .

Siúr Meagher said that Treoraí’s Heart was but a clochmion, yet already in these few minutes she couldn’t think of being without the cloch, of taking it off or giving it away. Holding the cloch felt right, feeling it against her skin was comforting; it belonged to her. The clochmion filled an emptiness within her that she hadn’t even known existed until now. She could feel its crystalline bonds thrusting deep within her mind and she knew that to tear them out again would be agonizing.

She could also think of another reason why Máister Kirwan might have made this decision. “You did this to keep me here, didn’t you?” she said. Siúr Meagher didn’t deny the accusation. One shoulder lifted under the white clóca.

“If it was a mistake, then give the cloch back—there are too few stones already for the cloudmages and many others who would love to hold what you have.”

“You know I can’t do that. Not now.”

A nod. The woman’s features softened then, a sympathetic half smile touching her thin lips. “Every gift also bears a debt, Meriel,” she said. “Those of us with a cloch na thintrí know that best of all.”

As Meriel slipped Treoraí’s Heart under her léine, she noticed that the skin of her left hand was touched with pale swirls, so faint that Siúr Meagher couldn’t see them from across the table. The marks were familiar; she’d seen them all up and down her mam’s arm, and marking one hand of those with Clochs Mór: the scars of the mage-lights. But those with clochmions never took those marks—the stones were too weak. Yet . . .

She smiled at Siúr Meagher and kept her hand in the pocket of her clóca as they walked back up the long corridors to the dormitories.

G
LOWING draperies of bright color flared overhead the next night; as promised, Máister Kirwan and Siúr Meagher taught her how to open the clochmion to the mage-lights and fill it with the energy from the sky. The marks she’d seen on her skin had faded. For that she was grateful; she had no desire to be so conspicuously scarred as her mam or the cloudmages. Afterward, in her room, Meriel lay in her bed holding the cloch in her hand, feeling the gem seeming to throb under her touch with the power to dance along her very bones. As she lay there, she also listened, wanting to hear the call of the Saimhóir, wanting Dhegli to come to her again, to hold her and be with her.

She would tell him. No matter what Máister Kirwan asked, she would keep no secrets from him.
He will know, anyway,
she told herself.
He’ll know because of the gift he holds.

But the night was filled only with the sound of the wind in the trees, the buzz of wind sprites, and the distant baying of wolves in the valley. Meriel touched her forehead where he’d placed the gift of Bradán an Chumhacht. She could feel, inside, the connection to him still burning, and she knew he was still somewhere distant.

That night was long, and sleep came late.

“What’s your secret?”

Meriel laughed guiltily, her hand going involuntarily to her breast where the clochmion lay hidden under her léine. “What do you mean?” she asked, and Thady laughed.

“Everyone knows that Máister Kirwan sent for you the other day. You were gone for hours and you’ve been very careful to say nothing about it to anyone. I know—I asked Faoil. So what’s your secret?”

He leaned on the rake he was holding. Most of the acolytes were working the breadroot lazybeds under the direction of Bráthair O’Therreagh and Siúr Bolan, clearing them of weeds. It was a rare warm day, with a bright sun beating down and a blue sky uninterrupted by clouds. Thady had managed to slowly move away from the other third-years until he was near Meriel. She let her hand go back to her own rake. She smiled back at him, feeling a twinge of guilt at the way she was drawn to his grin, his dancing eyes, the easy way he moved, the sheen of sweat on his forehead and the muscular forearms revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his léine. She shoved a vague sense of guilt away.
Dhegli has no claim on you, nor you on him
. . . “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. I certainly have no secrets from you, An-tUasal MacCoughlin.”

“Ah, so you’ve gone formal on me, Bantiarna MacEagan, and after all we’ve been through. Is that how it’s to be?” He frowned, but his eyes laughed.

“Aye, ’tis,” she told him, trying not to break into laughter herself. “And there’s no secret about what Máister Kirwan wanted of me. He warned me about you.”

“Oh, did he now?” The laughter in his eyes faded. “And what did he warn you of?”

Meriel did grin then. “You,” she told him, “are too easy to tease, Thady. All Máister Kirwan wanted was to tell me that my mam was extraordinarily displeased with my behavior and that if I persisted, I’d find myself back in Dún Kiil.”

He sighed, as if relieved, glancing away over the field and the other acolytes bent to their work. When he looked back, the flirtation was back in his voice and face. “There you go, then—your mam’s given you a way to get just what you want.”

“And what is it
you
want, An-tUasal MacCoughlin?” a breathy male voice intruded. “It certainly isn’t the joy of a good day’s work in the sun.” Bráthair Geraghty panted from the exertion of climbing the steep hill from the keep. He leaned heavily on his wooden-toothed rake, glancing squint-eyed back down the slope. From here, they were above the highest towers of the White Keep and could see, far below, the houses of the town and the bay. Bráthair Geraghty squinted at the panorama, his mouth half-open as if struck by the beauty, though Meriel doubted that his poor eyes could see much of it. Then he turned back to them. “Maidin maith, Meriel. And to you, Thady.”

“Maidin maith, Bráthair,” Meriel answered, though now that Bráthair Geraghty was here the morning seemed less good than it had.

“ ’Tis,” the young cloudmage answered, “especially since the mage-lights came last night.” He gave Meriel a lingering glance as he touched the clochmion around his neck. “A particularly beautiful display, I thought.”

Meriel flushed, remembering the touch of the mage-lights, curling around her uplifted hand, the wondrous sensation as they filled her clochmion, the sense of communion with the web of clochs na thintrí scattered over the land—even to her mam’s, a lurking, huge presence. She’d gasped in wonder and Máister Kirwan had chuckled even as he replenished his own Cloch Mór.
“ ’Tis worth it all, these moments . . .”

Bráthair Geraghty had already started digging at the lazybed with his rake, dislodging a tangle of foulweed and tossing it toward the compost pile. Thady grimaced and shrugged simultaneously with Meriel—it was obvious that the Bráthair intended to work near them. “Let’s get to work, then,” Bráthair Geraghty said. “These weeds aren’t going to go away by themselves.”

Thady sniffed. Meriel shook her head at Thady behind the Bráthair’s back and lifted her rake. She pulled out a clump of foulweed, threw it in the direction of the compost. She started to bend down again.

Stopped.

A thunderclap rolled over the mountainside, impossible in that cloudless sky. The sound echoed from the surrounding peaks as everyone looked up in astonishment, peering around. It came again, and now they could see an impossible dark cloud massing just above the front of the keep. As they watched, lightning arced from cloud to ground, thunder following. They couldn’t see where it struck, the towers and walls of the keep obscuring their view. The sound of a gale-force wind shrieked close by, yet the air hung still around them. Distantly, a man’s voice screamed in pain. Beyond the walls, more light flashed: a red brighter than the sunlight. Black smoke rose above the roofs, streaking across the sky as if torn by a storm.

Bráthair O’Therreagh and Siúr Bolan went running past, their faces pale. Bráthair Geraghty dropped his rake and started to run down the steep hill with them, but Bráthair O’Therreagh waved him back. “Stay here!” Bráthair O’Therreagh shouted over his shoulder to Bráthair Geraghty. “Those are Clochs Mór—Tuathian raiders! Keep the acolytes with you!” He glanced significantly at Meriel. “Especially the Bantiarna.”