Holder of Lightning (20 page)

“For your own safety,” they told her. “For your protection.”

But she knew it wasn’t for her protection. It was for the protection of the cloch.

Since she’d been in Lár Bhaile, the mage-lights had appeared here a dozen times. Each time, they had called her; each time, she had answered the call, letting their power fill the cloch she carried, now encased in a silver cage necklace around her neck, as it had been once for her da. Soon, she knew, the well within Lámh Shábhála would be filled to overflowing and the stone would open the way to the mage-lights for the other clochs. Everyone else knew it, also, for she saw that the Riocha were gathering here in Lár Bhaile, and many of them wore stones that had been in their families for generations, stones that were reputed to be clochs na thintrí. They waited. They smiled at her the way a wolf might smile at an injured doe.

The Alds had been consulted, old records pored over, tales and legends recalled. They knew now that Jenna held Lámh Shábhála, and they also knew the pain the First Holder must endure when Lámh Shábhála opened the rest of the clochs na thintrí to the mage-lights. They seemed content to let Jenna be the First Holder.

She thought most of them also imagined themselves the Second Holder, though at least Padraic Mac Ard didn’t seem to be among them. Wherever she went, there were eyes watching, and she knew that the gardai whispered back to the Riocha.

Jenna could sense that the gardai didn’t like where she’d brought them. They scowled, and kept their hands close to the hilts of their swords. The four of them were at the end of the market square; the stalls were small and dingy and the crowds thin. Just beyond, a narrow lane moved south: Cat’s Alley, where the houses seemed to lean toward each other in a drunken embrace, leaving the cobbled lane in perpetual twilight. The central gutter was foul with black pools of stagnant water edged with filthy ice, and a frozen reek of decay and filth welled out into the square from the open mouth of the lane. Jenna grimaced: this was where Aoife, the servant she trusted most, had told her that she would find a man named du Val, who kept potions.

“Back in Ballintubber,” she’d told Aoife, “we had a woman who gathered herbs and knew the old ways. You know, plants that can cure headaches, or can keep a young woman from getting pregnant, things like that. Where would I find someone like that here?”

Aoife had smiled knowingly at Jenna. “I do know, mistress,” she said. “Down in Cat’s Alley, no more than fifty strides from where it meets Low Town Market. You’ll see the sign on your right.”

Jenna counted the steps, trying to avoid the worst of the muck on the ground. Before she reached forty, she saw the weathered board with faded letters: Du Val, Apothecary & Herbalist. She couldn’t read the words, but the tutors Tiarna Mac Ard had assigned to her had taught her the letters and she could compare then with the note Aoife had given her. “Stay here,” she told her escorts.

“Mistress, our orders . . .”

She’d learned quickly how to deal with the objections of gardai. “Stay here, or I’ll tell the Rí that you lost me in the market. Would you rather deal with that? I’ll be careful. You can stay at the door and watch me, if you’d like.” Her words emerged in puffs of white vapor; she wrapped her clóca tightly around her. “The sooner I’m done here, the sooner we can get back to the keep and some warmth.”

They glanced at each other, then shrugged. Jenna pushed open the door. A bell jingled above. In the wedge of pale light that came in through the open door, she saw a small, windowless room. The walls were lined with shelves, all of them stuffed with vials of glass and crockery. Ahead of her was a desk piled high with more jars, and beyond into dim shadows were cabinets and cubbyholes. There was a fireplace to the right, but the ashes looked cold and dead. “Hello?” Jenna called, shivering.

Shadows moved in the darkness, and Jenna heard the sound of slow footsteps descending a staircase behind a jumble of boxes and crates. A short dwarf of a man peered out toward her, squinting, a hand over his eyebrows. “Shut the door,” he barked. “Are you trying to blind me?”

“Shut it,” Jenna told the garda, then when he hesitated, added more sharply, “do it!”

The door closed behind her, and as Jenna’s eyes adjusted, she saw that some light filtered in through cracks in the doors and shutters, and that candles were lit here and there along the shelves. The little man shuffled forward to the desk with an odd, rolling gait. He was dressed in a dingy, shapeless woolen tunic and pants, held together with a simple rope. His face reminded her a bit of Seancoim’s—the same bony ridge along the eyebrows, the flattened face. She wondered if there wasn’t Bunús Muintir heritage in him somewhere. He glanced up and down at her appraisingly. “What can I do for you, Bantiarna?” he asked.

“Are you du Val?” He sniffed. Jenna took that for an affirmative answer.

“I’m looking for a certain herb that none of the healers in the keep seem to know,” she told him. “I was told that you might have it.”

“The healers know shite,” du Val spat. “They forget the lore their ancestors knew. What are you looking for?”

“Anduilleaf.”

Du Val said nothing. He came from behind the desk and stood in front of her. He was no taller than her chest. He stared up at her face, then let his gaze travel over her body. He saw the cloth wrapped carefully around her right arm and took her arm in his hands. Jenna didn’t protest as he unknotted the cloth strip and rolled it back. When her hand was exposed past the wrist, he turned it over and back, examining the skin with its mottled, scarred patterns. Then, with stubby hands that were surprisingly graceful, he wrapped the arm again.

“So you’re the one? The one who calls the mage-lights?” Jenna didn’t answer. Du Val sniffed. “You don’t have to tell me; I can look at your arm and see it. I’ve seen the mage-lights swirling around the keep and heard about the young figure that stands on the keep’s summit at their bid ding and swallows them. I’ve heard the name Lámh Sháb hála bandied about. I’ve heard the rumors, little ones and big ones, and I know more about the truth of them than some of the Riocha up in the keep. I’ve seen the Riocha come to Lár Bhaile all of a sudden with bright stones around their necks, and I know that the eye of the Rí Ard in Dún Laoghaire looks this way as well, and he’s also very interested in what’s going on. And the goons outside—I suppose they’re here to protect you and stop me from taking the cloch from you.”

Jenna felt a shiver not born of cold run through her. “They’re fast and strong, well-armed and mean, and they will kill you if you so much as scratch me,” she told du Val. He seemed unimpressed. He scratched his side.

“Vermin,” he said. “You can’t get rid of them. Not here in their natural habitat: the city. How long have you been taking the leaf?”

“Almost two months now.”

“Regularly?”

“Almost every day.” In truth, it was every day. Sometimes twice. On the really bad days, the days after the mage-lights, even more. Du Val stroked his chin.

“You know that andúilleaf’s addictive?”

Jenna shrugged. “It takes away the pain.”

“So it does, so it does—though your healers would tell you that the leaf has no known pharmacological properties, if they recognize the herb at all. They wouldn’t know where to find it, wouldn’t notice it growing. That knowledge’s lost to them. The Old Ones knew, the Bunús Muintir. The few of them who are still around know, too. They also know how careful you have to be with the leaf, if you don’t want to end up needing it forever.”

“If you’re planning to talk me to death, I’ll go elsewhere,” Jenna told him, speaking to him in the tone she’d heard the bantiarnas use with their servants. “I have another source.” She turned to go, hoping the bluff would work. She could feel tears welling up behind her eyes and knew that she couldn’t hold them back once she closed the door behind her, no matter what the gardai might think. She was scared: lost in the need for the relief from pain the herb brought, lost in a level of society she didn’t understand. There was no “other source”—she had no idea how she could find Seancoim again, or how she would find her way to Doire Coill without having to explain it to the Rí and Mac Ard.

“All right,” du Val grunted behind her, and she wiped surreptitiously at her eyes before turning back to him. “I have the leaf. ’Tis expensive.” He almost seemed to laugh. “But considering who you are, that’s probably not a consideration, is it? Who else knows you’re dependent on it?” When she didn’t answer, he did laugh, a snorting amusement that twisted his swarthy, broad face. “If you’re afraid that I’ll use the information to blackmail you, forget it. You have worse worries than that.”

He went to the back of the room, rummaging around in the shadowy recesses of a leaning, bowed case of shelving. He returned with a glass jar half-filled with brown leaves. “This is all I have,” he said. “ ’Tis old, but still potent.” Jenna reached for the jar, and du Val pulled it back to his chest, scowling up at her. “First, it’s two mórceints.”

“Two mórceints?”
Jenna couldn’t keep the shock from her voice. Two mórceints was more than a good craftsman made in a year. Back in Ballintubber, that might have been more money than the entire village together saw in the same time.

“Two mórceints,” he repeated. “And don’t be complaining. There’s few enough of us who would even know how and where to find this, and it grows in only one place anywhere near here.”

“Doire Coill,” Jenna said.

If du Val was surprised by her knowledge, he didn’t show it. “Aye,” he said. “The dark forest itself, and only in spe cial places there. Two mórceints,” he repeated, “or you can check your ‘other source.’ ” He smiled at her, with black holes where several teeth should have been.

“All right,” she said. She fumbled in the pouch she carried. At least Tiarna Mac Ard wasn’t stingy with his money; she had the two mórceints and more. She counted out the coins into du Val’s grimy, callused palm, then reached again for the jar. He wouldn’t release it.

“Does someone know you’re taking this?” he asked again.

“Aye,” she answered. “My mam.” It was a lie. The truth was that no one knew, unless Aoife suspected it.

He nodded. “Then tell your mam this: take the leaf no more than once a day, and for no longer than a month. Start with four leaves in the brew; cut the dosage by one leaf every week, or you’ll be back here again in another month, and the price will be four mórceints. Do you understand that?”

“Aye,” Jenna answered.

With the word, du Val released the jar and closed his fingers around the coins. He jingled them appreciatively. “A pleasure doing business with you, Holder.”

“I’m certain it was.”

He snorted laughter again. “I’ll see you again in a month.”

“I don’t think so.”

“The magic you’re trying to hold is powerful, but also full of pain. There’s no cure for it. You can look for ways, like the leaf, to dull it, or you learn to bear what it gives you. Either way, it will always be there. Better to accept the pain as it is, if you can.”

“Do you charge for your platitudes, also?”

Du Val grinned. “For you, I can afford to give the advice for nothing.”

“And that’s exactly what it’s worth,” Jenna retorted. “I won’t be back.”

She immediately hated the way the words sounded, hated the intention to hurt that rode in them: she sounded too much like some of the Riocha at the keep, the ones she despised for their haughtiness. If du Val had shown that her words stung, she would have felt immediate remorse. She would have apologized. But the dwarf shrugged and moved away behind the desk. He puttered with the flasks and vials there, ignoring Jenna. Finally, she turned and went to the door. When her hand touched the rope loop that served as a handle, du Val’s voice came from behind her.

“I’m sorry for you, Holder. I truly am.”

She took a breath. She opened the door, nodded to the relieved glances of the gardai, and closed the door behind her again.

She spent another candle stripe or so in Low Town Market, desultorily pretending to shop as an excuse for the trip. The wind began to rise from off the lake, and she could see storm clouds rising dark in the west beyond the roofs of the houses, and finally told the gardai to fetch the carriage for the ride back. The carriage moved slowly through the twisting maze of narrow lanes, heading always up toward the stone shoulders of Goat Fell and the keep high above. Jenna lay back on the seat, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of vibrant, crowded life around her: the strident, musical calls of the vendors; shouts and calls from the windows of the houses she passed; the laughter from the pubs, seemingly on every corner; the sound of a fine baritone voice lifted in song . . .

“Stop!” Jenna called to the driver.

The carriage jolted to a halt, and she got out, the gardai hurriedly following her. She could still hear the voice, coming from the open door of a tavern just down the street. She strode down the lane to the pub, squinting into a hazy darkness fragrant with the smell of ale and pipe.

So over the sea they sped
From Falcarragh where the mountains loom
From home and bed
To Inish and their doom . . .

She knew the tune: the Song of Máel Armagh. She had heard it once before she left Ballintubber. And she knew the voice as well.

“Coelin!”

The song cut off in mid-verse, and a familiar head lifted. “By the Mother-Creator . . . Jenna, is that you, girl?”

“Aye. ’Tis me, indeed.”

Laughing, he set down his giotár and ran to her. He took her in his arms and spun her around, nearly knocking over a few pints. He set her down again, holding her at arm’s length.

He kissed her.

“I thought you were dead, Jenna. That’s what everyone was saying. The damned Connachtans killed the Ald, and Tom Mullin, too, when he tried to stop them. Then there were the killings down by your old house, and the fires . . .” Coelin was shaking his head; Jenna’s finger still touched her lips. Now she placed the finger on Coelin’s lips.

“Shh,” she said. “Quietly. Please.” That, at least, she’d learned from the Riocha: you never knew who might be listening to your words.