Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (54 page)

“You will
do
it!” he snapped. “For your Rí!”

Ó Riain glared at Doyle over Enean’s shoulder, then bowed his head slightly. “Everyone here heard Tiarna Mac Ard give his word. You’re all my witnesses.” He released the cloch; the wolves vanished. Enean spun around to Doyle, the sword whistling in the air.

Doyle opened his fingers, letting Snapdragon fall back on its chain. The dragon faded and blew away as if on an invisible wind. Around them, the other clochs went out, one by one.

“Now the rest, Mac Ard,” Ó Riain said. The man dropped to one knee; Doyle heard others doing the same behind him. “Say it.”

You could win. Now more than ever. Just open Snapdragon . . .
Enean was watching him, the sword trembling in his muscular hands. Doyle sank down and bowed his head. “I acknowledge Enean O Liathain as Rí Dún Laoghaire,” he said. He rose up again and embraced Enean. The sword clattered on the ground as Enean’s arms went around him. “You’re still the bravest man I know, Enean,” Doyle said to him. “Despite everything. I’ve never met anyone braver.”

“I wish Edana were here,” Enean said. Doyle could hear the tears in his voice.

“I wish she were, too,” he said. “Very much so. I wish you luck, Enean. I do. I hope you understand when I tell you I can’t stay here. Not right now. I have to go to Edana.”

“Bring her back here,” Enean told him. “I want her to see the torc around my neck.”

Doyle smiled at the pride in Enean’s voice. “I will,” he told him. “She’ll be proud of you.” Doyle released Enean’s hands and took a step back. He glared once at Ó Riain, grinning with triumph behind Enean. Crouching down beside MacCamore’s body, Doyle closed the old man’s eyes and mouth. “Rest well,” he whispered to the corpse. “I’m sorry.”

Ó Riain was staring at him, waiting. The tension still hung in the room, a fog.
You could have won ...
“Let’s go,” Doyle said to Alaina and Shéfra. “We’re done here.”

They pushed through the crowd that had gathered, most of them Riocha attached to Ó Riain, and left the floor for his own chambers.

The Toscaire Concordai knocked on the open door. Doyle saw him glance at the baggage waiting there for the servants. “So you’re leaving.”

“Aye, Toscaire,” Doyle told him. “As soon as the servants prepare our horses. It’s dangerous for my people to stay.”

“I understand that the Riocha of Dún Laoghaire have decided on a new Rí.” The Toscaire moved a step into the room and shut the door behind him. “Will Rí Enean become the new Rí Ard when the Óenach meets again, I wonder.”

“I truly don’t know, Toscaire,” Doyle told him. He pulled an overcloak from a hook near the door and swept it over his shoulders. “Perhaps. But perhaps not.”

The Toscaire nodded, the bear’s head moving. “While fighting the Arruk, our generals had to give way and fall back, yet we remain confident that we will eventually prevail. I, too, find it a foolish bravery to continue to fight on a field where there’s no hope of victory.”

Doyle inhaled, a long breath through his nose. “I’m glad you understand, Toscaire Rhusvak.”

Eyes gleamed behind the death scowl of the bear. “Despite the day’s events, I would still advise Thane Aerie to throw the might of the Concordia behind the one who holds Lámh Shábhála. I wonder how the Riocha of Dún Laoghaire would react to a flotilla of troop ships from Céile Mhór in the harbor and—let us say—the chief cloch and several cloudmages of the Order at their front door. I think the new Rí’s guardian might tremble. If there were a way for that to happen . . .” The Toscaire paused.

For the first time that day, Doyle felt a renewal of hope. “There is a way,” he said to the Toscaire. “There will be a way. I’m certain of it.”

“Then send me word when it might happen, so that I can tell my Thane.” The Toscaire came close to Doyle, grasping his arm. Doyle could see the man’s bearded face, could smell the oils and the scent of his dinner. “I like strength,” he told Doyle. “It’s what Céile Mhór needs more than anything now. And I see strength in you, not in this new Shadow Rí and his puppetmaster. I’ll deal with them if I must, but I’d rather see Lámh Shábhála around your neck and its glory sending the Arruk fleeing back to Thall Mór-roinn.”

Doyle put his hand over Rhusvak’s. “I promise you that will happen,” he told the man. “You have my word.”

M
ERIEL returned to the lough the next night. Owaine had wanted to go with her, but she had told him to stay there. Keira listened to their discussion from the other side of the fire in her cave, sorting the pile of herbs she’d gathered that afternoon and saying nothing. Owaine was persistent, and eventually Meriel agreed to let him accompany her as far as the edge of the woods.

The trees were singing that night, the Seanóir, the Old Ones’ voices so loud and compelling that Keira gave Meriel and Owaine tufts of soft moss to put in their ears. “Keep your minds on what you’re doing,” she told them, “or you’ll find yourselves deep in the forest feeding their roots with your blood and flesh.” Even through the moss, the song of the trees was insistent. Meriel was glad to leave the forest behind. She lifted a hand to tell Owaine to stay, checked the road in the moonlight, then ran quickly toward the water, vaulting the low stone walls bordering the road and crossing the dew-damp grass to the shore.

Dhegli was already there, the Saimhóir lolling on a grassy shingle half in the water. He moaned and warbled at her as she stripped off her clothing and ran into the water, feeling the change touch her as soon as the cold, then quickly warm, water touched her. He came to her, brushing up against her seal body, laughing. “Hello again, my love,” he said, the voice husky and low in her mind. “Follow me—I want to show you a place I found . . .” He nipped her furred neck, making her shiver. Then he was away and she swam joyfully after him.

He took her northward along the lough’s shore to where the lake narrowed and deepened, and they began to hear the low, constant roar of the falls of the Duán. Dhegli dove deep, suddenly, and she followed: through a shimmering cascade of frothing water that hammered and buffeted her, the sound of it nearly deafening. Then they were through and rising again, and Dhegli hauled out into a hollow behind the falls. The falls howled and bellowed and hissed several yards in front of them; the air was filled with wet spray. And the walls . . .

It was dark here and human eyes might have seen nothing. But she was in Saimhóir form, and enough moonlight filtered through the water of the falls for her to see the glimmer of crystals lining the cavern. It was as if she stood in the center of a jewel, surrounded by glittering facets. Dhegli lay alongside her, his head resting on her back, his body warm along her length. “It’s beautiful,” she said, then laughed at the sound of her voice, amplified and changed by the crystalline walls and the sheet of falling water in front of them.

Dhegli laughed with her. “Wonderful, isn’t it? And even more delightful in the daylight,” he told her. “You’ll have to come here then, when rainbows dance in the air and the walls shimmer with color. This is a place of magic, though like everything, it’s ephemeral.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look up.”

She lifted her head. Above them, a shelf of granite hung out into the falls, white water pouring over its jagged lip. “The falls are eating away at that, every day,” Dhegli said. “One day, it will break away and whatever’s up above will fall into this space while the falls of the Duán fill this place, tear it down and destroy it.”

Meriel shivered at the thought and Dhegli laughed. “Ah, not for years yet. But it will happen. Nothing and none of us last forever. But we’re here now, and we’ve seen the beauty and we’ll remember it always.” His head moved on her fur; his flipper stroked her flank. “Do you want to make love in this form, or in yours?” he asked.

“In mine,” she said, and she felt him change even as she allowed herself to slip back. She shivered at the touch of the damp air. “Though it’s cold this way,” she said.

“Not for long,” he answered, and his arms went around her.

Afterward, he let himself return to Saimhóir form, though Meriel remained as she was, cuddled against his warmth. She couldn’t see the crystals now, but she imagined the place in the daylight, as Dhegli had described it. She stroked his fur, luxuriating in the thick softness of it. “How did you find this place?” she asked him.

“I didn’t,” he told her. “It was Challa. She found it and brought me here yesterday.”

“Oh.” The mention of the Saimhóir’s name brought her presence between them. Meriel bit her lower lip, wanting to ask him a hundred questions and yet not wanting to know the answers. If she didn’t know, she told herself, then nothing had changed. If she didn’t know, she wouldn’t have to respond. If she didn’t know, everything was fine.

If he’d stayed silent, it would have been fine. But he didn’t. “Why do your voice and your face change when I say her name?” Dhegli asked.

“What do you mean?” His featureless black eyes remained on her; she could see herself twice reflected in their glistening surfaces. She looked away. “It’s just . . . you said you loved me, but I hear you talk about Challa. . . .” She couldn’t stop the rise in her voice on the last word.

“I do love you.” A pause. She knew what he would say next. She knew and she didn’t want to hear it. “I love Challa, also.”

She remembered what he had said about Owaine and her, and a chill made her shiver.
Don’t ask . . .
But she couldn’t stop herself. “Have you and Challa . . . ? Are you . . . ?”

“Aye,” he answered without hesitation. She heard no apology in his voice. No guilt. No shame. It was simply a word like any other. “I love her also. Why wouldn’t we enjoy each other’s bodies?”

He started to say something else, but she pushed herself away from him, breaking the contact, and all she heard were the moans and wails of a seal. She huddled in the middle of the small space, shivering, her knees to her chest, hugging herself. “No,” she said when he waddled near her, though she knew he couldn’t understand her. “Stay away from me.”

He would not. He pushed up to her even though she backed away until her spine touched the hard points of the crystals. The chamber was no longer beautiful; it was a prison lined with a thousand spears. His head touched her legs and his voice returned to her head. “. . . think differently than you. Not wrong, not right, Meriel. Just different. If you want me, you have to accept that, just as I have to accept the way you are. I can be a stonewalker only for a short time, just as you can be Saimhóir only for a bit. We each have to live most of the time apart, in our own worlds. We can’t be with each other always. Aye, if one us stayed in the other’s form for too long, we’d find ourselves caught in that form forever—but we’d both be dreadfully unhappy that way. Even if you chose to be Saimhóir, you’d eventually start to yearn for the land and your own kind; you wouldn’t know or understand or even agree with our ways. You couldn’t use the sky-stone in that form, and you’d lose it. If I chose to be Daoine, then Bradán an Chumhacht would leave me and that would torment me the same way you’d be tormented if you lost your sky-stone, and I would always want the sea. Meriel, we meet here in the middle for a few fleeting moments before we have to go be among our own again. I want you to be happy there, Meriel. If you had a lover on the stones, I’d be happy for the joy you’d take with him. How would that change anything between us?”

It all sounded so logical, but Meriel was shaking her head long before he finished, her eyes closed to try to hold back the tears. “No,” she shouted, the word echoing against the crash and thunder of the falls. Her stomach was knotted; she wanted to vomit, wanted to scream with the inner pain. “Can’t you see? That would change everything.
Everything!
”

“How?” he persisted, his head nudging her lap. “I don’t understand. Do you doubt my feelings for you, Meriel? I helped your mam because of you. I came when you called, all this way. I came because you’re part of me.”

“Maybe you should have stayed where you were.” She pushed him away. “I want you to leave me alone,” she said, not caring that with the loss of contact he could no longer understand her. She pushed away from the rocks, padding over to where the water lapped at the rock and the roar of the falls drowned out even the contradictory voices inside her, where the cold spray mingled with the tears that she could no longer hold back. She heard Dhegli come up behind her, in human form now. She started to leap out into the water, but in the hesitation his arms went around her and his mouth kissed the nape of her neck.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Meriel,” she heard his voice say in her mind. “I never wanted to do that.”

“But you did,” she told him. “You did. And the worst thing is that you’ll never really understand why.”