Holder of Lightning (68 page)

“I still haven’t made a decision,” Jenna answered. She paused, took a breath. “Tiarna,” she finished.

MacEagan gave a sniff that might have been a chuckle. “How can I help you make that decision, then? Tell me what you need.”

“There’s nothing you can give me. It’s something I have to feel. Back in Ballintubber . . . My marriage would never have been arranged; I wasn’t important enough for that. It’s the poor who can most easily marry for love, and I always expected that, if I married, it would be that way. I expected that we would have little more than the land we worked, that it would be hard, but it would be all right because we would care for each other. This—” Jenna swept a hand through the air.

“You can still have love,” MacEagan said. “I don’t intend to keep you from that.”

“But it would always have to be a secret love. You might know, and perhaps Aithne, but it would have to be hidden from everyone else.”

“Aye,” MacEagan responded. He blinked. “As mine is. Now.” He took another sip of the whiskey and set the glass down once more. “I’ve already given you my trust, Holder. I’ve already made myself vulnerable to you so that you would feel safe. I can’t force you into this marriage, and wouldn’t even if I could. But I do think it could be advantageous to us both. I will give you one other promise—if one day you find a love that you can’t bear to keep hidden from the rest of the world, then I will go with you to the Draíodóir and sign the dissolution. All you have to do is ask.”

“You say that now.”

“I’ll put it in writing, if you wish.”

Jenna could feel her hands trembling. She placed her right hand over her left, trying to conceal the nervousness. In the three days since the Banrion had made the suggestion back in Inishfeirm, she had agonized over this. The night the Banrion had come, she’d gone to the harbor and called Thraisha, but no matter how wide she cast the vision of Lámh Shábhála, she couldn’t find her. The Holders within the cloch na thintrí had been useless, yammering contradictory advice. She had found Riata in the babble and spoken with him, but he had only sighed.
“The Daoine way isn’t ours,”
he said, more than once, and didn’t seem to be able to comprehend the implications, so foreign to his culture. She’d called her da from the carving of the blue seal, and he had listened sympathetically, but in the end all he could tell her was to do what she thought best. She wished more than once that she could talk with her mam again—she wondered what Maeve’s advice might be, caught up as she was in the same snare—but her mam was with Mac Ard. She closed her eyes every night and called to Ennis’ spirit, trying to bring him to her to tell her what to do . . . but the only answer had been the wind and the steady, relentless sound of the surf against the rocks.

“You are the only one who can make the decision,”
Riata had said finally.
“You are the one who has to live it.”

“Write it, then,” Jenna said. “And we will marry, Kyle MacEagan.”

“Please leave us, Keira,” MacEagan said to Jenna’s attendant. The young woman—no older than Jenna herself—lowered her gaze, curtsied quickly, and vanished, closing the door to the bedchamber behind her. MacEagan smiled at Jenna, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling her night robe tightly around her neck. He held a bottle of wine and two goblets.

“I thought I would come and say good night, Jenna,” he said. He remained standing at the door. He nodded toward the polished wood behind him. “You can trust her. Keira’s been with me since she was twelve; she knows how to keep her mouth shut and eyes averted when they need to be. Or if you have someone else you feel you can trust more . . . ?”

Jenna shook her head, mute. MacEagan—
my husband,
she thought.
I wonder if I will ever stop shivering when I hear that
—continued to smile. “ ‘Bantiarna Jenna MacEa gan of Be an Mhuilinn, Holder of Lámh Shábhála.’ I imagine that will sound strange to you for a while.”

“I think it may always sound strange,” Jenna answered.

“If asked, Keira will swear that I spent our wedding night here in this chamber,” MacEagan said. “But Alby has put together a room for me just across the hall. I thought . . .” He lifted the wine and gold-rimmed goblets. “We should at least share a drink together first. I would like that, if you’re willing. It’s been a long and tiring day for both of us.”

That was certainly true enough. Banrion Aithne had given Jenna a clóca of finest white silk that had come all the way from Thall Mór-roinn. Jenna had let Keira and the other attendants dress her, feeling numb and somehow detached, as if she were watching this happen to someone else. The wedding had been in the Great Hall of Dún Kiil Keep; she entered the hall to find the Rí and Banrion, the entire Comhairle, Máister Cléurach and several of the Bráthairs of the Order, and many of the minor Riocha of the city in attendance. The dripping of the stones punctu ated the droning voice of the Draíodóir brought from the Mother-Creator’s temple to conduct the ceremony. Jenna stood next to MacEagan, not truly hearing the words, and when the Draíodóir handed her the traditional oaken branch to break, symbolizing her departure from her previous family, the dry
crack
of the stick had sounded impossibly loud and she had dropped the half she was to give to MacEagan, startled. The party afterward had been intermi nable. A singer had begun the
Song of Máel Armagh,
his baritone voice so much like Coelin’s that Jenna felt her breath go shallow for a moment. The food in front of her seemed to taste of ashes and paper. A seemingly eternal line of well-wishers passed their table. Jenna had wondered what they were thinking behind their carefully smiling faces, their choreographed movements, their polite and empty words. . . .

MacEagan poured the wine and handed one of the goblets to Jenna. She took it, but stared down into the well of purple liquid without drinking. She felt as if she wanted to cry, but her eyes were almost painfully dry. “I don’t feel much like celebrating,” she said.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Jenna. Truthfully.” She glanced up; there was genuine empathy in his face, a distress that carved deeper the lines around his eyes. “I realize I can’t ever fill the void Ennis left in you; perhaps one day someone will. But I do promise that in the meantime I won’t make the emptiness larger.”

“What does that mean?”

He sat on the bed near her, leaving a hand’s width between them. When she moved away, he remained where he was. “It means that I’ll stand with you even if others won’t. The truth is, when the time comes to finally choose sides—and it’s coming sooner than anyone except perhaps Aithne, Kianna, and I believe—neither you nor I know where the final lines will be drawn and who will stand where. People do strange things when they think it’s to their advantage, or when it seems to be the only course they can take.”

“Like marrying someone they barely know.”

The corner of his lips twitched; it might have been a smile. “That’s one example, aye. You began a new age when you woke the clochs na thintrí, Jenna. We still don’t know the rules of it yet, or how it will change us. We only know that it
will
change us.” He lifted his goblet. “So would you drink with me? To the future beyond the Filleadh.”

Jenna felt the infant stir within her, a fluttering deep in her stomach. She wondered what kind of world the child would be coming into.
Not one I thought a child of mine would have a year ago, nor one I would have chosen . . .

“To the future,” she said.

The clink of the goblets touching gilded rims seemed as loud as the crash of a closing door.

57

The Battle of Dún Kiil

“I
M so scared,”she’dadmittedtoMacEaganthatmornIing. “I don’t know if we can stop them.” She didn’t mention Thraisha’s dream, which had haunted her more and more in the last few weeks: the images of death and loss. She hadn’t mentioned that to anyone, but she felt the certainty of it, more firmly each day. She felt as if she were walking a path that was already set for her, unable to turn aside or change it. Part of her, at least, was already reconciled to the inevitability of failure.

The first signs of the coming battle were the white sails on the horizon beyond the arms of the Inner Harbor, well out in Dún Kiil Bay.

They knew the armada was coming from Falcarragh—their own fast scout ships had come scurrying back as soon as the fleet had been sighted. The first battle of the war had already been fought and lost: the much smaller fleet of Inish Thuaidh had engaged the enemy as soon as it rounded Falcarragh Head and turned west toward the island. The tattered remnants of the Inish fleet—five ships of twelve oars, one of twenty: their rams broken, their single sails torn, the hulls dark with smoke and blood—had landed at the end of An Ceann Caol a week ago; an exhausted courier had staggered into the keep with the news two nights afterward.

And now the sails could be seen in the morning light.

Jenna stood in the golden dawn with MacEagan, Aithne, Kianna Cíomhsóg, and Rí MacBrádaigh. They gathered on the south tower, gazing out over the town, the bay, and the sea. The wind was laden with the scent of salt and fish. Soon, Jenna suspected, the primary smell would be the coppery odor of death.

The sails . . . Jenna could count at least twenty of them; more seemed to appear every few minutes. “Forty oars, at least two hundred troops on each,” MacEagan said, answering the unasked question. “Perhaps a few less than they started out with, if our ships were at all successful in ramming and sinking theirs. But I imagine that we’re looking at a force of up to ten thousand men.”

Ten thousand
. . . It seemed an inconceivable number. It seemed even more inconceivable to imagine such a horde in battle.

Everyone glanced down from the ramparts to Dún Kiil itself. The town bristled with troops and weapons. Officers shouted orders to trained gardai as well as conscripts from the surrounding lands. The town steamed with the smokes of the forges, the smithies hammering out weapons even as the invaders approached. Catapults sat on the harbor front and out on the headlands, ready to hurl fiery boulders at the Rí Ard’s ships as they approached.

But there were not ten thousand here. There was less than half that.

“How many Clochs Mór do they have?” Kianna Cíom hsóg asked. The bantiarna’s sword was already unsheathed, clenched in a muscular hand. Her bright red hair hung braided and long, shimmering against the dull leather armor around her torso. Aithne shrugged.

“The runner said that the captains claimed there were at least three single hands of them used during the sea battle. But that could be an exaggeration.”

Or an undercount . . .
None of them would say it. Jenna remembered the night of the Filleadh and the power she had unleashed.
Three double hands of Cloch Mórs were opened then . . .
MacEagan had one, as did Aithne, Máister Cléurach, Ennis’ friend Mundy and one other Bráthair of the Order. One single hand. The Rí Ard could have two double hands and more.

One of them, she was certain, would be Árón Ó Dochartaigh. He would be out there, as would Mac Ard and the Tanaise Ríg, Nevan O Liathain . . .
Ironic, isn’t it, how firmly you turned the little bastard down when he offered you marriage. Won’t he be amused to find you married here, when you could have been the Tanaise Banrion, to one day be Banrion Ard . . .

So much would have been different, if she’d accepted. She might never have met Ennis again, but he would be alive. She would never have gone to Thall Coill, and Sean coim would still be walking in Doire Coill with Dúnmharú on his shoulder. Maybe that would be better.

You can’t go back and change any of it. That’s not within even Lámh Shábhála’s power.

“We should retreat now,” Rí MacBrádaigh muttered, staring down at his troops. The Rí’s eyes were wide as he turned to look back at the others gathered with him, and his dry white hair was wild in the wind. “We could leave a small force here to hold them back and give us time to rejoin the families we’ve already sent back to the mountains.” He looked from one to another of them, as if searching their faces for some agreement. Jenna turned away so she didn’t have to see him. “Doesn’t that make sense?” he asked. “We could harry them from the mountains, cut them down bit by bit when it was safe, maybe find a better place to make a stand, maybe even Sliabh Míchinniúint again . . .”

“Which we’ll do if it becomes necessary,” Aithne told him, speaking to him like a stern parent to a misbehaving child. “Not all of them will land here. And none of their Holders are trained cloudmages, nor do they have Lámh Shábhála.” Jenna felt everyone look to her with that pronouncement. She could think of nothing to say.
I’m not your salvation,
she wanted to say.
Don’t look at me as if I were.
She felt ill, nauseous. She placed her hand on her stomach, pressing it tightly.

“We’ll meet them as they land,” Kianna said. “I need to go speak with those who will be fighting with steel. Banrion, I leave the strategies for the cloudmages to you. Rí MacBrádaigh, will you go with me? Our people would like to see their leader.”

“I . . . I don’t know what to tell them,” the Rí stammered, looking frightened, and Kianna exchanged glances with Aithne.

“I’ll tell you what to say,” she told the man. “All you’ll need to do is keep a brave face on.” She gestured toward the keep; the Rí, with a final look back at the sails on the horizon, shuffled slowly toward the archway to the balcony, with Kianna following.

Banrion Aithne sighed. “We shouldn’t stay here, that’s for certain,” she said. “The keep will be an obvious target for the clochs. Better that they not know where we are. Jenna, where do you want to make a stand?”

“Down at the harbor,” Jenna answered. “We’ll need to be close as they come in so they’re within range of our clochs; if we must, we can retreat back up toward the keep and the mountains with the rest of the troops.”

Aithne, Jenna knew, could have blamed her for this.
Maybe she was right, all along. Perhaps if I’d listened to her, if we’d made the attack on Falcarragh first before the Rí Ard was ready as she and the Comhairle wanted . . . She could say that it’s my fault, that the Rí Ard wouldn’t come here at all except for me . . .
But there was no accusation in Aithne’s voice or face, only a solemn acceptance of their task. “Then that’s where I’ll stand as well. I’ll tell Máister Cléurach to meet us there.” With that, she swept away toward the keep, leaving Jenna and MacEagan alone.