Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (30 page)

Meriel bit her lower lip, looking away from him.
Do this and be free, or refuse and be a prisoner.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Nico said, as if he’d expected no other answer. “Now, it’s time to rest and think about what we’ll do tomorrow. Dye her hair, Sevei, so that those who come tomorrow won’t see the red. Then you two should get some supper and sleep. Tomorrow will be . . . interesting.”

As they left the wagon and went over to the cook fire, Sevei nudged Meriel. “I think Nico likes you,” she said.

Meriel found that she wanted to believe that, also, because her well-being depended on it.

The mage-lights swarmed in the sky late that night and Meriel’s clochmion called to her, yearning to be filled again with the power. Sevei woke at the same time Meriel did. “Come on,” she said, nodding to the tent flap.

They went outside. The lights played over the roofs of the village and across the field, waves of color that washed over the land and vanished again while the curtains and streamers swayed in the night sky just below the gathering clouds. Nico was sitting outside his wagon with Keara and a few others of the clan, watching the mage-lights. He nodded to Sevei as they came out from the tent, and she guided Meriel behind another of the wagons where they were hidden from the village, though not from Nico, who stared curiously from his perch. “Go on,” Sevei said. “Do what you need to do.”

Meriel loosened the neck of her tunic and brought out the clochmion, holding it in her right hand as she lifted it like an offering to the sky, opening her mind as Máister Kirwan and Siúr Meagher had taught her. The mage-lights circled above, snaking down to wrap about her wrist; with their touch, Meriel could feel the web of clochs na thintrí throughout the land, many of them replenishing themselves in the same energy. Out there in the distance, Lámh Shábhála was feeding on the mage-lights, a huge presence like a mountain glimpsed on the horizon. Meriel wondered if her mam could feel Treoraí’s Heart, and if she knew it was Meriel.

Meriel sighed as the power of the mage-lights filled the cloch, relief and pleasure flooding through her, a strange warmth surrounding her so that she seemed to breathe charged air.

A hand touched her shoulder; she glanced around at Sevei, who was staring at Meriel’s light-wrapped hand. “It’s wondrous,” she whispered. “Does it . . . does it feel as beautiful as it looks?”

The cloch’s reservoir of power was full, and Meriel reluctantly let her hand loosen around it. Tendrils of glowing color lingered for a moment, then drifted away. “Aye,” she said. “I don’t know that I can describe the feeling. It’s like . . . when I’ve been with . . .”

Meriel stopped. She remembered Dhegli and the feel of his body against hers.

Sevei gave her a twisted half smile. “Ah. I think I understand,” she said. Her hand drifted slowly down Meriel’s back and then away. Meriel turned toward Sevei and, in the shimmer of the mage-lights, saw a sadness in the woman’s eyes that surprised her. Meriel started to slip Treoraí’s Heart back under her tunic, but Sevei caught her hand. “Look,” the Taisteal woman said. Meriel glanced down. The faint scars that snaked around her hand to the wrist were more defined now, and faint traces of them could be seen on the skin halfway to her elbow. “The cloudmages get those marks, I know,” Sevei said. “I’ve seen them on a few of the most powerful Riocha, those with the Clochs Mór. But they don’t go so far up the arm, and are usually fainter than these. I’ve never noticed that you can see any markings on anyone with a clochmion.” Sevei’s gaze went from Meriel’s hand to her face. She leaned in, very close to her. “I hear that the First Holder’s arm is marked all the way to the shoulder because of the power of her stone. Is that true, Cailin?”

Sevei’s eyes held her. Meriel nodded. “But this is a clochmion,” she said. “That’s what Máister Kirwan told me. I’m certain that’s what Máister Kirwan
believes,
also. They wouldn’t have given me anything else. No matter who I was.” But she started to wonder. It’s also
Treoraí’s Heart, a life gift from the Créneach to the First Holder.
She tried to keep that thought from showing on her face.

Sevei’s stare held her for a moment longer. Then she released Meriel’s hand. The night air was cold on her skin and Meriel rubbed at the hand. The scars had faded somewhat. She could still see the marks on her hand, but the scarring on her arm was faint enough to be unnoticed.

Sevei seemed to be debating within herself. She was looking at Nico, who was now staring at the smoke curling up from the Taisteal’s campfire. Sevei blinked heavily and rubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. “Come on, Cailin,” Sevei said. “We still have work to do tonight, and we’re both already tired. We’ll have a busy morning.”

It started raining before dawn. The rain pattered on the tent like a thousand fingers and droplets fell from the patches and tears in the fabric. Outside the tent, Meriel could hear the sounds of the Taisteal breaking down the encampment in the steady rainfall and preparing to leave. Several villagers were huddled outside as well; she could hear them complaining softly to one another about the foul weather. “Remember what Nico said,” Sevei told her, “and let me do most of the talking this time—later on you’ll be able to do it yourself. Right now, follow my lead as best you can.”

She went to the tent flap, untied it, and motioned for the group to enter. They did, three men and four women: ducking their heads, shaking the raindrops from cloaks and hats and gazing around them, all of them bowing their heads politely to Meriel as she sat with hands clasped on the stool Sevei had covered in red cloth. The hood of Meriel’s clóca was down, and her newly-dyed hair gleamed as black as a moonless sky.

“You need to know that Cailin is very tired,” Sevei said over the drumming of rain. “The Mother-Creator’s touch isn’t gentle, as you can imagine, and she used up most of her healing strength yesterday with the little girl, who was near death. We mortal folk find it difficult to hold a god’s power in our fragile bodies. You also must understand that the choice to heal or not to heal isn’t Cailin’s, but the Mother-Creator’s—Cailin is but Her vessel. Because this is the gift of the Mother-Creator, we ask you for nothing but what you wish to give freely.” A few of the people grinned at that, and Sevei held up a forefinger. “Only remember that the Mother-Creator watches what you choose to do for Cailin, and it’s Her favor—coming through Cailin—that you ask for.”

The grins faded as quickly as they’d come. They stared at Meriel while Sevei talked, making her squirm uncomfortably on the stool and look down at her own hands. Sevei had covered both her hands with fingerless gloves so that the scars of the mage-lights on the right hand couldn’t be seen. When Sevei had finished, Meriel motioned to one of the men to approach, as Sevei had instructed her beforehand. He hobbled forward leaning on a crutch, his right foot swaddled in thick bandages. Meriel’s left hand rested over the hidden clochmion while her right took the hand he offered to her: blue-veined, callused, and thick-skinned, crosshatched with fine wrinkles, the tip of his middle finger missing from the first joint—the hands of a field worker. She glanced at Sevei, who nodded.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

“It’s my foot,” the man said, the words punctuated by a grimace of pain. “The gout is in the joints and sometimes I can barely stand to walk on it. I can’t work much anymore, and the pain’s been getting worse lately.”

Meriel slid from the stool and crouched down in front of the man, running her hand softly along the bandaged foot. She could feel the injury, throbbing as her fingers brushed her cloch, and with the touch came faint traces of the man’s thoughts: curiosity about whether she’d be able to help him, a rather minor ache as he flexed his toes under the bandages, and—shockingly—a disturbing surge of lust as his gaze traveled her body. She stood quickly, her face reddening as she nodded to the man and she sat again on the stool. “Let me see the others,” she said to Sevei.

One by one, they paraded forward: the woman with complaints of chronic back pain (though the cloch seemed to find nothing at all wrong within the woman, and her thoughts were strange and wild); a young wife whose three pregnancies had ended in miscarriages, and who grieved so deeply inside that Meriel found herself wanting to weep; a man whose broken arm had been badly set and was now unusable; the elderly widow whose skin and face were covered with warts and growths; and finally the man troubled by frequent kidney stones—she could feel the memory of the stones as he spoke of them, and the horrible pain of them until they passed.

She touched them all. The woman with back pain straightened as soon as Meriel stroked her back, letting out a shout. The man with gout was standing without putting any weight on his cane and leering at her. The young wife and the man with kidney stones were smiling at her expectantly. The man with the badly-set arm and the well-warted woman alone seemed disappointed, and Meriel avoided looking at them, not wanting to find their gazes on her. She heard Sevei usher them all outside. “. . . I know the weather is terrible, but wait a moment; I’ll see if Cailin wishes to see any of you separately. Nico, our Clannhri, is just outside; you may give him any offering you wish. . . .”

Sevei ushered them out, then closed the tent’s flap and came over to Meriel. “This is too hard, Sevei,” Meriel said. Her hand was on her breast where Treoraí’s Heart burned. She could sense that it wanted to be used, yet the responsibility weighed on her.
You can’t fix everything or everyone. Only one or two, here and there . . .
“I don’t know if I can do this. What if . . . what if the cloch only helps for a little bit? What if that little girl from last night gets her cough back in a few days, or if it’s even worse afterward . . .” She stopped, imagining Siúr Meagher’s hands turning arthritic and clawed, or perhaps worse.

“If that’s what happens, well, we’ll be that many days down the road. Nico will keep us moving faster now, with Cailin of the Healing Touch traveling with us.” She pursed her lips in a wry smile. “The Taisteal are used to that kind of reputation following behind us—people sometimes regret the bargains they made. We don’t mind as long as their remorse can’t catch us. Why do you worry about the healing failing?—do you
know
that’s what happens?”

Meriel shook her head. “No. I don’t . . . I don’t know enough at all.”

Sevei took a step to her and put her hands on her shoulders. “This is hard for you,” she said, “and it’ll only get harder. The word will spread, as fast as we can travel. Faster. There will be more people coming to see you in each village, and when we reach Áth Iseal and Lár Bhaile, well, we’ll need to be very careful. But by then, you’ll be used to the routine, and it will all be easier. So . . . do you want to call one of them back?”

“I don’t know . . . They’re all hurting in one way or another.”

“Cailin, it doesn’t matter. Half of them already think they’ve been cured or that at least there’s a chance of it. The woman with warts—if the cloch won’t help her, I can tell her that you’ve asked Keara to fix her a potion.”

“And will
that
help her?”

Sevei lifted a shoulder. “It won’t hurt her. She might even enjoy the effects, since Keara uses the poteen she brews. What about the man with the bad arm?—that would have an immediate, visual impact. Can the cloch help him?”

“I think so, but . . .”

“But what? You want one of the others? None of them? Tell me.”

“I don’t
know
. . .” The last word was nearly a wail. Who should she heal? For the first time, she realized that holding a gift like Treoraí’s Heart could cut both ways, and that made her think of her mam with Lámh Shábhála.
She must wrestle with this dilemma every day, having to make choices about how to wield her power, knowing those choices will inevitably affect other people’s lives and might even lead to their deaths. How can she do that? How does she find the strength and certainty?