Holder of Lightning (45 page)

“Mundy! By all the gods, you’re as ugly as ever.” The two men, laughing, met in the middle of the dock, hugging each other fiercely, kissing each other’s cheeks. “So you’re still here!”

“I am. I doubt you’re going to believe this, but I’m now in charge of the acolytes—who’d have thought that someone as difficult as I was would end up having to herd the young ones and trying to keep them out of trouble.”

“Who better? You know all the tricks, having done them yourself,” O’Deoradháin laughed. “How’s Máister Cléurach faring these days? And why aren’t you holding one of the clochs by now?”

Mundy’s expression turned somber at that. “Máister Cléurach’s as well as can be expected, I suppose. These aren’t good times for the Order.”

“What do you mean? Is that why everyone is looking at us like we’re tax collectors? With the mage-lights coming every night to the clochs now, I’d have thought—”

Mundy shook his head warningly, raising his hand. “This isn’t anything to discuss here. I must ask you for some patience. In the meantime, you haven’t introduced me.” He glanced significantly at Jenna.

“This is Jenna Aoire,” O’Deoradháin told him, and Jenna stepped forward. “Jenna, this is Mundy Kirwan, a Bráthair of the Order.” O’Deoradham leaned toward Mundy, speaking softly so that only Jenna and Mundy could hear him. “She is the First, Mundy. She holds Lámh Shábhála; she brought the Filleadh.”

Mundy’s expression was simultaneously shocked and awed. “First Holder, I am honored. And Aoire . . .” He glanced again at O’Deoradháin with lifted eyebrows. “That’s a name that’s not unfamiliar here.”

“I was told that my family was from here,” Jenna told him. “A few generations ago.”

Mundy nodded. “The Máister will undoubtedly want to meet with you immediately. Do you have belongings?”

O’Deoradháin lifted the pack he carried. “This is all.”

“Then follow me. I’ll take you up to the mountain, and we can get you rooms there . . .”

Mundy escorted them to the carriage, little more than a flat cart with wooden seats attached, open to the weather without even the cover of an awning. A young boy in the same white attire waited there with the two horses, though the léine underneath his clóca was red, not white. Jenna looked out curiously as they ascended the narrow, winding switchback road up the steep hillside, more and more of the panorama spreading out below them as they rose. The sea was a rippling, shining carpet, dotted with a few nearby tiny islands; well out to the north, stony cliffs blue with distance rose on the horizon, the white line of distant breakers underneath. “The shore of Inish Thuaidh,” Mundy told her, noticing her gaze. “Those are the Bird Cliffs. Thousands and thousands of seabirds nest there.”

“I’d like to see that sometime.”

“Perhaps you will.” Mundy was sitting across from Jenna and O’Deoradháin, his seat facing them. He turned back from the scenery. “Aoire,” he said, almost musingly, but with an undertone that made Jenna’s eyes narrow. “An acolyte once stole a supposed cloch from the cloister and ran away with a local girl. In at least one version I heard, her family name was supposed to be Aoire.”

Jenna glanced at O’Deoradháin. “We agreed that we wouldn’t try to hide anything from Máister Cléurach,” he told her. “And I trust Mundy.”

The cart lurched in the ruts as they navigated one of the tight hairpin turns of the road. Jenna felt a momentary surge of irritation that O’Deoradháin would speak so openly, but she forced it down, knowing that it was mostly because she was uneasy about revealing the truth of how she’d come to acquire the cloch. “Then maybe that version’s the correct one,” Jenna told Mundy. “Her name was Kerys Aoire and she was my greatmam. And the cloch they took was this.” She pulled the stone out from under her tunic. “This,” she said, “is Lámh Shábhála.”

“Lámh Shábhála . . .” Mundy breathed the word, leaning forward to peer closely at the cloch. “So plain, compared to the other ones. No wonder no one believed that it was a true cloch na thintrí, or at best only a minor one. So we
did
hold it for a time.” An ironic smile touched his face. “Máister Cléurach won’t be pleased to hear that. Not after what’s happened here.”

“What
has
happened?” O’Deoradháin asked. “There are marks on the walls of the central tower where it looks like fires have burned, and our reception was definitely cold.”

“I’ll let the Máister give you that news,” Mundy responded. “It’s nothing any of us like to talk about.”

Máister Cléurach was a short, balding man with a fringe of snow-white hair that didn’t seem to have been combed in days. He came bustling toward Jenna and O’Deoradháin between the desks of his two clerks. “Ennis!” There may have been pleasure in his shout, but Jenna couldn’t see it in his face. The folds of his face settled comfortably in the lines of his frown. “By the Mother-Creator, I was certain we’d lost you. The last letter was a year ago . . .”

O’Deoradháin shrugged at the mild rebuke. “I wrote six months ago, and again three months ago as well, Máister. But the tuatha are unsettled, and who knows where those letters have gone.”

“Aye, we know the tuatha are at war, and we know why.” Máister Cléurach seemed to glare at O’Deoradháin as if he were the cause of it, and then the old man went to one of the arched, open windows of the cloister, staring back south and east over the waves.

“Máister Cléurach,” O’Deoradháin said, “Mundy hinted that things aren’t well here, and I saw marks on the walls. What’s happened? Why aren’t Mundy and you and some of the others holding clochs? The Order was founded to make cloudmages . . .”

The old man turned back into the room, blinking as if the pale light outside had blinded him. “Five months ago,” he said slowly, “not long after the Solstice and just before the mage-lights heralded the Filleadh, ships carrying gardai came here out of Fallcarragh. When we realized that this was more than an unexpected visit, it was too late. The gardai wore the colors of both Tuath Infochla and Tuath Gabair. We closed the gates to the White Keep, thinking we could hold them in siege until help came from Rí Thuaidh, but we had acolytes who were from Infochla and Gabair and some of them betrayed us, opening one of the gates. The gardai came storming in, and though we defended the cloister as well as we could, we’re not trained to fight. The betrayal of our acolytes went deeper—these gardai also knew where the clochs na thintrí were kept.” The Máister sighed, his rheumy gray eyes flared. “They took them all, Ennis. All.”

“Máister . . .” O’Deoradhain breathed. “I didn’t know . . .”

Máister Cléurach grunted, interrupting him. “The clochs na thintrí were all they were after. They fled as soon as they had them, returned to their ships and sailed away. When our Rí finally sent men and ships—too few of both, and far too late—they were a fortnight gone. Then the mage-lights began to appear everywhere in the sky, heralding the Filleadh, and we knew all hope to recover them was lost. The Order may have the knowledge to teach cloudmages, but now we have no clochs to give them.” The Máister’s sour face regarded Jenna briefly, then returned to rest on O’Deoradháin. “And what do you bring us, Ennis, you who we sent out to find Lámh Shábhála? More tales of failure, no doubt.”

“I bring you Jenna Aoire,” O’Deoradháin answered. “The tale is hers.”

“Aoire . . .” The word was a hissing intake of breath. The clerks looked up from their work and Máister Cléurach’s gaze returned to Jenna. He stared at her face. “Aye, I see it now. The shape of your face, your eyes . . . You could be an Aoire—a family whose fortunes, I must tell you, have declined greatly in my time.”

“My great-mam was Kerys Aoire,” Jenna told the Máister, “and my great-da was an acolyte here named Niall, though I don’t know his surname.”

Máister Cléurach visibly trembled as Jenna spoke, his hands clenching together at his breast. “I know that tale and those names, and I know Niall’s surname,” he answered. “I know because I was sent here as an acolyte the following year, and the gossip about Niall Mac Ard was fresh and new among the acolytes and Bráthairs, since they’d known him.”

“Mac Ard?”
Jenna couldn’t stop the words, which stabbed her so that she could hardly breathe. “Niall was a Mac Ard?”

Máister Cléurach glared at her as if she were a dim-witted student. “Aye. That was his name. A well-known Riocha name in Tuath Infochla, and Gabair, too, where a Mac Ard was once Rí long ago. Most of our acolytes are Riocha. You would hear many famous names among them.”

Jenna felt dizzy and nauseous.
My great-da was a Mac Ard . . . Did Padraic Mac Ard know that?
She glared at O’Deoradháin angrily. “You knew!” she said to him. “You knew and you didn’t tell me.”

He was shaking his head, and the confusion in his face seemed genuine. “No, Jenna. I swear I didn’t. I knew the story, aye, but not the acolyte’s surname . . . All that happened forty years before I came here as a boy. It was just an old cautionary tale given to the acolytes and Niall’s last name was never mentioned. None of us were old enough to have known them, and the elder Bráthairs who might have been here then wouldn’t talk about it.”

“They were
told
not to talk about it,” Máister Cléurach interrupted. “It was a foolish deed done by a naive young man that cost him his life, and what was important was that it not happen again, or we might lose one of the stones we knew were true clochs. What Niall stole was probably just a pebble and not a true cloch, and almost certainly not the cloch it was reputed to be.”

“Maister,” O’Deoradháin said, “Jenna is the First. The Holder of Lámh Shábhála.”

The Máister’s eyes widened in sudden realization and he frowned at her so harshly that Jenna took an involuntary step backward, her hand going to the cloch under her tunic. Her sleeve fell away, exposing the scars, and Máister Cléurach
huffed
once. He glanced back—the clerks were staring also, and he waved a hand at them. They scattered, leaving the room by the rear door as Máister Cléurach turned back to Jenna and O’Deoradháin. “Then . . .”

“Aye, Máister,” O’Deoradháin told him. “The cloch Niall took was what it had been said to be.”

“No . . .” Maister Cleurach protested, then his mouth snapped shut and his eyes narrowed. He seemed filled with a cold anger as he regarded Jenna again. “If you hold the cloch Niall Mac Ard stole from us, then Lámh Shábhála is not yours, but the Order of Inishfeirm’s.” He held out his hand, as if he expected her to place the stone there.

Jenna returned his glare. Her arm throbbed as she pulled the cloch out and forced the fingers of her right hand to close around it. She shut her eyes momentarily: no, there were no other clochs na thintrí here other than the ones she and O’Deoradháin carried. “Lámh Shábhála is its own,” she told Máister Cléurach, “and it has chosen me.”

His eyes stared greedily at the stone. “That is the cloch na thintrí I have had described to me. There is a record of it here: we have paintings and drawings of all the clochs na thintrí that were in our collection, and I recognize this—there was no other like it. So . . .
plain.
”

“And your Máister at the time thought the stories about the cloch being Lámh Shábhála were false, or that it was at best a minor stone,” Jenna retorted. “That’s what my great-mam believed; that was what Niall had told her.”

“Indeed, that
was
Máister Dahlga’s belief,” Máister Cléurach responded. “He wasn’t the most intelligent man and I heard him say that myself, but what else was he going to claim but that bit of wishful thinking? We thought the stone lost at sea—Niall’s body was found a few days later on the coast of Tuath Infochla and brought back here; we believed your great-mam had suffered the same fate until two years ago, when we learned that she’d actually lived, and that her son—Niall’s child—had left Tuath Infochla and traveled south. By then we also knew that mage-lights would return soon, and so we sent out some of the Bráthairs to look for this offspring of Niall Mac Ard in case he still had the cloch that might be—” He stopped. His lips pressed together. “—that
was
Lámh Shábhála.”

“You’re mistaken if you believe you have any claim to Lámh Shábhála,” Jenna told him. “Not after what my family’s gone through. Not after what
I’ve
gone through.” She looked at O’Deoradháin. “And I made a mistake coming here.” She turned on the balls of her feet, ready to leave.

“Wait!” The note of panic in Máister Cléurach’s voice halted Jenna in midstep. “Why did you bring Lámh Sháb hála back here?”

O’Deoradháin answered. “She came to learn, Máister. She came because I told her that you would teach her to be a cloudmage, a Siúr of the Order. She came because this was her family’s home and I told her that the Order would help her. If all that’s wrong, and I’ve unintentionally lied to Jenna, then you can have my resignation. I’m leaving with her.”

O’Deoradháin’s rebuke put color in Máister Cléurach’s cheeks. His chest expanded as if he were about to shout something in return, then he let the breath out with a sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. His hands opened in a gesture of apology, then fell to his sides. He sat on the edge of one of the desks, slumping. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’s just that it’s all gone, everything Máister after Máister worked for over the centuries.
He
knows—” Máister Cléurach pointed to O’Deoradháin—“but do you? Do you know why the Order of Inishfeirm came to be?”

Jenna shook her head, silent, still half-turned away.

“Come with me, then,” he said. He started to walk toward the door through which his clerks had gone, then stopped at the door when he realized that Jenna wasn’t following. “It will be easier if you see,” he told her. “I promise you that it’s not a trap.” He held the door open.

Reluctantly, with another glance at O’Deoradháin, she went through.

38

The Vision of Tadhg

T
HEY walked down a corridor of marble flags. Twin rutted hollows were worn in the hard stone, unpolished and stained: the marks of countless sandaled feet over countless years. Jenna realized then just how old the White Keep was. The halls of the Order were quiet; the conversations that drifted from the open doors they passed were whispered and hushed. Even the laughter she heard once had the sense of being muffled and held back. The occa sional acolytes and Bráthairs—no females, Jenna noticed—they met in their walk gave a quick bow of obeisance to the Máister, but Jenna felt their eyes on her, curious and wondering.