Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (72 page)

He could feel his pulse throbbing at the sides of his neck. “Aye,” he managed to say. “But only if it’s also what you want.”

“It is,” she whispered. “Aye. Come here, Owaine . . .” She lay back and pulled him down alongside her.

This time the kiss lasted far longer.

N
O ONE remarked on the fact that Owaine and Meriel were sharing a bedroll the next morning. Edana, first up, woke Meriel with the soft noise as she rekindled the cook fire, and the young woman’s eyebrows lifted slightly as Meriel peered at her sleepily, but Edana said nothing, not even when Meriel reluctantly left the covers to help her and Owaine also stirred. Jenna also was awake, but she was staring into a distance that none of them could see and only seemed to snap back into focus when the smell of andúilleaf reached her nose. She grasped the cup that Meriel brought her eagerly, her stiff and scarred right hand curling around the mug like a piece of deadwood, bitterly cold to Meriel’s touch. Jenna sipped at the brew despite the heat.

“Look,” Jenna said, pointing with her chin as she drank. “Over there.”

Meriel saw it then: a doe and her fawn—not the storm deer, but the more usual red. They were standing in the shadows of the elms close to the edge of the clearing in which they’d made their camp. Above them, the elm’s branches were covered with several long white vines . . . but as Meriel watched, the vines writhed and wriggled, and she realized they were not vines, but pale-scaled snakes, their bodies longer than a human’s and as thick around as Meriel’s forearms. Even as Meriel opened her mouth to speak, the snakes moved, dropping as one suddenly on the fawn. The doe gave a high bleat and fled into the woods.

The snakes wriggled, wrapping their long, muscular bodies around the panicked fawn’s neck, their heads rearing back and biting the animal repeatedly. It was over in a moment. The fawn went down, its legs kicking wildly and then going terribly still after a last, final jerk of its body. The snakes continued to writhe around it, like a nest of impossibly huge worms, their jaws wide as they started to tear away and shred the flesh of the young deer. Meriel could hear the sound of their feeding, a wet, continuous rasping like liquid fire. Muscles moved in waves down the snakes’ thick bodies as they swallowed and gorged themselves.

There was a horrible, visceral fascination to it. Meriel stared. “Snakes don’t cooperate,” Owaine said behind her. “Not like that.” His arm went around Meriel and she leaned gratefully into his embrace. He smelled familiar and good.

“Evidently those have never heard that rule,” Doyle said. He’d awakened as well. Edana, by the fire, had stopped preparing breakfast. “You know, my love, I think I’ve just lost any appetite I had.”

“What are they?” Meriel asked. “There aren’t any snakes in Inish Thuaidh, and they’re supposed to be rare even here in Talamh an Ghlas. But I’ve never heard of any like
those
.”

“I woke them,” Jenna said, and Meriel glanced over Owaine’s shoulder at her mam. She was staring also, with no horror on her face but only a solemn fascination. “Or rather, Lámh Shábhála did, at the Filleadh. As it woke others.”

“You could have skipped those, Banrion, and I wouldn’t have complained,” Owaine said. Meriel felt him shiver. “Let’s pack up and get moving.” No one objected. They quickly broke camp and moved through the trees toward the High Road, watching carefully above them for white snakes.

“We should come to the Donn Gate of Falcarragh by the end of today’s walk,” Doyle told them when they reached the road. The village was just ahead of them, though the Riocha who had ridden past them the previous evening had evidently already left the inn, for they could see that the stables were empty except for a few draft animals. “What do we do then . . . ?” His voice trailed off into the question.

“We lose ourselves in the crowds, first,” Owaine said. “We find somewhere where we can be relatively safe, and we see what the situation is.”

“There’s going to be no place ‘safe’ in Falcarragh, not with mages everywhere and the combined armies of the Tuatha in town,” Doyle answered.

“With all that, it’s going to be more chaotic than usual. A few ragged travelers shouldn’t attract much attention,” Owaine told him.

Meriel listened to the two of them—
just like men, to plan without asking any of the rest of us what we think
—her own thoughts far less certain. She had no plan in mind beyond reaching Falcarragh; in truth, part of her hadn’t believed they would actually get this far. It had seemed so improbable, back in Doire Coill. Now, facing the actuality, it looked no better. Jenna, especially, seemed to grow more withdrawn and exhausted as they approached the city. She said almost nothing that morning as they passed through a succession of small villages that seemed to crowd close together along the River Donn as it swelled toward its meeting the with Bay of Falcarragh. Meriel had worried that Jenna, used to being not only among Riocha, but as Banrion someone whose word was to be listened to and obeyed, might accidentally betray them. But she remained silent and hunched over whenever other travelers greeted them or talked to them, and no one gave the woman with the heavily-bandaged right arm more than a glance of pity.

Seeing Falcarragh, late that afternoon, made their intentions seem beyond foolish. . . .

They topped a small hill and spotted the Donn Gate ahead of them, the westernmost entry to the city, where the River Donn, now wide and slow, made a sweeping northward turn and opened into the long cleft of Falcarragh Bay, which would finally join the Westering Sea twenty-five miles to the north. From there, Inish Thuaidh was only thirty miles distant across island-pocked waters.

Falcarragh itself lay before them, its dwellings sweeping up on steep hills, though the bulk of the city, Meriel would learn, was hidden from them, nestled in a wide valley just beyond the ridge to the east of Donn Gate. But beyond the ridge, the city swept up again on the shoulder of two tall, rounded peaks: Sliabh Gabhar, where the Rí’s Keep perched in stolid impregnability as it overlooked the bay; and the taller and steeper hump of Sliabh Sí, where the Mother-Creator’s temple stood. Out in the misty, blue distance, they could see ships at anchor, dozens of them slumbering on the waves. And Donn Gate ...

Meriel had always thought Dún Kiil, the capital city of Inish Thuaidh, immense and crowded, especially compared to the towns and villages she’d visited elsewhere on the island. But this . . . Several roads converged here, the one they had followed up from Lough Donn, another coming in from the east and Glenkille, yet another crossing the Donn Bridge from the west and south, leading—Meriel suspected—all the way down to Tuath Connachta and Keelballi. The gates themselves were immense iron latticework doors, fancifully wrought in the shape of animals and vines and leaves, and so large that Meriel realized it must take a dozen gardai to close each of them. Twin round towers marked the opening, the ledges of each story adorned with the leering faces of gargoyles and mythical beasts, the summits—twenty feet above the road—also populated with stone carvings. A thick stone wall ran from the end of the Donn Bridge, along the bank of the river, and then turned abruptly toward the first of the gate towers. From the other side, a second wall extended to the south until it swept over the steep slope of the ridge and vanished in the distance.

“By the Mother . . .” Owaine breathed the exclamation, nearly open-jawed with wonder. They’d stopped, moving to one side of the road to gaze out over the sight as other travelers moved past them toward the gate. Meriel almost laughed, knowing how the city must appear to Owaine’s eyes, having never been away from tiny Inishfeirm. “I never thought so many people could live so close together,” he said.

“I know,” Meriel told him, linking her arm in his and leaning her head against his shoulder. Behind them, she heard Doyle sniff and Edana shush him. “I’ve never seen the like. Not even Dun Kiil.”

“Aye, but you’ve never seen Dún Laoghaire,” Doyle said. “You could fit Falcarragh inside the inner wall there and have room left over.”

“Then I hope I never see it,” Owaine told him. “I’ll be happy to go back to . . .” He stopped and looked around them.
Inishfeirm.
Meriel knew what he’d wanted to say, but it wasn’t a name one should evoke here, where there were so many ears to overhear. Owaine sighed. “We should go on,” he said.

It seemed that everyone in all of Talamh an Ghlas was trying to cram themselves at once between the massive stone portals of Donn Gate: wagons full of produce from the outlying farms, travelers from each of the roads, a squadron of gardai wearing the red-and-white colors of Tuath Airgialla and marching in solemn formation, Riocha on horseback or in carriages, peddlers, citizens hurrying about on business, even a caravan of brightly-clothed Taisteal (making Meriel think of Sevei and Nico, and starting her wondering what had happened to Clan Dranaghi in the wake of her escape). The visual riot of color was matched by a cacophony of noise: people shouting, animals bleating and grunting, the racket of squealing, poorly-greased axles and wheels, the enticing calls of vendors. The other senses were assaulted as well: the scent of spices and manure and far too many people; the feel of exotic cloths and the salty mist of the bay on their skin. Falcarragh was overwhelming, its sensory input almost too much after Doire Coill and then the long walk from Lough Donn. At least it appeared they could lose themselves easily in the city, as Owaine had intimated.

Assuming that they could first could get through Donn Gate . . . There were gardai there, watching those entering. They leaned against the doors to the towers, appearing to be mostly bored, but their gazes were on the crowds passing into the city. Meriel and the others stayed to the middle of the avenue, trying to hide themselves among the crowd without appearing to do so. Meriel, holding her mam’s arm, crowded against a wagon full of melons, the ripe smell of them almost overpowering, trying to shield them from the gardai to their right with the horse.

“Hey! You there!” The shout came from the left, and Meriel’s head snapped around. One of the gardai had pushed himself away from the wall and was striding over in their direction with two of his companions. “Aye, you two!” he called, pointing to Owaine and Doyle. Doyle glanced at Owaine, then took a half-step forward to meet them.

“Sirs?” he inquired, his voice a husky whisper. “Is there a problem?”

The gardai who’d hailed them grinned. “No problem at all. In fact, we have a proposition. You two look like fine young specimens, and we happen to have a need for men like you. Haven’t you heard that war is about to start? We need good, strong hands on the pikes, and we’ll pay you ten coppers a day for the privilege—to you, or to your widows.” He grinned again, displaying tilted brown teeth. “You’ll be coming with me now—” He leaned forward as if he were about to grab Doyle by the arm as his companions also came toward them.

Doyle coughed, a long and horrible hacking sound, and the gardai stopped. He scowled, looking closely at Doyle’s drawn and ashen face. “I have an illness from the marshes,” Doyle told the man. “I was bitten by wind sprites, and the next day was like this. The woman with us, my mam . . .” He gestured at Jenna, who glared once but said nothing. “She has it, too.” He coughed again, openmouthed, in the direction of the garda, who took a step back.

“Then perhaps you should stay and take care of your mam,” the garda said. Then his gaze drifted to Owaine. “But your friend here looks healthy enough. Come along with us, now.” He gestured to his men to take Owaine, but Meriel rushed forward, grasping him.

“No, you can’t,” she cried. “We’re . . . we’re newly married, and I’m with child. Please, if you have any compassion at all . . .”

The garda laughed mockingly. “Aye, I have compassion. And you have a fine face and talk almost as well as a Riocha. I’ll let you give him a last kiss to remember him by before we leave, and then you can give us one, too.”

“Meriel!” Owaine said sharply. “It’s fine. I’ll go with them.” He looked at Edana, whose hand had moved to her léine, where her Cloch Mór lay hidden. “Be calm,” he said, a bit too loudly. “I don’t want anyone hurt.”

“What accent is that?” the garda asked, his face suddenly suspicious. “That sounds Inish. Take him,” he said to the others. “Maybe we’ve just caught a spy.”

“No!” Meriel shouted. The situation seemed to be worsening with each second. The other gardai at the gate were looking over curiously now, and they found themselves in the midst of an open space at the center of the gate traffic, all the other travelers suddenly giving the confrontation wide berth. Meriel had an image of them having to fight their way out of here, of Edana and Owaine bringing their clochs into play, of fire and magic playing their deadly light over the area, of gardai rushing them with swords or sending a rain of arrows at them from the windows of the gate towers as they tried to flee. She wondered if she could grab her mam quickly enough, if Jenna and Doyle had the strength to run at all, and how far they would get before they were caught and brought down.
It all ends now, before we even get into the city.
She wanted to weep, wanted to undo it all and have just stayed back in Doire Coill, where at least they would have been safe. She didn’t know if she could stand seeing her mam cut down, or Owaine . . .

There was a sound behind the gardai, high on the tower: like two rocks slamming hard together. As the gardai turned to look, one of the gargoyles perched on the top ledge leaned forward. It tumbled down as people scattered, landing with a crash on the flagstones not ten feet from them, shards of gray stone ricocheting around the gate. One of the gardai clutched his wrist, a long bloody scratch appearing there, and there were cries of pain from other people around them as they were struck by stony shrapnel. There was another loud
crack
as the gargoyle next to the first broke away. “Someone must be up there!” the garda holding Owaine shouted. “Come on!”