Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (5 page)

She felt herself shudder as Cristóir’s eyes flew open, as the haze of pain receded like a morning fog. “Marta?” he said through dry and cracked lips, and Meriel spoke the woman’s name at the same time.

“Banrion Ard,” she heard Áine say as if from some great and vast distance. “It’s done. You may come back now.” Meriel sighed, letting her fingers relax around Treoraí’s Heart. The mage-scars stood out prominently on her hand and arm, pure white and raised. As the cloch dropped from her grasp, the sense of being two people fell away, the shock of the release causing her to reel backward in Áine’s waiting arms. The Hand helped Meriel to her feet as the final vestiges of Cristóir’s thoughts fell away from her. Cristóir was sitting up on his litter, Marta crying on her knees alongside him as they embraced each other, and the two cousins were gaping in wonder at the scene. Meriel’s left hand throbbed and ached, and she flexed stiff fingers, her whole arm trembling from the exertion of being a conduit for the mage-forces held within the now-emptied Treoraí’s Heart.

Someone cleared their throat near the door, and Meriel saw one of the pages for the keep standing there, his head discreetly lowered so his gaze was on the brightly-tiled floor. “Aye?” she asked the boy, and his head lifted.

“Banrion Ard, the Banrion Mac Ard asks that you meet with her,” the page said. His gaze flicked once over to Cristóir and Marta, still embracing tearfully without seeming to notice the others. Meriel grinned at Áine. “A good choice, I hope,” Meriel said, and Áine smiled briefly. “Escort the Banrion to the south porch,” Meriel told the page. “Tell her that I’ll be there directly.”

“Have you heard recently from the twins or Owaine?”

With the question, Meriel smiled. “Aye, all of them,” she said. “Sevei’s doing well at Inishfeirm, or so Máister Kirwan tells me. He thinks she might be ready for a cloch na thintrí of her own. Sevei wrote me a letter herself—she evidently has a beau there, someone named Dillon—one of the Ó’Baoill clan. She’ll be coming back here with her gram, though she doesn’t know it yet. And Owaine sent a message bird that arrived yesterday. He and Kayne should already have passed the Bunús Wall. I’ll be glad to have them home again, finally, also. And safe, thank the Mother.”

Edana, seated across a small table from Meriel, smiled in return. Meriel’s hand, cupped now around a mug of kala bark tea, still ached from using Treoraí’s Heart; Edana’s hand stretched over the linen to touch Meriel’s in mute sympathy. The keep servants had placed refreshments on the inner porch of Dún Laoghaire Keep. A quartet of gardai stood discreetly away from them on either side—with Edana as the Banrion of Dún Laoghaire and Meriel the Banrion Ard of all the Tuatha, they were rarely alone and unguarded outside their private chambers. On the grassy sward before them, Ennis, almost two double-hands of years of age and the youngest of Meriel’s children, was examining a map of Talamh an Ghlas under the supervision of his attendant-tutor Isibéal, a woman of perhaps thirty. The boy’s face was solemn and intent as he pressed his finger down on the parchment and asked Isibéal an unheard question. Ennis was always serious; sometimes, Meriel thought, too much so for such a young child. She wished he were playing with a ball or chasing butterflies rather than pressing his nose to a piece of yellowed, dusty paper.

“He should be out more,” Edana said, as if guessing Meriel’s thoughts. “I know a good family with holdings near Tuath Gabair who would be happy to take him in fosterage for a time—they have sons his age. Here in Dún Laoghaire, there’s so little for him. I think that’s why he’s so quiet and intense. Born with the caul over his face . . . well, you know what they say about that.”

Meriel smiled indulgently toward her son.
“What’s the matter with him?” Meriel had said, worried and exhausted after the long labor. The two midwives were glancing nervously at each other, but Keira, the old Bunús woman who was also the Protector of the old forest Doire Coill, clucked angrily at them and took the child, holding it up. Edana saw the pale blue membrane over the infant’s face, like a translucent mask. Already, Keira was wiping it away with her hand as the baby squalled its irritation.

“And Isibéal?” Edana said, the question taking Meriel away from her reverie. “She seems to be working out well.”

Meriel nodded. “Aye. I had misgivings, but with her references from Banrion Taafe . . . When Doyle comes back from Lár Bhaile, thank him for me for suggesting her. But you didn’t come here to talk about Ennis.”

Edana glanced away toward Ennis and Isibéal. “No,” she answered finally. “I’m . . . worried, Meriel.”

“About?”

A hand lifted from the tablecloth and fell back. “Rumblings,” Edana said. “Some of my ears among the Riocha are telling me that there’s been strong talk lately—about you, and about your mam. About Jenna’s visit here and what it implies.”

Meriel would have laughed at that in dismissal had Edana’s face not been so serious. “There have
always
been rumblings like that,” she said. “For how many years now? Nothing’s ever come of it.”

“I know, but this is different. No Rí or Banrion of Inish Thuaidh has come here in five centuries, and now your mam is coming: the Mad Holder herself.” Meriel blinked and drew back at the term, and Edana pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry, Meriel, but you must know that’s what they’re saying. One of my people in Tuath Connachta said she overheard Rí Fearachan talking about a spy in Inish Thuaidh and how some plan is to be put into action.” Edana hesitated, looking away toward Ennis and Isibéal, and Meriel could sense that she was considering her next words. “The discontent among the Riocha is higher now than it has been since you became the Ard,” she said finally. “It’s been building for the last year, since you sent the troops to Céile Mhór.”

Meriel was already shaking her head. Sending out the army hadn’t been a choice she’d wanted to make. Sending soldiers off to war was never a decision with which she could be comfortable, especially since her husband and oldest son were among them. But the reports from Céile Mhór had been so dire and terrifying. The Arruk, vile creatures flooding into the peninsula from their homelands in Thall Mór-roinn, had pushed their way relentlessly north, killing and destroying as they went, and the Thane of Céile Mhór had finally sent a desperate plea for help to Dún Laoghaire. The discussion had raged for days when she’d called the Comhairle of Ríthe together. “
Céile Mhór may be far from the Tuatha, but those are our cousin Daoine who the Arruk were killing and they are the buffer between us and the Arruk. If they fall, then the Arruk will inevitably come here and it will be
our
families who are slain and our fields trampled underneath. We need to—no, we
must
—answer the Thane’s call.”
To demonstrate the seriousness of her belief, she had named Owaine as the commander for the Tuathaian army that would be sent, though the decision had made her tremble, and Kayne—full of youthful conviction and fervor—would not be left behind either. Yet though they’d all finally agreed, when the troops had assembled, the Ríthe had sent far fewer soldiers to her than promised. . . .

“The Arruk left us no choice,” she said to Edana. “We both know the arguments.”

“I agree, but . . .”

Meriel raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“You complained at the lack of troops from some of the Tuatha, but while Inish Thuaidh sent clansfolk, they didn’t offer any cloudmages at all, and Lámh Shábhála remained at home.”

“It’s that old complaint again? ‘The First Holder doesn’t do enough with her power. If
I
had it . . .’ Did you really expect Mam to go riding off to war with Lámh Shábhála?”

“I wouldn’t expect that at all,” Edana answered, and there was a sharpness buried in her words that indicated she expected very little of the Banrion of Inish Thuaidh in any case. “Meriel, you know the affection I have for you, so forgive me when I say that in some ways I must agree with that complaint. The First Holder hasn’t used Lámh Shábhála as much or as well as she could, and it’s well past time for Inish Thuaidh to become part of the Tuatha and under the control of Dún Laoghaire. Now, your invitation for the First Holder to come here and your treatment of Inish Thuaidh as if it were an entirely independent land is causing the anger of the Riocha to boil.”

Meriel felt her face flush with the criticism. “All the money and artisans Mam sent to rebuild Falcarragh, all the treaties she’s signed, the trade we now have between us, the peace that has existed between the Tuatha and Inish Thuaidh since that time . . . over three hands of years now, there’s been peace between the Tuatha. I would say that she’s done all she need do, and perhaps more. What do they expect of her: to ride all over Talamh An Ghlas and use Lámh Shábhála to plant the fields or clear the bogs or create whole new towns of sparkling stone? Even if she did that, the Riocha would all be complaining that she was planting the wrong crops and stealing their peat and that the streets in the new towns were too narrow. They’d come here screaming about her trespassing on their lands and insisting that she go back home.”

Meriel realized that Edana was waiting patiently and closed her mouth on the remainder of the tirade. “I’m sorry,” she told Edana. “I know that you’re giving me an honest evaluation of how you see things, and I appreciate that. It’s just . . . well, she’s my mam. Go on, say what you wanted to say.”

Edana’s hand brushed her again, the touch of a good and familiar friend. “I know she’s your mam, Meriel. I know you feel a need to defend her because of that. But ...” Edana shook her head as if she’d changed her mind about what she wanted to say. “I look at what you’ve done with Treoraí’s Heart, and I wonder what you could have done if Lámh Shábhála had been around your neck after Falcarragh.”

Meriel remembered the Battle of Falcarragh all too well. They were memories that would never fade: the terrible destruction, the death, the undeniable insanity of her mam at that time and the sacrifice that had been required to save her. Sometimes, she’d wondered herself at the cost. “Edana . . .”

The woman sighed quietly. “I know. You didn’t want the great cloch, and I understand that, too, even if Doyle never will. But you need to understand that the voices against the First Holder are rising again, especially since she chose not to lend her aid to Céile Mhór. And the voices are rising against you, because you did. The Ríthe see her arrival here as a symbol—one that diminishes them and favors her, and they hate her. They will always hate her.”

“What you’re saying is that there’s no path I could follow that would appease them.”

A shrug. “You have enemies: some of them old, some of them newer. Some Ríthe who wouldn’t mind being Ard themselves, or Riocha who think that by bringing you down they’ll increase their own standing, or that they might gain Lámh Shábhála or one of the Clochs Mór, or those who simply are angry because you so often choose to help the common folk over Riocha with Treoraí’s Heart.”

Meriel remembered the look on Bantiarna MacKeough’s face, just a few stripes of the candle ago—she could well imagine that she had made another enemy there. “The Riocha have money and servants to help them. The tuathánach have only themselves.”

Edana’s hand rose and floated down again like an autumn leaf. “I know. I don’t fault your choices, and I can only imagine how difficult they must be for you. I’m only saying that they gain you more enemies than friends among those who have the most influence, and that those Riocha you’ve passed over to help some sheepherder instead of them will resent your choice. I’m worried that the voices are on the verge of being no longer just words, that someone may attempt to do something more.”

Meriel could see the true concern in Edana’s eyes. She wondered if there were more. “Would Doyle’s be one of these voices you’re hearing?” she asked, and the twist of Edana’s mouth told her more than the woman’s reply.

“I don’t know. I hope not. He’s said nothing to me, but in truth . . . Well, of late we spend more time apart than together. He’s always in Lár Bhaile on some business of the Order of Gabair, or up in Infochla looking after his family’s estate, or visiting one of the children. Dún Laoghaire doesn’t interest him—or me, I’m afraid.”

The recent estrangement between the two was no secret to Meriel; she and Edana had spoken of it often enough over the last months, but the open pain in Edana’s voice made Meriel wonder. “Has something more happened . . .”