Mage of clouds the cloud.., p.57
Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2), page 57
Torin had heard the tales of his da’s generation, of Jenna Aoire the Mad Holder who would become Banrion MacEagan. His own keep back in Lár Bhaile still bore the scars from the Mad Holder’s flight after she’d killed his mam. He’d heard the older Riocha talk of the Battle of Dun Kiil and the awful destruction the woman had wreaked there. Some of the tales were undoubtedly exaggerations, but some . . .
If even half were true, she would be a formidable opponent, even with the Clochs Mór of the Tuatha arrayed against her. A cold foreboding slithered down his spine.
“She is mad if she believes she can stand alone against us all,” Mas Sithig said. He brought his hand down, the mage-lights trailing away reluctantly. “She’s brought herself to her death, none too soon.” His gaze flicked over Torin, and he saw that despite the Rí’s brave words, the man was as uncertain as Torin. Aye, she’ll fall, almost certainly, but how many of us will she take to the Mother with her? How many of us will she kill before the Black Haunts come for her?
But there was nothing any of them could do. The battle had been brought to them, all unexpected, and they had no choice. “Sound the keep bells,” Mas Sithig told the garda. “Send runners to Overlook Park and alert the troop captains—have the soldiers arm themselves and come here.”
“It’s already done, my Rí,” the garda said. “And I’ve placed a squadron of twenty men outside the courtyard who will remain with you.”
“Then send a runner to Tiarna O Blaca,” Torin told the man. “Tell him to gather the mages of the Order of Gabair and meet us at the Old Wall.”
The garda nodded and rushed off.
“No Holder has ever stood against so many Clochs Mór,” Rí O Seachnasaigh said. His plump face looked almost eager. If he was shocked or upset by the apparent death of Ó Riain, the man he’d championed, the emotion didn’t show. “One of us will hold Lámh Shábhála tonight.”
Those of us who are still alive, Torin thought. “I hope you’re right, Rí O Seachnasaigh. Let’s go, then, and may the Mother go with us,” he said.
He placed the chain of his Cloch Mór around his neck, wondering if he would see the dawn.
They rode into the teeth of a hurricane. They rode into chaos.
Owaine saw the lightning of the clochs and the leaping flames under the swirling mage-lights. He heard the walls tumble and the gardai wail.
By the time Owaine and the others reached North Gate, Jenna had moved deeper into the city. They could heard the sounds of battle; they could feel the tingle of enormous mage-power unleashed; they saw the flashes and forms of the Clochs Mór in battle. Owaine pulled Blaze from under his clóca. Dread sat in his stomach, and worry about Meriel and where she might be tore at him. He gaped at the ruined walls, lit fitfully by the spreading fires in the nearby dwellings and the mage-lights above. The smell of smoke choked him. The scope of the destruction awed him and terrified him at the same time.
The choice before him seemed clear. Jenna may have gone mad, but she was still the Banrion, and the armies that filled this city had come here to take Inish Thuaidh. He was an Inishlander; he knew what he had to do, as did Máister Kirwan.
“We have to help the Banrion,” Mundy said, speaking Owaine’s thoughts. “She can’t hold off all the clochs alone—they’ll kill her. Come on!” He started to ride off, Owaine and Mahon following, but Edana and Doyle sat unmoving on their horses in the midst of the rubble.
“We part ways here,” Edana told them. Ó Her horse stamped nervously. “We were allies against Ó Riain and in recovering Lámh Shábhála. That’s over now, and I won’t save Enean’s killer.” Her face was grim and set.
“You’ll fight with the Tuatha, then?” Mundy asked her. She shrugged. Doyle glared at Owaine silently. Mundy’s face tightened and Owaine thought that the Máister might open his own cloch and attack Edana rather than let her leave. Edana must have felt the same, for her hand went to her breast and she frowned. Doyle, too, reacted, and Owaine put himself between the two.
“Meriel would understand your choice, Bantiarna,” he said. “Go the way you feel you need to go, and I thank you both for the help you’ve given Meriel and me. I only hope we don’t meet again tonight, Edana. We don’t need to be enemies.”
“We don’t get that choice, Inishlander,” Doyle spat back. “Your interests are no longer mine or Edana’s. Not if you intend to help my sister survive her murderous folly.”
Owaine heard the creak of leather and Mahon reached for his sword at the insult to the Banrion, and from the side of his vision he saw the Máister’s hand close about his cloch. “Then we’ll end this here and now,” Mundy said warningly, but Owaine shook his head desperately.
“No, Máister. Please,” he said, but it was already too late. Demon-Caller was open and the mage-creature howled, stamping its feet and shaking the ground. Horses reared, Owaine falling from his mount to land in a bruised heap in the rubble. Arms of light wrapped around the demon from Mundy’s cloch, but the demon laughed and vanished. When Owaine looked, Edana and Doyle had fled into the darkness. Gone. Mundy cursed.
“We can still catch them,” Mahon shouted, his sword out, but Mundy shook his head and pointed to the west and the hills where the Old Wall sheltered the keep. Owaine could see the mage-lights curling there like a brilliant tornado, and as he touched Blaze with his mind, he could feel other Clochs Mór gathering against it. “The Banrion is in battle,” he said. “We can’t wait.”
Mundy nodded. “Then we’ll go to her, and we’ll fight and die like Inishlanders,” he said.
Edana and Doyle hurried their horses up the street to the gate that led through the Old Wall. They moved against a seething flood of Falcarragh’s citizens, all of them rushing away from the center of the battle. On the nearest tower of the Old Wall, Doyle could see Riocha gathered, outlined in the flickering of mage-light. Rí Torin, and Rí Mas Sithig, and . . .
Doyle froze for a moment, then dug his heels into his horse’s ribs, nearly running down the people in front of him, who scattered away as best they could. “Doyle,” Edana called. “Wait!” She hurried in his wake and they forced their way through the gates even as the gardai were trying to shut them. They were inside, and Doyle stared at the tower, outlined against the fierce mage-lights netting the stars.
Tiarna O Blaca was there, and another . . . Doyle could see the bear’s head, silhouetted against the fury of the sky.
“Shay!” Doyle shouted. He let himself half fall from the horse. “Shay! I ask you now!”
O Blaca turned, peering down to where Doyle stood. He seemed to nod, and he lifted his Cloch Mór.
The Toscaire Concordai was suddenly no longer on the tower, but was standing on the ground with his back to Doyle. The man seemed confused and disoriented at the sudden shift of place, his hand lifting with the jewel of Snapdragon.
“Toscaire,” Doyle said softly behind the man. “Remember me?”
Rhusvak’s head started to turn, but Doyle gave the man no chance to react. His dagger slid quickly and deeply along the man’s neck, severing the jugular vein and spattering Doyle in a gout of steaming blood. The bear’s skin slipped from his head; the man’s eyes were wide with fear as he saw Doyle and he clapped his free hand uselessly to his neck as blood continued to pulse from the wound. Doyle tore Snapdragon from the Toscaire’s blood-slick hands.
“This is mine,” he said to the dying man. “Be happy I killed you rather than let you live with the pain I’ve suffered.” He pulled the chain of Weaver from around his neck, tossing Enean’s Cloch Mór to the ground as carelessly as a chicken bone. He put Snapdragon around his neck, exulting at the familiar feel of it. He lifted his hand holding the cloch, his skin and the sleeve of his léine soaked with blood to the elbow. The dragon roared.
He looked at Edana. She was staring at him as if he were a stranger.
“Damn you! Damn you all!”
Jenna had never felt such power arrayed against her. Even at the battle of Dún Kiil, the focus of the clochs had been scattered rather than directed only at her. Here, she was alone and the clochs struck repeatedly at her, again and again, relentless. She was already unhorsed, the animal lying dead and broken in the street behind her. She should have been lying there with it, but the mage-lights were still twisting above her, feeding Lámh Shábhála, and instead she stood and directed her fury at the ramparts of the keep and the Ríthe and cloudmages who stood there with their Clochs Mór. She pulled the power continuously from the sky as they could not, Lámh Shábhála doing what no other cloch could: remaining full even as the other clochs drained themselves of their power.
In her mind, the mages set against her were dark, gibbering demons. They roared at her, their anger joining the wild jabbering of the dead Holders in her head, the crackling of fires, and the din of the various manifestations of the clochs. Wolves howled, a dragon curled in the sky and spat fire, ghostly armies marched and thickets of spears flew through the air between globes of fire. She broke the spears, cast aside the fire, tore the wings from the dragon, and smashed the wolves even as they tore at her.
Already she had defeated half a dozen of the Clochs Mór, a feat no other Holder in her mind had ever accomplished. Already this night would be legendary. She had come alone against impossible odds and she stood unharmed in the midst of carnage.
But slowly, she was flagging, exhausted in body and mind even though berserk mage-power still coursed through her. She could not last forever. She could not stand against them all. A giant fist smashed against the wall she threw up almost too late and Jenna fell to her knees with a cry. The fist rose up again and she dissolved it with a thought, but could not react quickly enough to the red flare of lightning that reached her. She screamed, walling herself inside Lámh Shábhála, wrapping herself in mage-light so the next stroke broke, as did a flight of glowing arrows that followed. She hurled back the gardai—clochless—who rushed her as one, screaming their battle cry, crushing the squadron of soldiers against the Old Wall and then tearing it down to bury them. She heard their wails as they died.
She had killed so many this night: hundreds already. What did a few more matter? She laughed her bitter, mirthless laugh.
The Clochs Mór regrouped and came at her again, striking her from all sides at once. Jenna couldn’t contain them all, couldn’t put her attention everywhere. She tried to imagine a black, thick wall around herself, but they tore at it and she couldn’t put it back up all at once. There were a dozen Clochs Mór attacking now, and several clochmions also, buzzing about like stinging, angry insects.
The ancient Holders’ voices in her head whispered warnings, but there was also admiration in them.
“. . . this is far more than any of us could have held off.”
“You wield Lámh Shábhála so well, better than nearly any of us . . .”
“But you’ll still die. You’ll be with us . . .”
“No!” she shouted at them, all of them. The anger filled her, a blinding blood-red that soaked the world around her in its color. She concentrated, sent Lámh Shábhála’s energy out to where most of the Clochs Mór were grouped, and felt at least two more of them go down, the images vanishing in her cloch-sight. “No!” But there were still the others, and they followed her back through the hole in the wall she’d made with her counterstroke. Ghostly spears impaled her; gaping, white-toothed jaws tore at her; lines of energy wrapped around her.
And then: a new Cloch Mór, or rather, a new mage holding it: a gold-and-red dragon appeared in front of her. “Hello, Sister,” the dragon said, and struck. The hideous mouth she pushed aside before it closed around her, but the tail, whipping around, struck her hard. She felt ribs break in her chest.
Jenna went to her knees. The mage-lights swam above her, milky and furious.
“No!” she shouted again, but this time it was a shriek of pure agony, and she knew she was lost. “Damn you, Doyle!”
“Has Bradán an Chumhacht given you a vision of what’s to happen?” Meriel asked Dhegli as they swam toward Falcarragh.
“Aye,” he’d answered. “It has . . .” But he would not tell her what he had seen.
The surface of the water, above them, was bright with the colors of fire and blood, of ice and snow. Dhegli, swimming alongside Meriel, his flippers brushing her side, lifted his snout toward it. “The sky burns tonight as it never has,” he said in awe. “Your mam draws it all down.”
The pod of Saimhóir had entered Falcarragh Harbor, swimming quickly close by the island of East Light and slipping near to the quays. Around them, even in the blackness of the water, she could sense the barnacled hulls of warships and the long chains of their anchors. The seals moved among them, unseen. Challa hovered near the two of them, and her gaze was not friendly.
Meriel could feel the power of the mage-lights also—Treoraí’s Heart was a white-hot ember against her fur, and through it, she could sense the searing pinpoint that was Lámh Shábhála, crowded around by other clochs, all of them arrayed against her mam. The battle had begun, and Meriel knew her mam could not defeat them all. Already, Treoraí’s Heart told her, Jenna was injured and in pain. “Dhegli, my mam . . .”
“I know,” he said. “We need a diversion that will take the attention of some of the clochs.” He swam away, the Saimhóir surfacing as one and she heard his whistling, barking voice speaking to the others. The seals ducked below water again as Dhegli came over to Meriel. His flipper touched her. “Watch!” he said, his muzzle pointing to a warship moored at the Harbor Quay, flying the Rí Ard’s colors.
Foaming water erupted around its waterline, and there was a sudden, gaping hole in the wooden hull through which water was rushing. The boat heeled over, sailors shouting alarm on the deck, the masts and lines creaking and snapping, the pier itself shuddering. Lanterns swayed as men looked over the railing at the water and the crippled boat, then there was a great splash near another boat anchored out in the bay, and it, too, began to slowly founder. There were shouts of alarm all around them. Somewhere close by, mage-light flickered and a ball of light rushed past them, falling into the water with an explosion and the sound of hissing steam.
“There,” Dhegli said. “The Saimhoir will take away the attention of at least a few of the Clochs Mór. Now—you and I go to the First Holder.” He slipped away before she could say anything, moving quickly to the shore. Meriel hurried after him, hauling herself out awkwardly. He was already changing: a naked, dripping man pushing himself up from the mud. A moment later she stood beside him, equally bare but for the gleaming chain holding Treoraí’s Heart.
The city was on fire and they could see the shadows of people running through the smoke and haze and mage-lights. They could hear shouting, and the crackling of mage-power. “Hurry!” Meriel said to Dhegli. “We need to find her!”
The dragon that was Doyle coiled above Jenna, leering. The mouth gaped open as the forms of the other Clochs Mór gathered around. Jenna yanked at the tendrils of the mage-lights in her mind, sucking down the energy, but the dragon moved and she saw death snaking toward her.
Before Doyle could strike, blue-green ropes wrapped themselves around the dragon’s throat, holding the creature for a moment before it snapped them like threads. But then red lightning erupted against its scaled chest, driving Doyle back and away from Jenna. She knew that energy, knew it very well—it had come to her aid before: the Cloch Mór Blaze. “Ennis?” she whispered, a faint hope arising in her. “Oh, Ennis, is that you?”
She followed the trace of Blaze’s power back to its source, looking with the eyes of her cloch-sight, and she saw that it was not Ennis but some young man. She stared at him, uncomprehendingly. Owaine . . . The name came to her as if through some dim memory. For a moment, the red haze about her died, the wild madness receding. Where is Meriel, then . . . “Oh, Mother,” she whispered. “What have I—”
The Clochs Mór gave her no rest. Snapdragon was back, and Edana with Demon-Caller was with him, and the clochs of the Ríthe . . . They came at her again and the mad blood-mist returned, obliterating thoughts of Meriel. She was the Holder—that was all. The Holder . . . There was nothing more.
Jenna pulled at the mage-lights with Lámh Shábhála in furious desperation, pushing herself to her feet again. She could feel Blaze moving to her flank, and Mundy’s cloch also. Briefly, she allowed herself to feel some hope.
Jenna raged. She tore at the Old Wall and the base of the Ríthe’s tower, and great boulders flew. Two more of the Clochs Mór went silent as the Ríthe and mages gathered there fled for more stable ground. Jenna seized the opportunity—in her cloch-vision, she found Doyle and locked Lámh Shábhála’s energy around him. She could see his face, straining with the effort of trying to escape her. The mage-demon howled and charged at her, but Jenna threw the beast aside contemptuously. “Brother,” she said. “You’ve lost a battle with me for the last time. You are your da’s son, and I hated that man as much as I loved our mam.”
The dragon wriggled in her deadly, tightening embrace as Doyle grimaced, his mouth shut as muscles jumped at his jawline. She watched his struggle, almost lovingly, ignoring everything else but his face. She tightened her hold, then released it slightly. “Scream,” she crooned to him. “I want to hear you scream first.”
“. . . aye, that is what I’d do . . .”
“. . . is insanity. She’s lost herself.
“Jenna! You must let the madness go . . .” That was Riata’s voice, the whisper of the ancient Bunús Muintir Holder.
“Be silent!” she shouted back at the ghost.
He would not. “Your madness blinds you . . .”
He was right, she realized belatedly. She’d given the other Clochs Mór time to regroup, and they came at her again. She could feel Owaine and Mundy at her back, protecting her, but they could only deal with one or two foes at a time, and there were too many. Too many.
The assault tore Jenna away from the dragon, which hissed in both frustration and relief. She batted at them, clutching at the zenith with ethereal fingers and tearing at the mage-lights there, throwing the energy at her enemies wildly, not caring who she struck or how.
