Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (38 page)

The riders came forward.

“Sevei,” Nico called out as they approached. “Come here and bring our Cailin with you.”

Sevei nodded to Meriel and hopped down from the wagon. Meriel followed, standing next to Sevei as the riders came abreast of the wagons. At a nod from the lead rider, the others moved carefully to either side and effectively surrounded the clan. None of them had weapons drawn, but neither did they smile at the faces of the clan staring out at them from the wagons. “Maidin maith, Tiarna,” Nico called up to the rider. “A pleasant day, ’tis.”

“And who are you?” the rider grunted without returning the pleasantry.

“Nico, Clannhri of Clan Dranaghi.” He paused, as if waiting for the man to give his name. When the tiarna simply stared, Nico continued. “We’re on our way to Lár Bhaile, then to Dún Laoghaire and up the coast and across the Finger to our own long-unseen homes. I note by your colors that we’ve entered Tuath Gabair. The most pleasant of all the Tuatha, as I would know, having seen them all. The lush green hills, the—”

“I want to see everyone out of the wagons,” the man snapped, interrupting Nico. “Now.”

“As the tiarna wishes . . .” Nico called to the rest of the clan, and a few moments later the entire group was standing alongside the wagons, the small children hugging to their mam’s legs. “This is all of you?” the tiarna asked Nico. The horse nickered restlessly and the man pulled at the reins to calm him.

“Aye,” Nico answered. “My family, which I love as the tiarna no doubt loves his own family.”

A grunt. “None of them are orphans you’ve picked up to sell, or slaves?”

Nico shook his head. “No, Tiarna. Everyone here is of Clan Dranaghi. Everyone.”

“Check the wagons,” the rider ordered his men. “Make sure they’re not hiding anyone else.” He rode slowly up and down in front of them as the other riders dismounted, staring at each of them. Meriel could feel Sevei’s hand firmly gripping her arm.

“If the tiarna would tell us who or what he’s looking for, perhaps we could help,” Nico suggested.

The rider laughed. “I’m sure you’d be happy to tell me whatever I’d like to hear, especially if I crossed your palm with coins. I know how well the Taisteal can lie.” His gaze swept over them and stopped on Meriel. He stared hard at her. “Odd skin color for a Taisteal,” he said. “All the rest of you so dark, and she so pale. And I’d swear the sun finds red highlights in her hair . . .”

“The tiarna is very observant,” Nico said. “You are to be complimented. Cailin was an, ah, unfortunate mistake by her mam, I’m afraid, who dallied with one of the local young men on our last trip here to Talamh an Ghlas. Cailin wanted to see her da’s homeland, so she came with us this time.”

“Is that true?” the rider asked. He looked directly at Meriel. “Answer me. You’ve nothing to fear from me if you tell the truth. Step out here to me, away from the others.”

Meriel felt Sevei’s hand loosen on her arm. “Careful,” Sevei whispered as Meriel moved out from the crowd, going up to the tiarna’s horse.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

The man stared down at her: green eyes, a face furrowed with a scar along the chin, the skin tanned by sun and wind: a warrior’s face. He would do as he was ordered to do no matter what that order might be. Meriel remembered what Nico had told her when she’d first tried to escape:
“Those we meet won’t be your allies . . .”
This tiarna, if she told him the truth, would more than likely take her to the Rí Gabair. Meriel knew that in Lár Bhaile the name of Jenna MacEagan, Holder of Lámh Shábhála, was a curse to be spat upon once uttered. Jenna had slain the Banrion Cianna, the mam of the current Rí Gabair, when she was last here and that deed was still well remembered and reviled. The Mad Holder’s daughter would be a prize indeed here. She would be a prisoner here, or perhaps worse.

“I’m Cailin,” she said, imitating the Taisteal accent as well as she could, shortening the vowels and making the consonants harsh and guttural. “Of Clan Dranaghi.” She thought she could almost hear Nico’s sigh of relief. “It’s just as Clannhri Nico told you. My mam was seduced by a man from Falcarragh long ago, and I have some of his coloring.”

The man nodded, though his eyes glittered as they continued to hold her. Then he looked away, calling to his men. “Well?”

“Nothing, Tiarna,” one of them answered. “Just the usual Taisteal junk.”

“All right, then.” The rider flicked the reins, moving up to Nico. “Then tell me, Clannhri, if you’ve seen other travelers on the road. In particular, I would be interested if you’ve seen a young woman, perhaps of about seventeen cycles, with red hair and an Inishlander’s accent. She may have Riocha around her or gardai, and they might try to prevent her from talking to others.”

Nico stroked his chin. “Oh, we Taisteal must see a thousand travelers on the road, Tiarna, and remembering is hard work. . . .”

The tiarna reached into his belt pouch and flipped a coin. Silver glinted at Nico’s feet. “Fortunately, I have the memory of an Ald,” Nico continued, glancing down once. “But, alas . . .” He shook his head gravely. “I recall no one like the girl you describe or any such travelers. I would certainly have remembered them.” He turned to the others. “Do any of you remember such a woman?”

The clan shook their heads as one. The rider released an irritated sigh. “A shame,” he said, “for the Rí Gabair’s reward would be in gold, not silver, and there would be a substantial pile of it. If you see this woman or if your overtaxed memory recalls her, then leave word with the Ald of the nearest village to send the message to Lár Bhaile. And should I hear of any Taisteal thievery in this part of the Tuath, I’ll know where to come, won’t I? Perhaps I’ll see you again in Lár Bhaile, if that’s indeed where you’re going.”

“I pray to the Mother-Creator that we meet again, Tiarna,” Nico told him. “It would be a pleasure. Perhaps we may even do some further business then.”

The man’s smile was devoid of mirth. “Perhaps,” he said. He nodded to his companion and kicked at his horse’s flanks. They rode off to the west. Nico spat in the dirt where the tiarna had been.
“Svinja sin od pas!”
he uttered, and spat again. Nico leaned down to pick up the coin and placed it in his pocket. He stalked back to his wagon.

“What did Nico say just then?” Meriel asked Sevei as they pulled themselves back into the seat of their cart. The pots and pans hung inside jangled and clattered as they started off again.

“It’s Taisteal,” Sevei answered. “He called the tiarna a ‘bastard son of a dog.’ ”

Meriel laughed. “I’ll have to remember that,” she said.

Meriel had thought that she’d see nothing that day more intriguing than the riders. She was wrong.

By late afternoon, the clan had seen little of other humans. The northern stretch of Tuath Gabair was dominated by drumlins, low but very steep hills one after another with marshland at their feet. There were occasional small woods of elm, maple, and pine around the bottoms of the drumlins, but the tops of the hills were bare as if generations of unknown people had logged the forests that had once been there, leaving the hills green with high grass dotted with purple heather and flecks of pure, startling color from wildflowers. Birds—sparrows and larks—called to each other and flitted through the bracken. They passed an occasional farm or spied a thatched roof well off on a tiny lane that meandered away from the main road, but for the most part the country was still wild. Nico had said that they were making for a village called Ballyrea some fifteen or twenty miles below the border of Gabair. “It’s the first glimpse of civilization in this Mother-forgotten part of the world, but it’s as beggarly a place as we’ve seen,” he said. “We won’t find much profit in Gabair until we cross the River Duán at Áth Iseal. Then we’ll finally be in a true city again.”

The sun was already dipping low in the sky before they caught sight of Ballyrea. They moved in alternating dusk and sun as the road climbed the drumlins and then fell again into the marshland. At the top of one of the hills, they could see smoke wafting skyward from several chimneys and the gleam of whitewashed walls under thatch, just at the foot of the next drumlin.

And there was something else.

A black cloud swirled over the land. It was low, skimming the treetops at one side of the village, moving too fast and against the wind. The cloud broke apart and reformed, the edges breaking into distinct particles that wheeled and swayed. Faintly, Meriel could hear a noise from the cloud’s direction, a strident din as if a thousand voices were calling. The cloud was moving southwest to northeast across the road, but it seemed to sense them and sent a questing tendril in their direction. Then the entire cloud followed, the dark bulk of it sweeping in an impossibly wide turn.

The noise intensified and Meriel suddenly realized what she was seeing and hearing.

“Crows!” Meriel shouted.

“Aye,” Sevei said. “A larger flock than I’ve ever seen before . . .”

The cloud of birds, as it approached, grew more distinct and more ominous. The birds were enormous, with wingspans as wide as Meriel’s outstretched arms. The thunder of their wings boomed, a low accompaniment to their screeching, strident voices. Meriel could almost imagine them talking to each other, their calls more varied than the barren screeches she’d heard from normal birds. The flock flew overhead once, so low that the Taisteal could almost reach up and touch them as they hurtled past, blocking out the sun. The horde passed and then wheeled around once more.

This time they circled above the caravan, and some of the birds landed on the roofs and wheels, on the horses’ backs, on the ground around them. Two of the birds flapped down just above Meriel; as she turned around to bat at them, they hopped back, cawing with beaks open and black eyes glittering. One of the crows, she noticed, had a patch of white feathers above its left eye. The two creatures seemed to nod to each other, then flew heavily away again.

Sevei struck at another bird that landed momentarily on her shoulder. The horses reared in the harnesses, nickering in fright at the noise and commotion; around them, Meriel could hear the rest of the clan shouting and cursing as the crows landed around them. Their world was suddenly confined to the whirl of black bodies and their shrill calls, the landscape around them blotted out in the ebony storm.

In the chaos, a crow landed again next to Meriel. A flash of white told her that it was the same bird as before. But as Meriel lifted her hand to strike away the creature, she stopped. The crow held something in its beak: a twig with an oak leaf attached to one end. As Meriel stared, it placed the twig carefully at her side and cawed once. When Meriel didn’t respond, it bent its head down and—with its beak—nudged the twig closer to Meriel before taking flight again.

The flock swept over the wagons and disappeared northward.

Meriel picked up the twig. As she did so, she heard a voice in her head: a woman’s voice, the words touched with a strange guttural accent.
I will meet you in Doire Coill. The branch will show you the way.

Then it was gone. The twig, a straight branch no longer than her hand, was trembling between her fingers as if it were alive, pulling her hand. When she relaxed slightly, the leafed end of the branch quivered as the notched leaf pointed south-southwest. When Meriel tried to move her hand away from that direction, the twig resisted, as if it were comfortable only when it lay in that direction.

“Cailin?” Meriel was suddenly aware that Sevei was talking to her, and she started. “I said, what’s that in your hand?”

“I don’t know,” Meriel answered honestly. “One of the birds dropped it.”

Sevei’s brow knotted. “Let me see . . .”

She held out her hand. Reluctantly, Meriel placed the twig in the woman’s palm. Sevei twirled it around, looking at it from all sides. If the branch spoke to her or moved in her hand, Sevei gave no indication. She handed it back to Meriel. “It’s oak,” she said. “There’s another old forest not far from here. Probably got it from there. Damned huge noisy things they were. I’ll bet the farmers hereabouts are in an uproar. A bloody big flock like that could strip a field in less than a stripe.”

Meriel nodded. The twig was trembling again, and she loosened her fingers slightly to let it move. It turned on its own in her upturned palm, the tip of the leaf pointing unerringly in the same direction.

Meriel said nothing to Sevei.

They saw the flock once more less than half a stripe later as the sun was going down, moving past them just off to the west, this time streaming by as if trying to beat the last rays of the sun and paying no attention to the caravan at all as they approached Ballyrea.

They flew, Meriel noticed, along the path of the twig.

A
FTER the night encounter with the dragon, Owaine thought that nothing worse could happen. For the next several days, that appeared to be the case. He continued to chase the Taisteal. Whenever the road reached a turning or intersected another road, Léimard would leap unbidden from its perch on the horse and flit quickly around the ground, finally scampering several strides up one path or the other until Owaine nudged the horse forward toward the squirrel, who would leap back up again. In each village they passed, or when they came across other travelers on the road, Owaine would inquire about the Taisteal; he kept the story he’d told those in the inn of Ballycraigh—that he was chasing the Taisteal because his love was ill and needed the True Healer who rode with them. From the reports he garnered, they seemed to gain somewhat on the Taisteal with each day; Owaine grew increasingly convinced, despite the lack of any hard evidence, that Meriel was the healer with them. In the village of Elphin, with the sun—finally emerging from the clouds—at the zenith, he was informed that the Taisteal had left just that morning, still moving south into Tuath Gabair. With a hard ride, the villagers said, he might even catch them by evening.