Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1 - Fire from the Stones

  Chapter 2 - Leaving

  Chapter 3 - Inside the Keep

  Chapter 4 - A Delegation Refused

  Chapter 5 - Excerpts from Letters

  Chapter 6 - Lucan’s Letter

  Chapter 7 - The Changeling

  Chapter 8 - Lure of Water

  Chapter 9 - A Dead Creature

  Chapter 10 - The Truth-Stone

  Chapter 11 - In the Midden

  Chapter 12 - Sheep and Bridges

  Chapter 13 - Friendship

  Chapter 14 - Clochmion

  Chapter 15 - Attack on the Keep

  PART TWO

  Chapter 16 - Awakening

  Chapter 17 - A Name

  Chapter 18 - Responses

  Chapter 19 - The Healer

  Chapter 20 - The Searcher

  Chapter 21 - Cailin of the Healing Touch

  Chapter 22 - Other Places Revisited

  Chapter 23 - Trust

  Chapter 24 - Travelers

  Chapter 25 - Hunters in the Wilds

  Chapter 26 - Unexpected Movements

  Chapter 27 - Ballintubber and Inishduán

  PART THREE

  Chapter 28 - Battle at Doire Coill

  Chapter 29 - Into the Woods

  Chapter 30 - Recovery

  Chapter 31 - By the Lough’s Waters

  Chapter 32 - Casting Bones

  Chapter 33 - A Game of Ficheall

  Chapter 34 - The Óenach of the Ríthe

  Chapter 35 - Water and Blood

  Chapter 36 - The Crow’s Note

  Chapter 37 - Reunions

  Chapter 38 - The New Holder

  Chapter 39 - Convergence

  Chapter 40 - A Father’s Cloch

  Chapter 41 - A Temptation

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 42 - Meeting in the Woods

  Chapter 43 - Awakening

  Chapter 44 - Stirrings of War

  Chapter 45 - Inside the Madness

  Chapter 46 - The Sióg Mist

  Chapter 47 - Fatal Decisions

  Chapter 48 - Preparations for War

  Chapter 49 - Alliances Formed

  Chapter 50 - Into the City

  Chapter 51 - Meetings and Plans

  Chapter 52 - A Trap Set

  Chapter 53 - Sliabh Bacaghorth

  Chapter 54 - Rogue Holder

  Chapter 55 - The Battle of Falcarragh

  Chapter 56 - A Holder’s Death

  Chapter 57 - The Banrion

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 58 - The Torc of the Ard

  APPENDICES

  Raves for Mage of Clouds:

  “Richly imagined . . . The author deftly manages Meriel’s journey from the sheltered and innocent Banrion’s daughter of the book’s opening chapters to the grounded and powerful woman she will become. Intriguing, fully developed characters abound. This entry can only enhance Farrell’s reputation as one of the rising stars of Celtic fantasy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Farrell creates a world filled with Celtic flavor and richly inventive back history and peoples it with strong male and female characters. Amid scenes of sorcerous rivalries and political maneuverings runs a story of a mother’s love for her child and a woman’s loyalty to her land and her magic.”

  —Library Journal

  “A wonderful continuation of the Cloudmages series.”

  —Booklist

  “Farrell offers up a beautifully written tale, intertwining Celtic mythology and epic fantasy, deftly managing political and romantic subplots that add depth and color to the story. Rich in detail and characterization, this novel will delight fans of complex fantasy fiction.”

  —Romantic Times

  “As in all good fantasy writing, character development is the key ingredient that brings originality to a story and elevates it from mere formula. Meriel’s journey of self-discovery and the growth of her character are what capture readers’ interest and enhance a wonderfully imaginative plot. It is also refreshing to read a story in this genre that features a strong, powerful young woman.”

  —Voya

  Copyright © 2004 by Stephen Leigh

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1220

  DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA).

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Paperback Printing, January 2005

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-11852-8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Megen, whose own march

  to independence is a mirror for my characters.

  And for Denise, who is part of all that I do.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Let me give a heartfelt acknowledgment to Sheila Bading—not for anything specifically in this book, but for the inspiration she gave me over the time I knew her. She was an excellent role model for me as well as some of my characters. May the Mother keep you safe in her arms, Sheila.

  My appreciation to Sheila Gilbert for her vigilant editorship, for the “Wow!” moment in her editorial notes, and for making me part of the family at DAW.

  This book’s sonic inspirations: Once again, Osna often found its way onto my CD player (and my iPod), as did Capercaillie, Cherish The Ladies, the Afro-Celt Connection, Loreena McKennitt, the Chieftains, Gaelic Storm, the Celtic Heartbeat collections, and even Flogging Molly.

  My apologies in advance to speakers of Irish Gaelic. Throughout the book, I have borrowed several terms from Irish and though I’ve made my best attempt, any mistakes in usage (and I’m certain there are many) are my own and are due to my limited understanding of the language. My intent was simply to give a bit of the flavor and cadence of the Irish language to English-speaking readers.

  If you’re connected to the internet, my web page can be accessed at www.farrellworlds.com—you’re always welcome to browse through.

  Talamh an Ghlas

  Inishfeirm

  PART ONE

  ACOLYTE

  1

  Fire from the Stones

  RAW power smeared red and purple across the night sky, held captive in the glow of the mage-lights. . . . Jenna raised her right hand, with the stone called Lámh Shábhála clasped in her fist, to the dazzling fury banishing the stars. The radiance snarled about her arm, the painful scars that mottled her skin glowing as she cried out in mingled relief and suffering.

  She felt the man’s presence before she actually saw him, sensed the attack even as the danger arced toward her: a dragon scaled in fiery red and yellow, great wings of leather beating the night sky, its taloned and muscular legs striking for Jenna as it reared back in midair, a long barbed tail lashing like a whip.

  Almost contemptuously, Jenna took a part of the energy in which she was ensnared and sent it toward the dragon. The power smashed into the creature, nearly blinding Jenna with a showering explosion of white and blue. The mage-dragon howled in ag
ony and vanished, but mocking laughter followed its disappearance: baritone, a bit too loud. She lowered her hand and the mage-lights curled reluctantly away into sky, fading. She could see him now, standing not ten strides from her—at the edge of the small courtyard enclosed within the private inner bailey of Dun Kiil Keep. He was a young man, no older than twenty, dressed in a silken, well-made clóca and léine, red-haired and thin of face, with a jewel grasped in his right hand—like Jenna’s own hand, it too was scarred, though lightly, a barely visible marking that stopped at the wrist. She knew him immediately, even though she’d last seen him several years before, when he’d been a pimpled, gawky adolescent: Doyle Mac Ard.

  She wondered how he’d gotten here—to her island, inside her keep, but she refused to let him see that his presence worried her. “Strike him down while you have the chance . . .” the voices of the old Holders within Lámh Shábhála whispered to her, but she ignored them, confronting the intruder with a scowl. “Only a fool would attack the Holder of Lámh Shábhála alone, especially when the mage-lights are out, Doyle.”

  “I’m not a fool,” the man answered. “I was simply announcing my arrival. And you’re as strong as they told me you would be, Sister.”

  “Half sister,” she answered. A sudden, shivering fright came over her—she could think of only one reason why Doyle would appear here to speak with her. “How is Mam?”

  Again, his noisy amusement echoed. “So nice of you to still care. I rather expected an immediate ‘You’re not welcome in Inish Thuaidh, Doyle’ or ‘I’ll kill you the way I killed your da.’ Of course, if you really cared for her, you would have actually come to see her once over the years. I hardly think your occasional letters to her count, though she stopped me when I tried to burn them.”

  Jenna didn’t answer. She longed to justify her absence: I asked her if she would see me in the letters, but she never answered. . . . She waited, and after a moment, Doyle sniffed. She saw the answer to her question in the lines of his face before he even spoke the words. “Mam’s dead. She passed two days ago. I thought I might tell you before you heard from your spies in the Tuatha.”

  “Dead . . .” Jenna didn’t know what to say. “No . . .” Tears started in her eyes, brimming to run down her cheeks. She tried to speak and couldn’t, the sudden grief closing her throat. An image flashed before her: Maeve, as she’d been the day Jenna had found Lámh Shábhála: the age Jenna was now, her hair a satin blackness sparked with wisps of pure white at the temples, and a smile creasing her face. Jenna blinked, and the vision faded. “How?” she asked finally, unable to get out more than the single word.

  “Does it really matter to you? You’re a few decades too late for genuine concern, aren’t you?” Doyle responded. When Jenna just stared at him, he finally shrugged. “She hasn’t been in good health for the last few years, as I’m sure your spies reported back to you, and the last winter was especially hard on her. I assure you that she was always well-cared for by Da’s family. When she was lost in her final madness, they made certain she didn’t hurt herself. I saw her as often as I possibly could, because I loved her and wanted her to know how much I will always be in her debt for having raised me. But I was never the child she most wanted to hear that from. Is that what you wanted to know?” A deliberate hesitation; a half smile. “My dear sister.”

  Jenna stared past him, not allowing any of the pain inside to show on her face. The residue of the mage-lights pounded in her temples, throbbing, and she longed to put a warm cloth over her eyes and take some kala bark to ease the headache. She wanted to be alone to grieve for the mam she remembered. “You sound surprisingly like your da,” she said. “You’re too young to be this cynical.”

  “I’ve had to grow up fast,” he responded.

  “Why are you here, Doyle?”

  “Not how? I’d think you’d worry about me just showing up in Dún Kiil.”

  “I can guess how. The library at Inishfeirm tells of a Cloch Mor—‘Quickship,’ isn’t it?—with the ability to move people to places its holder has been, so one of the Rí Ard’s tiarna must have found that stone and learned how it works.”

  “Indeed.” Doyle gestured mockingly at the high, crenellated walls about them. “Aren’t you glad that it was me who came and not some assassin?”

  The voices grumbled inside her—“. . . kill him . . .”—but she took a calming breath, pushing them back. “Don’t threaten me, Doyle. You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

  Doyle gave her a wide-mouthed look of false astonishment, his empty hands palms out in front of him, then laughed again. “Actually, I think I have a very good idea of what you’re capable of doing. I wouldn’t presume that I have any ability to frighten the Banrion and First Holder. In fact, I’m here to do you a service. I’m here to give fair warning to my kin.” His face went serious then, and he released the jewel he was holding, letting it fall to his breast on its chain. “I’m a man now, sister; a mage of the Order of Gabair and a tiarna in the service of the Rí Ard O Liathain and fully in his confidence.”

  “And also betrothed to Nevan O Liathain’s daughter and to be married to her at the Festival of Fómhar,” Jenna interrupted. “Given a Cloch Mór by the Rí Ard himself. I do hear these things, brother.”

  “Half brother.” Doyle grinned. “I hear things as well. I hear what the Riocha say: about Inishlanders in general and their Banrion in particular. They think you’re arrogant and above yourself; they think you’ve done little or nothing with the power you control; they think you’re mad and dangerous and you hide here like a hermit; and they believe someone more . . . well, deserving should hold Lámh Shábhála.”

  Jenna tightened her fingers around the finger-sized stone in its silver cage. “I know at least some of those you talk about. Then let Nevan O Liathain or any of them try to take Lámh Shábhála from me.” Her voice took on heat now—if she could not let herself grieve, then she’d let anger cover the turmoil inside her. “Perhaps you’d like to bring back your mage-dragon again and make the attempt yourself? I remember Snapdragon—the cloch you now hold—from Dún Kiil. I’ll tell you that it will fare no better now than it did then.”

  Doyle simply shook his head. “We’re not stupid, Jenna. Especially not the Rí Ard. But Dún Kiil was a long time ago, and memories dim and time grows shorter for the ones who were there. We young tiarna don’t remember it at all. Why, I was just a babe suckling at our mam’s breast when you murdered Da.”

  “It wasn’t murder, Doyle,” Jenna snapped. The headache and grief pounded at her skull; her right arm ached as if it were made of glacial ice. “. . . smash him for his arrogance and be done with it . . .”

  “Of course, you wouldn’t call it that. How do you think of it, Jenna? ‘Self-defense?’—no, it couldn’t be that, when you’ve already bragged to me that you don’t consider one piddling Cloch Mór a challenge for Lámh Shábhála. Or was it just a happy accident of some sort, just a twist of unkind fate? What was it you told Mam when you gave her Da’s body? ‘He gave me no choice . . .’ No, there’s no blame on you, sister. There’s no guilt to stain your soul when the Black Haunts come for you.”

  Jenna blinked away the memories. She set her jaw against the pain, both mental and physical. “We can dance with words all night, Doyle. If you wanted to chastise me for my past, you could have done it more easily in a letter. What is it you want?”

  A sniff. “I’m telling you all this, Sister, so that I can go to Mam’s barrow with a clear conscience and tell her that I warned you, that I made the attempt to avoid bloodshed between us. It’s she who has protected you all these years, Jenna. You probably don’t realize that. She told me that she couldn’t bear to see her children fighting each other, so I obeyed her. But she’s gone now. You may be too strong to attack directly, Jenna, but those around you, those you love, aren’t so well protected and to hurt you, someone might decide to go after them. Your enemies might feel they have no other choice. Do you understand what I’m telling you?
”

  The image came to her of her lover Ennis, his throat slit open in front of Jenna as she watched helplessly . . . Jenna closed her eyes against the horrible vision etched forever in her memory, forcing back the hot tears that threatened her again. She took a slow breath and opened her eyes again. “I understand that better than you’ll ever realize,” she told Doyle.

  “Good,” he answered. “Then I’ve done what I came to do. As to what I want . . .” Doyle stared at her, then let his gaze move slowly to her hand, where she clutched Lámh Shábhála. “I want what should have been Da’s in the beginning,” he said quietly. “I want what should have been mine. And I will have it.” His gaze came back to her eyes. His stare was unblinking and steady. “One day, I will have it. And aye, I know what that means.”

  He touched the stone at his chest and Jenna started in alarm. The voices inside Lámh Shábhála screamed at her—“Fool! Kill him now!”—but Doyle didn’t release the power of his cloch nor did the dragon appear. Instead, he was simply gone, soundlessly, as if he had never been there at all.

  Jenna let out her breath in a long, shuddering sigh.

  A garda’s step scrunched on gravel, and Jenna saw a face peering through the garden gate as he called out to her. “Banrion, is everything all right? I thought I heard another voice. . . .”

  “Just a ghost,” she told him. “The air tonight is alive with ghosts.”

  2

  Leaving

  MERIEL’S mam was at the window, staring out toward the cliffs of Croc a Scroilm, the “Hill of Screaming” atop which Dún Kiil Keep sat. “Your daughter’s arrived, Banrion,” the hallway garda announced, allowing Meriel to enter the room and then swiftly closing the door behind her. With the click of the door lock, her mam sighed as if in resignation and turned.