Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2), page 19
Sevei did that, and more. Meriel was quickly introduced to the routines of the Taisteal—preparing the stirabout for the clan, taking care of the children, striking the camp and packing everything in the wagons, feeding and caring for the horses that drew them, and in between it all taking care of her own needs. Sevei was never more than a stride or two from her, and every time that Meriel stole a glance to see if the woman was watching, she met dark eyes and an amused smirk. A stripe later, the caravan was lurching slowly down the road, heading farther inland with pots and pans jingling as the wagons bumped and swayed.
For most of the day, Foraois Coill stayed close at their right hand, then as the afternoon shadows started to lengthen, the ranks of twisted, old oaks curved away from the road until the wood was a dark line to the south. The road stayed near the higher hills to the north, moving along at the feet of long, steep slopes blanketed by heather and stands of maple and fir. Bogs sat steaming in the hollows.
After several stripes of travel, they moved into land that was recognizably inhabited. Occasional flocks of sheep watched them pass, their woolen flanks splotched with patches of pale blue or red that marked them for their owners. Low drystone fences defined fields where farmers labored, and here and there were dirt lanes leading from the road back to one-room, thatched cottages. Sometimes, someone would lean against the fence and watch them pass. Meriel could see their faces; streaked with dirt, browned and leathery with the sun: plain faces well-marked by their labor. “That’s the look of the true people,” Sevei said to Meriel as they passed a woman, clutching one child to her breast with another hanging snotty-nosed at her ragged, torn cloak. “The Riocha in their stone cities never think of the thousands out here who spin their fine cloth and grow their food, who bring in the lumber and cut the stone, who do all the work that makes it possible for the Riocha to live as they do. It doesn’t matter to them who sits on the throne—their lives won’t change. Their lives never change.”
Meriel glanced back over the side of the wagon at the woman. She’d turned away as the child coughed, a phlegm-rattled rack, her thin chest heaving. The woman stroked the child’s matted curls of red much the color of Meriel’s, crooning gently to her.
Meriel touched the cloch hidden under her clothing as the woman and her children slowly receded behind them. She could feel the warmth of its power, tingling in her fingers.
When she turned back to look at the road ahead, she felt Sevei watching her.
By the time the sun had dropped two fingers in the sky, they came across a village at a small crossing where another road wandered in from the northern hills and drifted out toward the now-unseen Foraois Coill. There were no signs, no posting—Meriel knew she would have been one of the few who could have read them, even if there had been. At Nico’s call, a man herding a small flock of sheep with his dog told them that this was Ballicraigh, that the Ald for the village was Toma Macsnei, and that they’d best put the wagons on the Eastlawn, a small field just past the inn.
Ballicraigh seemed to consist of less than a dozen buildings: a ramshackle inn, a mill alongside a quick-running stream, a smithy, a Draíodóir’s hut with the Mother’s circle painted above the door. There was a tanner somewhere near; Meriel could smell the ripe odor of dead animals. They were immediately noticed: small clots of children ran around their wagons and adult faces peered at them from windows or watched from open doorways. By the time they pulled into the Eastlawn, a gray-haired woman was striding purposefully toward them on the arm of a someone who might have been her daughter, an oaken stick held in one gnarled hand stabbing the earth.
“Here we go,” Sevei whispered to Meriel. “There’s always a bribe or two to pay.”
“Aldwoman Macsnei!” Nico called out as if he’d known her all his life, hopping down from his seat on the wagon. “Clan Dranaghi is pleased to be welcomed here. I am Clannhri Nico.”
The woman sniffed. She grinned, showing the few teeth remaining in her mouth. “Well, Clannhri Nico,” she said, “I hope you’re better than the last group of Taisteal who came through here. I gave them five crocks of my best honey for a cook pot, and the handle fell off not two hands of days after they left.”
Nice’s face stretched in almost comic horror, as he placed a hand at his breast. “Aldwoman, I am appalled. A few, a very few, of the clans . . . well, they are just not to be trusted. Perhaps the pot you purchased came from Inish Thuaidh; the workmanship there is so poor, as you know. I assure you that what we have is only the finest, the best . . .”
Aldwoman Macsnei waved a hand. “I’m sure, I’m sure,” she said in a tone that indicated the opposite. “Your wares have had slow magics of metal chanted over them as they’re made. They’ve been certified by the twelve Great Mages of Thall-Mór-roinn and will never rust or leak. I’ve heard all the fanciful Taisteal guarantees that mean nothing. Spare your breath.”
Nico gestured to Sevei, who rummaged about in the back of their wagon for a moment, then brought out a small hammered copper cook pot. She gave it to Nico, who presented it to Aldwoman Macsnei. “Ald-woman, let me give you this as a token of goodwill, and a small repayment for your troubles.”
The Aldwoman took the pot, turning it over in her hands and tapping it with the head of her walking stick as her daughter steadied her and the metal rang like a gong. She tugged at the handle, then shrugged, handing the pot to her daughter. “You’ll stay on the Eastlawn while you’re here,” she said. “I don’t want any of you Taisteal wandering about stealing things. I’ll call out the village gardai the first I hear of any trouble. If we find any of your men with our young women, I won’t be responsible for the reaction. Do we understand each other?”
“We understand each other perfectly, Aldwoman. Thank you for welcoming us to Ballicraigh.”
Aldwoman Macsnei grimaced sourly, sniffed, and spat, and waved her hand again. She started walking away, and Sevei nudged Meriel. “Time to work,” she said. “Stay with me, and don’t talk to the villagers unless they talk directly to you, and even then watch what you say. Nico wasn’t joking about what he’d do to you if you try to make contact with one of them or escape. You don’t want to be treated like a wild animal. Stay near me, and keep your mouth shut.”
The clan quickly unloaded tents and set up the camp as a few of the villagers started drifting out toward the meadow. The wares the Taisteal sold were as varied as their travels, as Meriel knew from the clan who had visited Dún Kiil. They were traders and barterers, crafts-folk and entertainers. There were the usual pots and pans showing a variety of origins and styles; blankets, clothing, and bolts of woolen cloth, some with geometric designs that spoke to Meriel of foreign hands and minds; exotic spices and flavorings; powders and elixirs interred in clay jars stoppered with wax and marked with unfamiliar symbols; jewelry that glittered and sparked on scraps of dark cloth, with stones of dubious origin hanging from silver and brass links or plain thread. The Taisteal would accept coins as payment if they had to, but they preferred barter: new-baked bread; the local honey; suckling pigs, chickens, or even the occasional sheep; grains and cereals; the work of a local potter that they could sell elsewhere—all the niceties that an itinerant lifestyle couldn’t provide.
Meriel realized quickly that the Taisteal also provided another commodity: news. In a land where most people lived their entire lives within walking distance of the place they were born, the Taisteal and other travelers along the roads provided the link with the greater world, and news now months old would be listened to with eager ears. If the Taisteal embellished it or twisted it to the advantage of the listener, so much the better.
Each of the clan members had their role to play in the economic dance. Meriel found that Sevei was, among other things, the Teller of Fortunes, and Cailin/Meriel was now to be her silent assistant. In their tent, they set up a small table draped with bright gauze with two rickety chairs, and lit racks of thick scented candles so that the tent’s interior glowed with warm, shifting light. Sevei produced a small wooden box and set it on the table. Lifting the lid, she let Meriel glance inside at the rectangles of thick, oiled paper. The cards were brightly colored and much-handled, the paper soft around the edges and covered with strangely-dressed figures and fanciful creatures. There were numbers in the corner of each card. “The cards came from Thall Mór-roinn, and were my mam’s and great-mam’s before me,” Sevei said in answer to Meriel’s unasked question. “There’s a true power in them, whether you believe that or not, and they tell me what to say. That, and what I see in the person before me.”
Despite herself, Meriel found her interest drawn to Sevei’s routine and soon developed a grudging admiration for the woman’s skill. The first person to come into the tent was a young woman of the village, who wanted to know about her future love life. Meriel listened, marveling as Sevei teased hints from the woman about her expectations and experiences and wove them all into a tale suggested by the fall of the dog-eared cards, their placement and arrangement. Sevei watched the woman closely, and Meriel realized that Sevei fine-tuned her words by the body language and facial expressions she saw. The performance was impeccable, and the woman left marveling at the cards’ ability to see her life and predict its future course.
“The power’s in you, not the cards,” Meriel said after the woman had left. Sevei lifted one shoulder as she shuffled the cards.
“Just now it was,” she answered. “I simply told her what she already knew and what she wanted to hear. It’s easy once you’ve mastered the knack of reading the person across from you. Watch me, and in a moon’s time or less you can take a turn at it. Now—go let the next one in.”
For the next few stripes, Meriel witnessed a slow procession of people coming through the tent. There was the grieving mam who was distraught over the fate of her son, who had been conscripted by the Rí Infochla’s gardai six summers before and had never returned; the farmer who wanted to know if the blight would hurt his barley crop again this year and how he might prevent it (the latter answer involved sending him to Nico for a potion to sprinkle in his fields); the couple who asked if Sevei could tell them whether they would remain childless (yet another potion, this time provided by Nico’s wife); the coincidental series of three men in a row, each of whom asked whether his wife was being faithful—which made Meriel curious to know if they’d managed to cuckold each other. “Is there anyone else out there?” Sevei asked after the last of the husbands had departed, smug with the knowledge that his wife had kept her vow.
Meriel started to the tent flap, but before she could reach it a hand slid the cloth aside. The face of the woman who entered gave Meriel a start of recognition: she was the mam they’d passed on the way into Ballicraigh. Her children were still with her: the babe in arms, now sleeping in a folded shawl sling wrapped over one shoulder, the redheaded one clinging shyly to her mam’s clothing. In the candlelight, Meriel could see the hollowness of the child’s eye sockets, the dark pouch of flesh hanging under them, the distended, swollen belly and crusted sores covering her lips and nostrils. The child wheezed as she breathed, her breath rattling in her lungs. The woman hesitated, as if unsure if she should be here, and started to turn away.
“What do you want to know, good lady?” Sevei called to her softly. She tapped the cards on the table. “I have the answers to your life here. You could know what the future holds for you for just a few coppers, or perhaps something you have to trade . . . ?”
The woman smiled, shaking her head.
“Nothing?” Sevei urged. “Some bauble that isn’t important to you, a trinket, perhaps a single coin. It needn’t be much.” Her eyes were on the woman’s wrist, where a half-dozen or so small coins hung from a bracelet of twisted string.
“I shouldn’t,” the woman answered. A thin hand twisted the coin bracelet around her wrist. “Though I wish—”
The red-haired girl coughed, a chest-racking paroxysm that left her gasping for breath. They all watched, the mam holding her concern in her face. “You want to know how it will be with your daughter,” Sevei said. “That’s the question you’ve brought to me. That’s what you most want to know.”
A nod.
“One coin,” Sevei told her. “The smallest one you have. That’s all I ask for the answer to that question.” A moment’s hesitation: then the woman untied the string and slid one of the coins from it. She placed it on the table and retied the string as Sevei took up the cards and gestured to the chair in front of her. She began laying out the array.
“This is very odd,” Sevei said, staring at the cards. She seemed genuinely shocked as she touched the cards with her fingertips, so different from the way she’d been all night that Meriel’s gaze went away from the little girl to Sevei. “Very odd, indeed . . .” but another cough took Meriel’s attention away again.
Meriel crouched down next to the girl. The child was wheezing badly, her chest moving rapidly. Meriel could smell the sickness on her breath and hear the rot in her lungs. The girl stared at her, venturing the smallest of shy smiles between the labored breaths. Meriel crouched down in front of her as Sevei laid down the last card and started giving the tale of the cards. The girl coughed again, a sound full of liquid and exhaustion. Blood flecked her lips when she looked at Meriel again. “Here,” Meriel whispered, and she reached out with the end of her sleeve to brush at the girl’s lips.
The cloch throbbed at Meriel’s breast. She touched it under her tunic, unthinkingly, and the power within it slipped out: burning, rushing through Meriel’s body to the point of contact with the girl and inside. Meriel gasped as a crushing weight slammed down hard upon her chest and her lungs seemed to fill with water. She was suffocating, feeling as if she were drowning from the inside. She tried to take a breath, and the effort made her cough, and the cough sent splinters of bone stabbing through her chest, skewering her. Meriel moaned, eyes wide in fright as she stared into the equally wide eyes of the little girl.
. . . so tired, but Mam made me walk here and my chest hurts so much but I like the colors of the Taisteal’s clothes . . . the lady has pretty hair Mam says that I’ll have pretty hair one day if the Mother-Creator doesn’t take me back the coughing hurts so much . . .
Then Meriel’s vision shifted, as if she were falling rapidly toward and through the girl. A red-imbued, nightmare landscape was all around her and the sound of a breath bellowed in her ears. Around her, there were clots of white, writhing fibers wrapped around scarlet nodules, and the power of the cloch went to each of them, searing the white to nothingness. Meriel felt each flare of power within her own chest. She screamed.
She pulled her hand away from the girl as if she’d touched a stewpot hung over a fire; she fell to the ground, and the girl tumbled in the other direction. “Cailin, what’s wrong?” she heard Sevei shouting, dimly, and heard the cry of the girl’s mam.
Her breath coming hard and fast, Meriel let go of the stone. The pain receded; the weight on her chest lightened and vanished, but the memory stayed. Of being inside the child. Of being the child. Áine—that was my name. I was Áine.
“Cailin?”
Meriel shook her head and pushed herself up, standing shakily. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just . . . leave me alone a moment.”
The woman had picked up her child. “Mam, I can breathe,” the girl said wonderingly. She pointed at Meriel. “That lady took the hurt away.” She laughed and took a comically deep breath with her mouth wide. “See, Mam?”
The mam sobbed once, a great heaving cry as she hugged the girl tightly. They were all staring at Meriel.
It was Sevei who broke the silence. “You see the answer here,” she said, her forefinger stabbing one the cards, where a red-haired woman walked along the edge of a cliff, holding an oaken branch toward the sun. “That card’s called the Healer. And there, next to it, that’s the card of the Mother-Creator, and beside it, the Gifting Hand. That tells all: Cailin’s mam was gifted with the Healing Touch by the Mother-Creator, as was her great-mam before her. We have always wondered whether the Mother-Creator would give Cailin the Touch also.” Sevei’s gaze flicked over to Meriel; a glare that dared her to contradict. “It seems She finally has.”
“Is it true?” The hope and need to believe in the woman’s eyes was frightening to Meriel. The infant in the sling was crying. “Áine’s not going to die?”
Meriel’s hands were still shaking, and flashes of the awful sickness in the girl’s lungs kept returning. “No,” Meriel answered, realizing that they were all waiting for her to speak. “No, Áine’s not going to die. I see a long life for her.”
The woman gave a choking, abrupt sob, tightening her arms around her daughter. “Mam, you’re crushing me!” Áine said, and the woman laughed and cried at the same time as she released her, twin tears tracking down her cheeks. She pulled the coin bracelet from her wrist and placed it on the table atop the cards.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you both.”
“You don’t—” Meriel started to say, but Sevei’s hands had already clapped down on top of the coins.
“It’s the favor of the Mother-Creator,” Sevei said. “She has blessed Cailin, and Cailin has, in turn, given the blessing to Áine. Go on your way now,” she continued. “Look at poor Cailin; the effort has tired her and she must rest now.”
With profuse thanks, the trio left, Áine laughing and scampering ahead of her mam. When the tent flap fell back behind them, Sevei hurried over to it and tied it shut, dismissing the man who was waiting outside for his fortune to be told. Arms crossed, head tilted, she regarded Meriel. “You realize that the story’s going to be all over this village in the next stripe or less,” she said finally. “The girl’s cured? Truly?”
“Aye,” Meriel answered quietly, eyes downcast. “I think so, anyway. I don’t really know.”
“The clochmion?”
