Holder of Lightning (64 page)

Her hand closed around Lámh Shábhála. She willed the cloch na thintrí to open, and felt the power go surging forth.

She was still standing near the cliffside, but the land now ended several feet farther out. And the statue . . .

It was no longer ruined and half missing. The legs and chest rippled with carved tendons; the feet were cat-clawed, seeming to tear into the rock on which the creature sat. The body was scaled, feathered, and brightly painted: the red of new-shed blood and the blue of a child’s eyes, the simmering yellow of the yolk of a hen’s egg. The expanse of wings spread majestically from its back, ribbed and fingered like some gigantic bat’s, with black, leathery skin pouched like sails between the ribs. The tail was complete, with a barbed, bulging tip at its end.

The head had a long muzzle, the mouth partially open to reveal twin rows of daggered white teeth. The ears were like a cat’s also, though between them were scales like staggered rows of painted shields; its eyebrows were two fans of spines, meeting above the muzzle and running back over the middle of the skull. The eyes were frighteningly human; the large, expressive eyes of a child, and as Jenna gazed at the statue, the eyes blinked and opened. Though the mouth didn’t move, a low, stentorian voice purred.

“So. Another one comes after all these years.”

Jenna could feel the power flooding from the statue; above, the mage-lights curled, visible even in the bright sunlight. The trees of the forest beyond writhed and swayed as if they, too, were alive and capable of pulling roots from ground and capering about. “Who are you?” Jenna asked. Her voice sounded thin and weak in this charged atmosphere.

The eyes blinked once more. A shimmering change rippled through the body from spiny crest to curled-claw feet and when it passed, the thing was no longer painted stone but living flesh. It stretched like a cat waking from a nap, the wings snapping and sending a rush of wind past Jenna. “I am An Phionós,” it said. “I am the First, and you are now in my world.”

Its voice was Ennis’.

“Stop that!” Jenna shouted at the creature, and it reared its great head, the mouth curling in a near-laugh, the eyes flashing.

“Ah, my dear Jenna. Do you think you’re so strong that you can command my obedience?” it asked with seeming mirth, still with Ennis’ inflection and tone. Then the mocking amusement left, along with the memory of Ennis’ voice. An Phionlós hissed, steam venting from its nostrils. Mage lights flickered around it in a bright storm. “Are you stronger than me, Jenna? Do you remember Peria’s fate? Do you remember how she screamed as I crushed the life from her? I give you this boon: release Lámh Shábhála now, before it’s too late.”

Jenna’s fisted hand trembled around the cloch. She could feel An Phionós bending its will to her, insinuating itself into her muscles and prying at her fingers, loosening them. Yet with the intrusion she also caught a glimmer of the entity’s mind, and she realized that, despite its fury and insolence, An Phionós didn’t actively seek her death. It had no choice as to how it must act. “Why do you do this?” she asked, gasping as she fought to keep hold of the cloch.

An Phionós laughed, a bitter and wild sound. “One should never offend a god,” it answered. “Their revenge is swift and eternal, and that’s why I sit here forever waiting. You, at least, have a choice—let go of the cloch and live, Jenna, or continue to hold it and die.”

“And if I hold it and don’t die?”

“That won’t happen. But if you do . . . there are depths within Lámh Shábhála that you have only glimpsed, and the shaping of this entire age could be yours.” Again the laugh. “I hope you don’t think that’s a gift. It would be the greatest burden of all.” An Phionós bent down close to her. The scent of rotting meat drifted from its mouth. “Re lease the cloch, Jenna. I have nothing for you but pain.” An Phionós’ hold on her hand vanished; it sat back on its haunches again. “Make your choice now.”

Jenna glanced wildly about her and An Phionlós snorted. “Your friend can’t help you. Look . . .” The air shimmered, and for a moment Jenna caught a glimpse of Seancoim, his mouth open in a shout, trying to push forward toward her as the mage-lights threw him back. Then he was gone again. “He doesn’t see what you see. He sees only your struggle, not me.” An Phionós’ front paws kneaded the earth, tearing at the limestone. His voice was Ennis’ again, and now Ennis’ eyes gazed down at her from An Phionós’ face, a single tear rising and sliding down a scaled cheek to splash on the rocks. “I don’t want you to die, my love. Don’t do this.”

“Stop!”
Jenna screamed again. She raised the cloch, pulling the chain from around her neck and lifting it high. Her fist tightened around it. “Here! Here’s your answer.”

An Phionós bared its teeth. The wings spread wide; the claws gouged new furrows in the stone. Mage-lights snapped and shattered around it. “Then we begin,” it said. It drew in a great breath, pulling in the mage-lights as if they were smoke. Its neck arced, the head reared back and it exhaled in a roar, blinding light rushing from its mouth. Jenna reflexively interposed a wall with Lámh Shábhála; the mage-lights crashed upon it like a furious tidal wave. Jenna stumbled back against the assault, the pressure of it driving her to her knees as An Phionós vomited forth an unending stream of raw power. Jenna’s hand tightened around Lámh Shábhála, wrenching the cloch fully open. She imagined the wall growing, expanding, pushing back: slowly, she stood. She thought of the wall as a mirror-smooth lake, reflecting back what came to it as the Banrion’s cloch had done. The wall shifted with the thought and she found herself wielding a weapon as the shield gathered in the energy thrown at her and hurled it back at An Phi onós. The beast staggered back at the first impact, roaring in wordless pain.

Then it nodded to her, as if in satisfaction. “So it won’t be simple. Good. You would have disappointed me if it had, Holder. After so many years, to be awakened only for a moment . . .”

It was pacing now, the scale-armored body striding back and forth before the hoary, vine-laden oaks: fifty feet long without the enormous barbed tail, half again as high to the crown of the head, the wings folded against its back. Then the wings opened, and a hurricane wind lashed Jenna as it took to the air, rising high above. The mage-lights encircled it like arms, burning like a second sun so that An Phionós was silhouetted against the glare.

Jenna waited for the inevitable attack: fireballs; thunderbolts of bright power; burning thickets of spears and swords; blasts of winds; demons or giants or a flight of angry dragons. None of it came.

The silver bands holding Lámh Shábhála dug into her palm. The landscape shifted around her again: she floated in a featureless void with An Phionós. The forest, the cliff, the sound of the seas, even the mage-lights—all of them were gone, though she could feel their energy supporting her. An Phionós swept its wings leisurely, circling slowly around her, and she waved her arms to follow its movement as if swimming in the emptiness.

“It’s just the two of us, Jenna,” it said, still circling. “That’s all it’s ever been. The shape of the energy doesn’t matter. Each cloch na thintrí bonds to its Holder in a different manner, in the form that a long sequence of Holders has worn into it like grooves in a road. Most Holders follow that same path because it’s easiest to see and hold to, and that’s why the clochs na thintrí tend to be used in the same way each time a new cloudmage uses them. Very few have the strength to shape the power of their cloch na thintrí in a new way, to give it a new form that might suit them better. It’s no different with Lámh Shábhála.”

“Are you intending to talk me to death?” Jenna asked.

An Phionós laughed. It stopped, hovering in front of her with slow beats of its leathery wings. “Perhaps. Do you die that easily?”

“No,” Jenna answered. “I don’t plan on dying at all.”

The teeth bared again. “No? Even to be with him?”

Now Ennis stood before her. He smiled, almost shyly, holding out his hand. “Jenna,” he said. “I wish . . . There was so much I wanted to tell you, just to say one last time that I loved you . . .”

She wanted to take that hand, wanted desperately to take him in her arms, to bruise her lips with his kisses. She started to lift her left hand, then forced it back to her side. She looked at An Phionós, not Ennis. “You can’t seduce me with false images,” she told it.

The huge, scaled head lifted. “Not false,” it said. “That
is
Ennis, or the spirit that was once him. I brought him here. He awaits you, Jenna, on the other side of death.”

“It didn’t hurt,” Ennis said to her, his familiar voice awakening a deep longing in her. “You should know that. I felt the knife move and the heat of my blood pouring out, then . . . I don’t know. It was as if I were outside myself. There was no pain, just a slow fading and a feeling of regret, and I was gone. I watched you cry over the body, Jenna, and I tried to touch you and comfort you. I tried to tell you that I was still with you, but I couldn’t. I
am
with you, Jenna, each day. And we’ll be together again.”

She listened to him, shaking her head in denial and disbe lief, and Ennis glanced over at An Phionós. “Death doesn’t hurt, Jenna. All you have to do is accept it.”

“I will make it easy and quick,” An Phionós told her. A forepaw lifted, the scythes of its claws scissoring in the air. “One stroke. One quick flash . . .”

“Ennis . . .” The word was a sigh, a plea. Jenna closed her eyes, letting Lámh Shábhála’s force flow out to him. Where it touched the body, she felt strings leading back to An Phionós. She could feel An Phionós trying to push her away with its own power, but she concentrated, letting more power flow from the cloch. She formed the energy into hands and ripped away the strands of connection even as An Phionós tried to stop her. Ennis wailed, his body went pinwheeling away like a rag in a storm, finally vanishing in a point of white light that made Jenna squint and throw her hand in front of her face. A wave of intense cold flew past her.

“It’s just us,” Jenna told An Phionós. “No ghosts. No lies. No tricks.”

“There’s no trick in what I said,” it told her. “I
can
make this painless and fast for you. You simply have to allow it.”

“No.”

She could hear the shrug in its voice. “Then it will be the other way.” Muscles bunched and wings flexed. An Phionós stooped like a hawk about to swoop down on a helpless field mouse. The wings folded in and the apparition fell in a rush, plummeting toward her. Jenna raised her cloch, concentrating its force on the onrushing creature, pushing back at it. Jenna grunted with the impact as An Phionós seemed to dissolve, slipping through the web of force like water through a sieve. Jenna searched for it with the eyes of the cloch:
there!
She hurled lightning at the mage-glow that was An Phionós, but it swept the bolts aside.

Frantically, she created a creature like An Phionós, molding it from mage-stuff and launching it at the creature. They collided in a snarl of talons and wings and teeth, and Jenna felt the concussion as if it were her own body that smashed into her opponent. She was flung backward—screaming, her eyes rolling back in her head, a red-shot blackness threatening to drown her—and she fought to hold onto consciousness. Her own fingers curled and slashed as she gouged at An Phionós, and for a moment, the creature retreated. Jenna breathed, gulping and tasting blood.

“This is good,” it said. “Usually the Daoine are so weak.” An Phionós looked at her, and it seemed to Jenna that its eyes saw past the surface of her skin and deep into her being. “But you’re not just Daoine, are you? Part of you is also Saimhóir, and much farther back, there is also Bunús Muintir. Ah, that surprises you, does it? You’re a mongrel, and mongrels are often the strongest.”

Then An Phionós came again with a roar; Jenna fought back in the form of the mage-creature, but An Phionós was immensely strong, far more powerful than any of the clochs she had encountered. In the space of a few breaths, her mage-creature was shredded and fading like smoke.

Lámh Shábhála was nearly empty; there was nothing left but the dregs of power. Jenna was no longer floating in nothingness. The hard gray rocks of Bethiochnead pressed into her back, and she lay looking up at a storm-lashed sky.

An Phionós hovered over her. “Now,” it whispered, “even the mongrel falls.”

Jenna threw a final bolt at the creature. The attack was weak and slow; An Phionós pushed the flickering brilliance aside contemptuously. “You’re an empty vessel, Jenna,” it told her. “Do you remember Peria? Do you remember how I crushed her? Do you remember the sound of bones cracking and splitting and ripping through flesh? That’s what will happen to you now.”

An Phionós descended. It picked up Jenna in its talons as she beat futilely at the beast with her fists, the scales scraping the flesh from her knuckles. She felt the knife-edge points digging into her flesh. Its head came down; its too-human eyes regarded her almost sadly. “You came so close,” it said. “Closer than you know. Perhaps . . .”

Its claws closed around her, She felt them begin to tighten, felt her ribs crack. An Phionós was inside her head now, its awareness flooding her. She was still holding Lámh Shábhála. Mage-energy crackled inside her with An Phi onós’ intrusion. “Now,” it said gently. “You’ll be with him again. I promise you that much . . .”

The pressure against her body increased. Jenna screamed in terror and pain. The mage-energy burned her. She tried to push back with Lámh Shábhála, but there was nothing there. She took her awareness deep into the cloch, deeper, to the utter bottom of the well, and there . . .

A glimpse . . . A hope . . .

“No!”

The pressure was suddenly released. An Phionós dropped her, and Jenna gasped in pain and surprise as she fell back to the ground, struggling up to a sitting position with her legs folded underneath her. The beast coiled above her, the wings and body blocking the sky.
“Why did you come here?”
it raged at her. “I can take
your
life if you give it to me, but I can’t take a life that doesn’t come here willingly—She whose servant I am won’t allow that. Why would you do this?”