woman’s face was hurt and angry. Meriel had seen that look many times before. Too many times.
Áine came back into the room as Meriel turned to Marta. “The Heart will bring Cristóir back to you,” she said.
The woman nodded, silent, her eyes shining, biting at her lower lip as if to stop from crying.
Meriel took Treoraí’s Heart in her hand again, kneeling alongside Cristóir’s litter and placing her free hand on his chest. Again the pain and madness and screaming rushed at her, slamming into her like a gigantic sea wave, threatening to pull her under and drown her. Meriel fought to hold onto herself as Cristóir’s world merged with hers. . . . let me die let me die . . . Despair was sickly pus yellow; pain was fiery red. The colors lanced into her and she heard herself screaming as one with Cristóir. The part of her that was Meriel responded: this time she allowed the energy to flow out unrestrained from the cloch and she directed its path—where she let the power touch, the red heat subsided to yellow, fading through pale green, then blue to white before the false colors faded entirely. She took the broken bones in her mind, let Treoraí’s Heart knit them back together whole and smooth. She closed the wounds inside him and healed them. She salved the bruises and repaired the torn muscles and tendons.
She felt herself shudder as Cristóir’s eyes flew open, as the haze of pain receded like a morning fog. “Marta?” he said through dry and cracked lips, and Meriel spoke the woman’s name at the same time.
“Banrion Ard,” she heard Áine say as if from some great and vast distance. “It’s done. You may come back now.” Meriel sighed, letting her fingers relax around Treoraí’s Heart. The mage-scars stood out prominently on her hand and arm, pure white and raised. As the cloch dropped from her grasp, the sense of being two people fell away, the shock of the release causing her to reel backward in Áine’s waiting arms. The Hand helped Meriel to her feet as the final vestiges of Cristóir’s thoughts fell away from her. Cristóir was sitting up on his litter, Marta crying on her knees alongside him as they embraced each other, and the two cousins were gaping in wonder at the scene. Meriel’s left hand throbbed and ached, and she flexed stiff fingers, her whole arm trembling from the exertion of being a conduit for the mage-forces held within the now-emptied Treoraí’s Heart.
Someone cleared their throat near the door, and Meriel saw one of the pages for the keep standing there, his head discreetly lowered so his gaze was on the brightly-tiled floor. “Aye?” she asked the boy, and his head lifted.
“Banrion Ard, the Banrion Mac Ard asks that you meet with her,” the page said. His gaze flicked once over to Cristóir and Marta, still embracing tearfully without seeming to notice the others. Meriel grinned at Áine. “A good choice, I hope,” Meriel said, and Áine smiled briefly. “Escort the Banrion to the south porch,” Meriel told the page. “Tell her that I’ll be there directly.”
“Have you heard recently from the twins or Owaine?”
With the question, Meriel smiled. “Aye, all of them,” she said. “Sevei’s doing well at Inishfeirm, or so Máister Kirwan tells me. He thinks she might be ready for a cloch na thintrí of her own. Sevei wrote me a letter herself—she evidently has a beau there, someone named Dillon—one of the Ó’Baoill clan. She’ll be coming back here with her gram, though she doesn’t know it yet. And Owaine sent a message bird that arrived yesterday. He and Kayne should already have passed the Bunús Wall. I’ll be glad to have them home again, finally, also. And safe, thank the Mother.”
Edana, seated across a small table from Meriel, smiled in return. Meriel’s hand, cupped now around a mug of kala bark tea, still ached from using Treoraí’s Heart; Edana’s hand stretched over the linen to touch Meriel’s in mute sympathy. The