Holder of Lightning (59 page)

She knew now why the cloch was handled so well and easily. She knew now who had helped Ó Dochartaigh plan the ambush. She knew now that there was another reason Ennis had been taken.

The new Holder was also its old one: Padraic Mac Ard.

In the cloch-vision, it was as if they faced one another in the same room though a quarter mile or more separated them. His mouth moved, his eyes almost sad. “Jenna . . .” The word was loud in her hearing, even through the clamor. She recoiled backward, the vision of Mac Ard receding as if she were falling away from him impossibly fast. She found herself back in her body, the roar of the battle around her.

“Jenna!” Máister Cléurach shouted. His face was grim and strained, his flesh pale as he lashed out with Stormbringer against the other clochs. He pointed at Aithne, but even the gesture allowed an opening, and the lava-beast threw globules of fire that the winds of Stormbringer hurled aside only barely in time. The field workers were running away in panic; the rows of wheat nearest Jenna and the others were now ablaze. The Dun Kiil gardai had gone to Aithne, swords drawn uselessly. One went down with a crossbow quarrel in his breast.

The mage-demon flapped its dragon wings above Aithne, claws out as it stooped like a hawk and plummeted. At the same moment, blue lightning erupted again from Árón’s hand. Jenna imagined a wall above the Banrion and she felt Lámh Shábhála shudder in her hand as the demon struck it, as the searing energy from Árón’s cloch battered at the shielding force. The demon, growling in frustration, tore at the shield; Jenna could feel it as if the claws were gouging at her own flesh. Aithne rose groggily, and she touched her own cloch.

A new demon appeared, the twin of the first. It hurled itself at the other and they came together with a roar.

Mac Ard sent lightning that tore at the earth directly in front of Jenna. Her horse reared, sending her falling to the ground. Her right elbow struck a rock in the mud, and her arm went numb. She was no longer holding Lámh Sháb hála. The world snapped back into drab confusion, the power of the Clochs Mór now just half-glimpsed whirlings in the air, the shrill howling of wind, and the flickering of pale light. One of the stone fences exploded, shards of rock flying everywhere. A fragment sliced across Jenna’s left arm, leaving a long cut that gaped white for an instant before blood welled up. Jenna cried in pain and frustration. Her right arm throbbed with the pain of wielding the cloch as she scrabbled in the mud.
There
—she saw the cloch, an arm’s length away, and flung herself at it. Her hand closed about it . . .

. . . and the fury rose again: around her. Inside her.

“Mac Ard!”
She screamed his name. She reached deep into the well of energy within her cloch, grasping it all, holding the power with her mind and shaping it. She could see him, could feel the lightning that writhed like snakes in his hands. She hurled the whole force of Lámh Shábhála’s energy at him. He sensed the attack and pushed back at it. Árón, too, felt it, and his Cloch Mór turned to aid Mac Ard. For a moment they both held, then, with a cry, she broke through. Árón swayed in his saddle, senseless. Mac Ard, in his tower room, crumpled.

Jenna herself sagged, suddenly weary. She took a breath, ready now to finish it, to kill them . . .

There were cries and shouts around her—she saw one of Ó Dochartaigh’s riders pluck the tiarna’s unconscious body from his horse and turn to gallop back up the hill. The others followed, retreating as the other two Clochs Mór pushed back Máister Cléurach and the Banrion’s renewed attacks. Jenna flung the cloch’s rage at them, and one of the Mages gave a cry and fell as the lava-beast wailed and vanished. The door to Glenn Aill opened to let the remaining riders in, then shut.

She could feel the remaining Clochs Mór close also, their Holders releasing the stones, though Máister Cléurach continued to hurl Stormbringer’s energy toward the walls and towers.

“Máister, it’s over,” Jenna heard Aithne say wearily. “They’ve gone. They’ll be in the caverns and gone before we can get to them.”

The old man lifted his hand. With a curse, he released the cloch. The storm was simply a cold, soaking rain once more. All but one of their gardai were dead; the Banrion’s attendants seemed to have fled. Three of the Ó Dochartaigh retinue lay on the ground, and . . .

“Ennis!” Jenna ran to him, ignoring the pain and fatigue of her body. “By the Mother . . .” She sank into the mud beside him, pulling him into her lap. His eyes were open, and the long gaping wound across the side of his neck no longer pulsed, but seeped thick and red. The ground below him and his léine were soaked with it, and the blood covered Jenna’s rain-slick hands as she cradled him.

“Ennis . . . Oh, Mother-Creator, no . . .” His name was a wail, a keening of grief. The rain splattered on his still face, on his unseeing eyes, and she rocked back and forth in the muck and grass, willing him to stir, to take a gasping breath, to speak, to live. She cried, praying to the Mother-Creator, to the Seed-Daughter from whom the Miondia, the lesser gods, had sprung, to Darkness in His own realm, to any god that might bring him back. She touched Ennis’ face, still warm in the cold rain, and stroked his hair.

“He’s gone, Jenna.” Máister Cléurach’s voice, at her shoulder. “Jenna, I’m so sorry . . .”

He’s not gone!,
she wanted to rail at him.
I won’t let him be gone. There has to be something, some way to change this . . .
But no words came out. She looked up at Máister Cléurach, stricken dumb, her mouth open as she shook her head.

She took Lámh Shábhála in her hand. She held the cloch, opening the small store of energy still left within it. She held the energy, not knowing how to shape it or change it so that she could bring his soul back from where it had fled. The brilliance of the mage-lights shimmered around her, and it meant nothing. She let go of the cloch and fell over Ennis’ body, weeping.

She lay there for long minutes until gentle hands pulled her away.

49

Leave-taking

T
HE attendants, returning now that the battle was over, argued that with the rain it was impossible to cremate the body, but Jenna insisted that a pyre be built in the nearest field. Jenna watched as they sullenly constucted the pyre in the downpour, sitting by Ennis’ body and refusing to move whenever Máister Cléurach or Aithne came to join her, though she didn’t resist when they tended to her injuries. The tears came and went on some internal tidal rhythm; the grief filled her like a cold moonless sea, heavy and deep. The sun sank below the mountains beyond Glenn Aill; the rain subsided to drizzle as mist and a few stars emerged between ragged clouds.

“The pyre’s ready,” Aithne said. Jenna felt the Banrion’s hand on her shoulder. The woman had said little since the battle. She crouched down alongside Jenna and took her hands, still clutching Ennis’ stiffening body. “They need to take him now,” she whispered, nodding to her attendants. They came forward silently and took the body as Aithne helped Jenna to her feet. She stood unsteadily, her legs weak with exhaustion and hours of sitting.

They placed the body atop the framework of logs and branches, and placed the bodies of the gardai who had died to either side of him. One of the retainers came forward with a burning torch and touched it to the base of the pyre. A pale blue flame flickered then went out. “The wood is soaked, Banrion,” he called. “We used what little oil we had, but . . .” There was a hint of pleasure in his words, the ghost of an unspoken reprimand.

“I’ll do it,” Jenna said. She shrugged away the Banrion’s hands, drawing a breath as she found Lámh Shábhála’s chain, recovered from where it had fallen and around her neck once more. She lifted the cloch, closing her eyes and coaxing the remaining essence from deep within the well of the stone.

She imagined fire: a flame of elemental force, burning purer and hotter than a smelter’s furnace. She placed the image under the pyre and released it. With an audible whump, the pyre burst into flame. White smoke billowed as the moisture in the wood went immediately to steam and evaporated. The pyre hissed and grumbled, but it burned so aggressively that the attendants all moved well back. Shadows lurched and swayed behind them as the flames leaped up to envelop the bodies, the light from it touching even the walls of Glenn Aill. Jenna poured the last dregs from Lámh Shábhála into the pyre; the flames roared in response, sending a whirling column of furious sparks pinwheeling into the night sky.

She watched as the flames devoured the corpses. She imagined Ennis’ soul soaring free, dancing in the glowing ash toward the sky and the Seed-Daughter’s welcome to the afterlife. She watched until the pyre collapsed in a tornado of sparks; until it was no more than glowing embers; until she saw above them the mage-lights snarling the sky and felt the yearning, seductive pull of Lámh Shábhála toward them.

“I know you’re exhausted and hurting, Holder, but you need to renew your cloch,” Aithne said softly, startling Jenna. “Árón and the others will be doing the same, and it’s a long and possibly dangerous ride home.”

Máister Cléurach, off to one side, had already opened his cloch to the lights. Aithne stood near Jenna, her face gentle and sympathetic. The Banrion looked battered and sore: a bruise discolored her cheek and puffed one side of her mouth. Her clóca and léine were scorched, torn, and filthy, and blood had soaked through along one arm where a long cut trailed down nearly to her wrist. She’d been burned on the other arm—Jenna could see the blisters that glistened on the woman’s left hand, running up beyond the sleeve of her léine.

Jenna nodded. “Banrion, I’m sorry . . .” she began, then faltered. So much had happened that demanded an apol ogy: that she hadn’t told the Banrion about the false Lámh Shábhála she and Máister Cléurach had prepared; that she hadn’t trusted Aithne; that Aithne had been injured pro tecting her . . . “I wish I’d told you before what the Máister and I had done.”

“I wish you had also,” Aithne said and the agreement cut deeper than any of the wounds. “But I knew, or at least suspected. And I understand why you kept your own counsel and didn’t tell me.”

“Árón was your brother, and I didn’t know how you’d react. I thought it might work, and it was the only way I could think of to get Ennis back, and . . .” A deep sob racked her from the center of her being, a grief so huge and terrible that for a moment she thought she couldn’t bear it. Aithne put her arms around Jenna, pulling her close. Jenna wept on the Banrion’s shoulder, letting the lamentation rise within her and give voice to her bereavement as Aithne stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head as her mam might have done.

Her mam . . .

Jenna gently pulled away from Aithne, pushing the grief back down within herself. “Banrion, during the battle, Lámh Shábhála showed me the face of one of your brother’s allies. It was Tiarna Padraic Mac Ard, of Tuath Gabair, holding the cloch they’d taken from Ennis. And the other clochs . . . Máister Cléurach is certain that at least one of the other Clochs Mór was among those stolen from Inishfeirm.”

Aithne’s face went grim. “That’s a strong accusation,” she responded. “Aron is stubborn and foolish. He thinks mostly of himself. But you call him a traitor to Inish Thuaidh now. And
that
is something I find hard to believe.”

“I know what I saw,” Jenna answered. She gestured at the sullen orange embers of the pyre. “I’m also realizing, now, how the loss of someone you love can mark and change you. And your brother’s right: I was responsible for that. I bear the blame.”

Aithne said nothing. Her gaze went from Jenna to the pyre. Finally, she placed her hand over her Cloch Mór. “I’ve been told the name of this cloch is Scáil,” she said. “ ‘Reflection,’ because it steals the power from another Cloch Mór and uses that force to defeat the attack. Árón gave the cloch to me, after I returned from meeting you at Inishfeirm. He said that it had been in our clan for centuries, but though he was eldest and it belonged rightfully to him, he had another. I used the cloch with Árón so that I could learn to understand how it worked. In those few minutes when our clochs were linked and struggling against each other, I also saw Árón’s mind mirrored in my own.” She paused, taking a slow breath and looking away from Jenna. “I saw the rot in his soul,” she continued. “I don’t think you made him that way, Jenna. I think Cianna’s death only exposed that vein within him and gave him an excuse to turn to it more and more. If the Rí Ard promised Árón that he would be made Rí in Dún Kiil, then my brother might well listen and betray kin, clan, and oath. But I still hope not. I still hope that there’s some other reason why he would tolerate Mac Ard’s presence here.”

Aithne sighed. She glanced up at the sky, then down at her cloch. “We don’t have much time, Holder,” she said. “And whatever my brother is or whatever he plans, you will need Lámh Shábhála. Let’s use the mage-lights while we can, and worry afterward.”

The day dawned surprisingly clear and warm. The field workers came out from Glenn Aill, staying well away from the encampment over which flew the banner of Dún Kiil and Rí MacBrádaigh. Of Árón Ó Dochartaigh and his people, there was no sign. Jenna let Lámh Shábhála open slightly; in the wave of cloch-vision she felt no other Clochs Mór aside from those with the Banrion and Máister Cléurach. If Árón and Mac Ard were still lurking in the area, they weren’t where they could immediately attack.

Ennis’ pyre still smoldered in the field, wispy tendrils of smoke rising from the ash. “Holder?”

Jenna turned to see Aithne and Máister Cléurach already mounted on their horses. The attendants were packing the last of the supplies onto the pack animals and the Banrion held the reins of Jenna’s horse. “It’s time to go back to Dún Kiil,” Aithne said. “We need to make plans. I’ll make certain that the Comhairle puts a watch on our coast immediately, but I don’t have much hope that we’ll catch Mac Ard before he returns to Talamh an Ghlas and tells the Rí Ard what’s happened here. If you’re right and my brother has allied himself with the Rí Ard and the Tuatha, then we can expect them to attack soon. Possibly before the Festival of Gheimhri and winter. I’ve been talking with Máister Cléurach; he wants you to go back to Inishfeirm at least through the month of Softwood to continue your study with Lámh Shábhála.”