Holder of Lightning (14 page)

Sheehan came back with stew for Mac Ard and Jenna, more bread, and cups of water. This time he said very little, glancing at Mac Ard with the expression of a scolded dog and hurrying off again. Mac Ard and Maeve talked, but Jenna only half-listened, leaning back on her arms and watching the fire. She wished someone would sing some of the Taisteal songs, and that thought made her think of Coelin, and she wondered how he was, if he’d been hurt by the Connachtans, or if Tara’s even still stood and wasn’t a burned-out hulk next to the road. She didn’t want to go forward; she wanted to go back. She wanted to see Ballintubber again and Knobtop and all the familiar places. If it were within her power, she would erase the events of the past several days and happily go back to her old, predictable life.

She felt tears starting in her eyes, and she brushed at them almost angrily. “I’m tired,” she told her mam. “I’m going up to the tent.”

Maeve glanced at her with concern, but she kissed Jenna. “We’ll do the same as soon as we eat,” she said. “I’ll check on you. Good night, darling.”

“Good night, Mam, Tiarna.” Jenna nodded to Mac Ard. She brushed at her skirts and walked away from the fire toward her tent.

She didn’t notice that one of the men to her left excused himself from his companions and rose, following a few moments later.

11

Two Encounters

“B
ANTIARNA, a moment . . .”

‘The voice came from behind Jenna, low and gravelly. Startled, Jenna turned. The man was brown-haired with a longish beard, and she found his age difficult to discern—he could have been as young as Coelin or nearer to thirty. His face was drawn and thin, his skin brown from the sun; his strangely light green eyes nested deep under his brows, glinting in the light of the fire. His clothing was plain, but more like that of a freelander than the Taisteal, and Jenna saw a bone-handled knife in its scabbard at his belt. His appearance was that of someone used to a life of labor, his body toughened and scarred by what it had experienced. He stopped a few feet away from her, as if he realized that she would shout for Mac Ard if he came closer. She moved a few steps toward the ring of light from the campfire.

“What do you want?” Jenna asked coldly.

“Nothing that will trouble you,” he said. “A minute’s conversation, that’s all.” When Jenna remained silent, he continued. “My name is Ennis O’Deoradháin. I’m not with the Taisteal; I have land nearby and happened to come here to see if the Taisteal had anything interesting to sell—my father was born here and also died here, several years ago. But in his youth, he wandered, and went to the west as a fisherman and came to the north. He married a woman there, and brought her back to Lough Lár.”

“What has that to do with me?”

“My mam—may the Mother-Creator keep her soul safe—was an Inishlander. They say I’m more like her than my father. In some ways, I think that’s true. They say one Inishlander knows another. Maybe that’s true as well, or maybe the mage-lights have just sparked something in me that was dormant all this time.” He stopped, staring at her.

“I’m from . . .”
Ballintubber,
she started to say, then realized that might not be something to admit either. “... Lár Bhaile,” she said. “Not Inish Thuaidh.”

O’Deoradháin nodded, though his eyes seemed unconvinced. “Mam always said that I had a weirding in me. She also told me that one of our ancestors was a cloudmage, and wielded a cloch na thintrí under Severii O’Coulghan in the Battle of Sliabh Míchinniúint. Of course, one never knows about family history that far back and to tell the truth it’s a rare Inishlander family that
doesn’t
claim a cloudmage or three among their ancestors, true or not. If all the stories are to be believed, the land must have been ankle-deep in clochs na thintrí.”

With the mention of the mage-stones, Jenna’s hand went to her waist, where her own stone was hidden. She immediately let her hand drop back to her side, but the man’s eyes had followed her involuntary gesture. He almost seemed to smile.

“Your arm—you’ve hurt it.” He nodded at the bandages wrapped around her arm; it seemed to throb in response.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “A cut, that’s all.”

“Ah.” He nodded again. He glanced over his shoulder, as if making certain no one was close enough to overhear them. “One wonders,” O’Deoradháin mused, “where Lámh Shábhála will be found if the Filleadh has really come, since the eldest cloch was taken from the Order of Inishfeirm and could be anywhere in Talamh an Ghlas by now. But then, you probably realize that already, since Clannhri Sheehan tells me that you’re a Mac Ard. After all, your ancestors were once cloudmages themselves. I’m not surprised to see a Mac Ard on the road where the mage-lights have been seen. Not at all.”

Jenna wanted to be away from the man, wanted to be alone, wanted to take the cloch out and hold it, wanted to throw it away and never see it again. She’d understood little of what he’d said—all that prattling about “Inishfeirm” and some Order, but he spoke of “Lámh Shábhála,” the same name Riata had used . . . “You’ve had your minute, Ennis O’Deoradháin, and I’m tired.”

“True, I’ve had the minute, and more, and I’ve spoken honestly about things that I probably shouldn’t, out here in the open.” The man’s left hand moved close to the hilt of his knife, and Jenna wondered how quickly someone would get to her if she screamed. Not soon enough, she feared, if O’Deoradháin was skilled with his weapon. Her bandaged hand went again to the stone; she could feel its chill under the cloth, and her heart was pounding in her chest. If she brought the cloch out, if she could use it as she had with the men from Connachta . . .

But O’Deoradháin only smiled, gave a short bow, and turned to walk back toward the fire. For a moment, Jenna wondered whether she should follow and tell Mac Ard and her mam what had just happened. But she couldn’t make herself go that way, not after what the man had said to her.

Instead, she went to her tent, half-running. Her arm throbbed and burned, and she boiled water over the tiny cook fire inside and made herself another cup of the andúilleaf tea.

The next morning, it was easy to forget the encounter. Maeve was there in the tent, sleeping alongside Jenna—she had wondered, after their conversation, if Maeve might stay in the tiarna’s tent that night. Jenna’s arm still ached, and she heated another cup of the brew to take away the hurt before her mam rewrapped the arm with fresh bandages. Outside, a warm, late autumn sun was shining, O’Deorad háin was nowhere to be seen, and they found that Mac Ard had haggled with Clannhri Sheehan for the purchase of three of the Taisteal’s horses. They looked old and slow, but a better prospect than walking the rest of the way to Áth Iseal. By the time the sun was well up in the sky, the Taisteal had packed away the tents into the wagons and were jangling and plodding south along the road while Jenna, Maeve, and Mac Ard rode north toward the ford of the Duán.

They moved through a landscape of green: farmland mostly, with occasional patches of wood. The High Road meandered, following the line of Lough Lár closely. Not long after they’d left, as they rounded a bend in the road, they heard hooves and the nickering of a horse coming up from an intersecting lane; a moment later, a rider came into view between a line of beech trees, a man wearing a plain clóca over pants and shirt. The hood of the clóca was up; the face in shadow. The man waved at them, then kicked his horse into a trot to meet them.

“Greetings, Tiarna Mac Ard, Bantiarnas. A beautiful morning. We seem to be going in the same direction, if Áth Iseal is your destination. May I join you? With brigands on the road, four is safer than one.” He pushed back the hood, and Jenna saw that it was Ennis O’Deoradháin. His eyes glittered as he glanced toward her, but he kept his attention on Mac Ard, who frowned.

“It isn’t brigands I particularly fear,” he answered. “You have the advantage of me, since you seem to know me but your face isn’t familiar.”

“My name is Ennis O’Deoradhain.” He gestured to the fields on either side of him. “This is my family’s land. Not much, but enough to keep us fed. We’re three generations freelanded, loyal to the Rí Gabair, and the name O’Deora dháin is well known around the west of the lough. And I know you because I was at the Taisteal’s camp last night seeing if they had anything useful, and Clannhri Sheehan has a mouth large enough to swallow all of Lough Lár itself.” He smiled and laughed at his own jest, and the harsh lines of his face relaxed in his amusement. “And if it allays your fears, I’m hardly a threat to you, Tiarna. I doubt my knife is a match for your sword.” O’Deoradháin swept his clóca aside, showing them that the only weapon he wore was the knife Jenna had seen the night before.

“In my experience, a knife kills as easily as any weapon,” Mac Ard told the man, but his voice was easier. “But a freelanded man loyal to the Rí shouldn’t be left alone to brigands, and the High Road’s open to all, if you’d like to ride with us.”

Jenna could have spoken. She saw O’Deoradháin’s gaze flick toward her again, and she set her mouth in a firm, thin line of disapproval. Yet she held back. O’Deoradháin flicked the reins, and his horse moved out onto the road. For a time, he rode alongside Mac Ard, and Maeve, and they conversed in low voices. Then O’Deoradháin dropped back to where Jenna trailed behind. “And how are you today?” he asked. “Is the arm better?”

“It’s fine,” Jenna answered shortly. She didn’t look at him, keeping her gaze forward to the road winding along the lakeshore. Lough Lár was narrowing, now no more than a few hundred strides across as they neared the falls of the Duán.

“So it seems you didn’t mention our encounter last night to the tiarna.”

“I didn’t think it that important. I’d forgotten it myself until I saw you this morning.” She answered him with the haughtiness she thought a Riocha would display. Now she did look over at him, and found him watching her with a strange smile on his lips. “Interesting that you’d happen to be going to Ath Iseal today, and at the same time.”

“What would you think if I told you that wasn’t entirely coincidence?”

“I’d wonder if I should make up for my error last night and tell Tiarna Mac Ard.”

“ ‘Tiarna Mac Ard?’ An awfully formal way to refer to your father,” O’Deoradháin commented. Her face must have shown something at that, for he lifted his eyebrows. “Ah . . . I see I’ve been mistaken. Evidently Clannhri Sheehan didn’t know as much as he pretended he did. You never can trust the Taisteal. I thought . . .”

“I don’t care what you thought.”

“This does shed a different light on things, though, I must say,” O’Deoradháin persisted. “What is your name, then?”

She remembered that Mac Ard had commented on their name being Inish, and that O’Deoradháin had suggested that he thought her an Inishlander as well. She considered giving him a false name, but it didn’t seem to matter now. Her mam would probably tell him, if he asked, or Mac Ard. “Aoire,” she said. “Jenna Aoire.”

The startled look on his face surprised her with its severity. For a moment, his eyes widened, and he seemed almost to rise up in his saddle. Then he caught himself, his features masked in deliberate neutrality. “Aoire. That’s an Inish name, ’tis. So my guess wasn’t so wrong after all.”

“Aye,” she admitted. “My father’s parents were from the island, or so he claimed, though Mam says that they left the island when they were young.”

O’Deoradháin’s head nodded reflectively. “No doubt,” he said. “No doubt.” He shifted in the saddle, adjusted his clóca. “We should be in Áth Iseal by midafternoon,” he said. “We’ll be passing the falls in a bit; they’re not as pretty this time of year without all the green, but they’ll be impressive enough if you’ve never seen them before.” It was obvious that he intended to change the subject, and Jenna was content to allow that to happen.

They heard the falls long before they saw them. Here, the High Road lifted in short, winding rises up a low series of hills, until they stood well above the level of Lough Lár. Away to the south stretched the dark waters of the lough; to the north, the road was hidden behind yet another set of low hills. Westward stretched checkered patches of farmland, meadow, and woods, and beyond that, like a green wall, was the forest of Doire Coill, lurking on the horizon.

A trail ran away from the High Road to a ledge overlooking the falls, and Mac Ard turned his horse in. “We’ve made good time this morning, and there’s not a better day to see the falls,” he said. “We’ll eat here.” As Mac Ard rummaged in the saddlebags for the food, Jenna and her mam walked to the end of the ledge, where the land fell off steeply toward the lough, so that they were looking down at the tops of the trees below. Ahead and to their left, the River Duán splashed and roared as it spilled down a deep cleft in the green hills, cascading white and foaming to the lake below while a white mist rose around the waters. The sunlight sparked rainbows in the mist that wavered, gleamed, and disappeared again. “Ah, Mam, ’tis beautiful,” Jenna breathed. The wind sent a tendril of mist across her face, and she laughed in shock and surprise. “And wet.”

“And dangerous, if you get too near the edge.” O’Deora dháin spoke, coming up next to them. He pointed down toward the lake. “Not two months ago, they brought up a man from Áth Iseal who slipped over the edge and went tumbling down to his death. He was looking at the falls and not his feet, unfortunately.”

Both Jenna and Maeve took a step back. “The mist has a way of enchanting, they say,” O’Deoradháin continued. “The Duán weeps in sorrow here.”

“Why in sorrow?” Jenna asked, interested despite herself.

“ ’Twas here, they say, well back in the Before, that an army out of Inish Thuaidh met with the forces of the Rí of what was then the kingdom of Bhaile; Rí Aodhfin, I think his name was. The river ran red with blood that day, the stain washing pink on the shores of the lough itself, and the skies above were bright with the lightnings of the clochs na thintrí. Lámh Shábhála itself was here, held by an Inishlander cloudmage whose name is lost to the people around here.”

The name of the cloch made Jenna narrow her eyes in suspicion, and she thought she felt the hidden stone pulse in response.
Aye
. . . The voice, a whisper, sounded in Jenna’s head.
Eilís, I was
. . . “Eilís,” Jenna said, speaking the name. “That was the Holder’s name. Eilís.”