Holder of Lightning (11 page)

“No, not forgotten,” Jenna answered, thinking that it might be best to mollify the spirit.
After all, Tiarna Mac Ard had known of him.

“Ahh . . .” it sighed. A hand stretched out toward Jenna, and she forced herself to stand still. She could feel the chill of its touch, like ice on her forehead and cheek, then the hand cupped hers and Jenna let her fingers relax. In her palm, the stone shot light back to the glowing sky. “So young you are, to be holding a cloch na thintrí, especially this one. But I was young, as well, the first time I held it . . .”

“
This
one?” Jenna asked. “How . . . ?”

“Follow me,” it said. Its hand beckoned, and from fingertips to elbow the arm seemed to reflect the intricate curls and flourishes of the lights above, as if the patterns had been carved into the limb. The phantom glided backward into Riata’s tomb, its cold touch fading.

“I can’t,” Jenna responded, holding back from the yawning mouth of the barrow. She glanced up at the lights playing over the valley, at the stone in her hand.

“You must,” Riata replied. “The mage-lights will wait for you.” Then the presence was gone, and nothing stood in front of the passage. “Come . . .” whispered the voice faintly, from nowhere and everywhere.

Jenna took a step toward the barrow, then another. She put her hand on the stone lintels of the opening: they were carved with swirls and eddies not unlike the display in the sky above and on Riata’s arm, along with lozenges and circles and other carved symbols. She traced them with her fingers, then walked into the passage itself. Darkness surrounded her immediately and Jenna almost fled back outside, but as her eyes slowly adjusted, she could see in the illumination of the mage-lights and the answering glow from the cloch na thintrí that the walls were drystone, covered with plaster that was now broken and shattered, the stones piled to just above the height of her head and capped with flat rocks. The passage into the burial chamber was short but claustrophobic. The walls leaned in, so that while two people could have knelt side by side at the bottom, only one standing person could walk down the corridor at a time. Once, the walls must have been decorated—there were flecks of colored pigment clinging to the plaster and her touch caused more of the ancient paintings to crumble and fall away. Here and there were larger patches where she could see traces of what, centuries ago, must have been a mural. Jenna was glad to finally reach the relative spaciousness of the burial chamber. She glanced back: through the passage, she could see the dolmen awash in the brilliant fireworks of the mage-lights.

The burial chamber itself had been constructed with five huge stones, forming the sides and roof. The air was musty and stale, and the room dim, touched only by the reflec tions of the lights, the cloch na thintrí’s illumination. At the center of the room was a large, chiseled block of granite, and set there was a pottery urn, glazed with the same swirls and curved lines carved on the lintel stones. Around the urn were beads and pieces of jewelry, torcs of gold and braided silver that glistened in the moving radiance. Clothing had once lain here as well; she could see moldering scraps of brightly-dyed cloth. These had been funeral gifts, obviously, and the urn undoubtedly held the ashes and bones of Riata. But his specter had vanished.

“Hello?” she called.

Air moved, her hair lifting, and she felt a touch on her shoulder. Jenna cried out, frightened, and the sound rang in the chamber, reverberating. She dropped the cloch na thintrí, and as she started to reach for it, the pebble rose from the floor, picked up by a hand that was barely visible in the stone’s glow.

“Aye,” Riata’s voice said in her head, full of satisfaction, the tones dark and low. “ ’Tis true. This was once mine.” Pale light stroked the lines of his spectral face, sparking in the deep hollows where the eyes should have been. His voice seemed more ominous, touched with hostility. “Or more truthfully, I once belonged to it. Until it was stolen from me and found its way to another.”

“I didn’t steal it,” Jenna protested, shrinking back against the wall as the shadowy form of Riata seemed to loom larger in front of her. “I found it on the hill near my home, the first time the mage-lights came. I didn’t know it was yours; I never even knew of you. Besides, it’s only a little stone. It can’t be very powerful.”

Cold laughter rippled the dead air of the tomb, and the stench of death wafted over Jenna, making her wrinkle her nose and turn her face away. “I don’t accuse
you
of stealing it,” Riata’s voice boomed. “This cloch na thintrí has owned many in its time and will own many more. Dávali had it before me, and Óengus before him, and so on, back into the eldest times. And it may be little, but of all the clochs na thintrí, it is the most powerful.”

“It can’t be,” Jenna protested. “Tiarna Mac Ard . . . he would have said . . .”
Or he didn’t know,
she suddenly realized. She wondered if he would have handed it back to her, if he had.

“Then this tiarna knows nothing. This cloch even has a name it calls itself: Lámh Shábhála, the Safekeeping. The cloch was placed here when I died, on the offering stone you see in front of you. And it was taken over a thousand long years ago—I felt its loss even in death, though I didn’t have strength then to rise. For hands upon hands upon hands of years I slumbered. Once, centuries ago, the lights came again to wake me and I could feel that Lámh Sháb hála was alive with the mage-lights once more. I called out to Lámh Shábhála and its holder, but no one answered or they were too far away to hear me. With the mage-light’s strength, I was able to rise and walk here among the tombs when the mage-lights filled the sky, but few came to this place, and though they were Bunús Muintir, they appeared to be poor and savage, and seemed frightened of me. None of them knew the magic of the sky. I realized then that my people had declined and no longer ruled this land. But someone held Lámh Shábhála, or the lights could not have returned. For unending years I called, every night the lights shone. Then, as they have before, the mage-lights died again, and I slept once more.” The shape that was Riata drew itself close to her. “Until now,” he said. “When the mage-lights have awakened again.”

“Then take the stone,” Jenna said. “It’s yours. Keep it. I don’t want it.”

Riata laughed again at that. “Lámh Shábhála isn’t mine, nor yours. Lámh Shábhála is its own. I knew it wanted me to pass it on as it had been passed to me. I could feel its desire even though the mage-lights had stopped coming a dozen years before I became sick with my last illness, but I held onto it. There were no more cloudmages left, only people with dead stones around their necks and empty skies above. I believed my cloch to be as dead as theirs; in fact, I prayed that it was so. I should have known it wasn’t. Lámh Shábhála is First and Last.” The voice was nearly a hiss. “And a curse to its Holder, as I know too well, especially the one who is to be First.”

The stone hung in the air in front of Jenna, held in invisi ble fingers. “Take Lámh Shábhála,” Riata said. “I pass it to you, Jenna of the Daoine, as I should have passed it long ago. You are the new First Holder.”

Jenna shook her head, now more afraid of the stone than of the ghost. Yet her hand reached out, unbidden, and took the cloch from the air. She fisted her hand around the cold smoothness as Riata’s laughter echoed in her head.

“Aye, you see? You shake your head, but the desire is there, whether you admit it or not. It’s already claimed you.”

Jenna was near to crying. She could feel the tears starting in her eyes, the fear hammering at her heart. The cloch burned like fiery ice in her hand. “You called it a curse to its holder. What do you mean?”

“The power of the land is eternal, as is the power of the water. Their magics and spells, for those who know how to tap and use them, are slower and less energetic than that of the air, but more stable. They are always there, caught in the bones of the land itself, or in the depths of the water. The power within the sky ebbs and flows: slowly, over generations and generations of mortal lives. It has done so since before my people walked from Thall Mór-roinn to this land and found Lámh Shábhála here. No one knows how often the slow, centuries-long cycle has repeated itself. There were no people here when we Bunús Muintir came to Talamh an Ghlas, but there were the standing stones and graves of other tribes who had once lived here, and we Holders could hear the voices in the stone, one tribe after another, back and back into a past none of us can see. The mage-lights vanished for the Bunús Muintir four times, the last time while I was still alive. The sky-power returned once for you Daoine, then vanished again. Now the mage-lights want to return again.”

Jenna glanced down the passage of the tomb. Multicolored light still touched the dolmen, brightening the valley. “The mage-lights have
already
returned,” Jenna said, but Riata’s denial boomed before she could finish.

“No!” he seemed to shout. “This is but the slightest hint of them, the first stirrings of Lámh Shábhála, the gathering of enough power within the stone to open the gates so that
all
the clochs na thintrí may awaken and the mage-lights appear everywhere. For now, the lights follow Lámh Shábhála—and that is the danger. Those who know the true lore of the mage-lights also know that fact. They know that where the lights appear, Lámh Shábhála is also there. And they will follow, because they want to hold Lámh Shábhála themselves.”

Jenna continued to shake her head, half understanding, half not wanting to understand. “But why hold the stone if it’s a curse?”

A bitter laugh. “The one who holds Lámh Shábhála gains power for their pain. Some believe that’s more than a fair barter—those who have never held the cloch itself. It’s the First who suffers the most, not those who come after, and you are the First, the one who will open the way. So watch, Jenna of the Daoine. Watch for those who follow the mage lights, for they aren’t likely to be your friends.”

Jenna thought of the riders from Connachta, and she also thought of Mac Ard. But before she could say more, Riata’s shape stirred. “The mage-lights beckon,” he said. “They call the stone. Do you feel it?”

She did. The cloch was throbbing in her hand. “Go to them,” Riata said. His shape was fading, as was his voice, now no more than a whisper. “Go . . .” he said again, and the apparition was gone. She could feel its absence, could sense that the air of the tomb was now dead and empty. She called to him—“Riata!”—and only her own voice answered, mocking. The mage-lights sent waves of pure red and aching blue-white shimmering down the passage, and Jenna felt the stone’s need, like a hunger deep within herself. She walked down the passage and out into cold fresh air again. The mage-lights wove their bright net above her, a spider’s web of color that stretched and bent down toward her, swirling. She raised her hand, opening her fingers, and the light shot down, surrounding her, enveloping her in its flowing folds. The whirlwind grabbed her hand in its frigid gasp, and she screamed with the pain of it: as the brilliance rose, a sun caught in her fingers, consuming her.

Hues of brilliance pulled at her. Knives of color cut into her flesh. She tried to pull away and could not, and she screamed again in terror and agony.

A flash blinded her. Thunder filled her ears.

Jenna screamed a final time, as the cold fire seemed to penetrate to her very core, her entire body quivering with torment, every nerve alive and quivering.

Then she was released, and she fell into blessed darkness.

9

Through the Forest

“J
ENNA?”

The smell was familiar—a warm breath laden with spice. Jenna opened her eyes to see Seancoim crouching alongside her. The dolmen towered gray above her, rising toward a sky touched with the salmon hues of early morn ing, and Dúnmharú peered down at her from a perch on the capstone. Jenna blinked, then sat up abruptly, turning to look at the tomb behind her. “Riata,” she said, her voice a mere hoarse croak. Her throat felt as if it had been scraped raw, and her right arm ached as if someone had tried to tear it loose from its socket. She could feel the cloch na thintrí: cold, still clutched in her fist, and she slipped it back into the pocket of her skirt, grimacing with the effort. Something was wrong with her right hand—it felt wooden and clumsy, and the pain in her arm seemed to emanate from there.

“You saw him?” Seancoim asked, and Jenna nodded. Seancoim didn’t seem surprised. “He walks here at times, restless. I’ve glimpsed him once or twice, or I think I might have.”

“He . . .” Jenna tried to clear her throat, but the effort only made it hurt worse. She wanted to take her hand out from where it was hidden in the woolen skirt, but she was afraid. “. . . called me. Spoke to me.”

Seancoim’s blind eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. He opened the leather bag at his side and rummaged inside, pulling out a smaller leather container capped with horn. “Here. Drink this.” Jenna reached out. Stopped. The skin of her right hand was mottled, the flesh a swirling pattern of pale gray and white, and the intricate tendrils of whitened flesh ached and burned. Her fingers were stiff, every joint on fire, and the damaged skin throbbed with every beat of her heart. She must have cried out, for Dúnmharú flew down from the capstone to Seancoim’s shoulder. The Bunús Muintir took her hand, examining it, pushing back the sleeve of her blouse. The injured area extended just past her wrist.

“Your skin is dead where it’s gray. I’ve seen it before, in people who were caught in a blizzard and exposed to bitter cold,” Seancoim said. Jenna felt tears start in her eyes, and Seancoim touched her cheek. “It will heal in time,” he said. “If you don’t injure it further.”

“Jenna!”
The call came from the ridge above them. Maeve and Mac Ard stood there, her mam waving an arm and scrambling down the slope into the valley, Mac Ard following more carefully after her. Maeve came running up to them, glancing harshly at Seancoim. “Jenna, are you all right? We woke up and saw the lights, and you were gone—” She noticed Jenna’s hand then, and her own hand went to her mouth. “Oh, Jenna . . .”