Free Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) by S. L. Farrell

awareness drift upward through the mage-lights and outward, searching. She could feel Jenna with Lámh Shábhála—still far distant, her great cloch sucking greedily at the power above. Meriel let her mind drift eastward and smiled. Aye, there was Owaine with Blaze, and closer than she could have hoped. She felt the touch of his mind through the mage-lights, faintly, and for a moment the image of his face came to her. My love, she thought, wishing he could hear the words, wishing she could hear him . . .
    “Look, Mam—over there at the other tower.”
    Treoraí’s Heart was nearly full now. Meriel opened her eyes, allowing herself to withdraw from the cloch-sight. Ennis was pointing to where two more tendrils of mage-light snaked down to a balcony on the tower across the courtyard, snarling and fuming around each other. The mage-lights there were exceptionally luminous, far brighter than the remaining sunset glow, and Meriel knew they replenished Clochs Mór. One of the clochs would be Demon-Caller, held by Edana as the Banrion Dún Laoghaire. The second cloch with Edana must be Snapdragon in the hands of her husband Doyle. Her husband . . . Meriel always thought of Doyle that way: as Edana’s husband, not as Meriel’s half uncle—the latter wasn’t a relationship she cared to contemplate often. So Doyle had returned from the Order of Gabair in Lár Bhaile.
    “That’s Auntie Edana and Uncle Doyle,” Ennis burst out with the same realization. “Can we see Auntie Edana tomorrow, Mam? She promised me that Enean would show me what his Weapons Máister has been teaching him.” Ennis clenched both hands around the hilt of an imaginary sword and chopped earnestly at a foe only he could see.
    “You’re too young for that yet,” Meriel told him.
    “The blue ghosts show me that I’ll need to know how to fight,” Ennis replied.
    Meriel frowned at that— blue ghosts again —but Ennis pouted, his lower lip sticking out dramatically, and she finally had to laugh. “All right, I’ll have Isibéal take you over there tomorrow, if you like. But you mustn’t bother Enean if he’s busy with his studies or doesn’t want to see you. He’s a young man now, not a child.”
    “He’s not as old as Kayne,” Ennis insisted. “He still plays with me. Well, sometimes. Not as often as he used to,” he amended. Always serious. Always wanting to be right . . .
    “That’s good. But still . . .”
    The door to Meriel’s bedchamber opened and Isibéal peered in, her gray-streaked black hair caught in a colorful scarf. “Isibéal,” Meriel said, waving to her. “Please, come out here.”
    The Taisteal woman nodded, moving with unconscious grace and ease across the bedchamber toward the balcony. She stopped at the open doors and gazed up at the fading mage-lights. Her eyes, even in the starlight, were an odd light blue in her dusky face. “I came for Ennis, Banrion Ard,” she said. “It’s time he finished his studies for the day and then got to bed. I hated to bother you, but the hall garda said the boy was with you . . .”
    “Thank you, Isibéal. You’re right, of course. Ennis . . .”
    “Mam!” Ennis protested automatically, but Isibéal laughed and took three lithe and quick steps onto the balcony, sweeping the child up in her arms and spinning him around twice so that he finally laughed and squealed in delight. Meriel noted that Isibéal’s feet, as always, were bare.
    “It’s how I grew up,” she’d said to Meriel when they’d first met. “My soul feels trapped when my feet are all bound in leather.” Meriel had found herself more interested in the woman’s Taisteal background, remembering her own times with the itinerant folk. “ My father was some handsome, smooth-talking clan wanderer, who came to my mam’s village and left a day or two later. One of the things he left behind was me in her belly, and I think I have more of him in me than her . . .”
    Isibéal had been sent by the