Holder of Lightning (74 page)

Mac Ard and O Liathain looked at each other; O Liathain had risen shakily to his feet again. His voice, even through the fear, was still oily and smooth and dangerous. “That’s what we all want, isn’t it, Holder? But it wasn’t us that started this, after all. After Lár Bhaile . . .” A shrug; a glance at Aithne. “Even the Banrion understands that, I’m sure. After all, Cianna was your niece.” His gaze went back to Jenna, but he kept glancing at the others. “Killing us also won’t end the war, Holder. It will only convince everyone of how dangerous you are.
Everyone.
”

Jenna was trembling now.
“I give you a gift for the sake of my children, though I don’t know if you are capable of using it . . .”
Jenna closed her eyes, trying to stop the buzzing in her head. Her scarred arm felt as if it were aflame, the pain crawling along the lines the mage-light had carved into her flesh; she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. She could tell that the clochs wanted to return to where they had been; it was only Lámh Shábhála holding them here. It was as if she had lifted all five of them into the air: if she let go, they would return, falling back in stantly to Dún Kiil; but the effort of holding them was draining her.

“You are Tanaise Ríg,” she said to O Liathain, and her voice was a shout, tearing at her throat. “You will be Rí Ard one day. You
can
end this. You will end it, or—” Jenna stopped.

“Or you will kill him?” Mac Ard finished for her. He stepped forward, putting himself between Jenna and the Tanaise Ríg. One side of his mouth lifted. “I’m sure you could, Jenna. That seems to be your answer for any dis agreement. Kill me, kill the Tanaise Ríg. Then what hap pens when the Banrion or your new husband or the Máister do something you don’t like. Do you kill them also?”

“Be quiet!”
Jenna shouted at Mac Ard, wondering if he could even hear her over the shrilling, singing energy that filled her. The cloch pulled at her, struggling to be free of her grasp. The strain of holding them here was too much, too much.

“Don’t you see?” Mac Ard continued, and he was no longer talking to her but the others. “We are dealing with a rogue Holder. That isn’t something I want to admit since Jenna’s the daughter of the woman I love, but none of us can deny it. She’s a danger to everyone around her. She can—she
will
—kill those she perceives as standing against her. She is mad. How long before it’s one or all of you that she turns on?”

“Shut up!”
Jenna roared at him. She ached to strike at him.

Mac Ard glanced at her, almost pityingly. “I love her mam,” he said to all of them. “I would have loved Jenna as a daughter, if she would have let me. I tried to be a guide for her, tried to be like a da. But she rejected all of that. Even her mam is frightened of her now—she would tell you that if she were here. Holding Lámh Shábhála has been too much for Jenna. It’s turned her fey.”

“No!”
Jenna lashed at Mac Ard with the denial, the power arcing around him, and throwing him backward so that he slammed into the base of the statue. He fell on his side on the ground. He spat blood.

“End this?” Mac Ard said, speaking not to her but to the others. He wiped at his mouth, trailing red over the sleeve of his léine. “Aye, we
can
end this, if all of us work together. Lámh Shábhála is strong, but not as strong as all five of us.”

Mac Ard struggled back up, one hand on the centuries-blurred stone of the statue, the other still holding his cloch. His hair was matted and bloody, and his dark eyes were intent on Jenna. She could feel him reaching for the energy within his cloch. She started to reach for it as well, knowing she could stop him, knowing that it didn’t matter that O Liathain was preparing to attack as well. But the others . . . Aithne was staring at her, and Máister Cléurach, and Mac Eagan. In the charged atmosphere of Lámh Shábhála, she could
hear
them, could feel their doubt and hesitation.

“Aye,” O Liathain said. “If we are together, one of us will be the new Holder, and I promise this as well: however it ends, whichever one of us takes Lámh Shábhála, I will take the armies of the Tuatha home. Remove the Mad Holder, and we will have peace.”

There was the same hunger in all of them. Despite the strong ties to their own clochs, the lust to hold Lámh Sháb hála was still greater. Mac Ard knew the desire better than any and had tapped it. Jenna felt the change. No one spoke, but in that moment, four clochs attacked as one. The strands running from them through Lámh Shábhála to the mage-lights brightened and came together in Jenna’s mind as if like a sinuous, multicolored dragon. The mage-demon snarled near the statue, fire burned near her, storm clouds gathered and lightnings flickered overhead, even a pale copy of Lámh Shábhála appeared.

They came at her at once. Jenna tried to hold them, tried to turn the energy but still it came, the mage-creature raking claws over her, fireballs slamming into her, the storm thundering . . .

A creature of fire arose, standing in front of Jenna, and it leaped at the mage-creature, taking it down. “I promised I would stand with you no matter what,” MacEagan’s voice said. “My wife.”

With MacEagan’s sudden defense, Jenna felt momentary doubt grip the others. Their attack, for a moment, faltered. It was enough.

Jenna imagined her hand, seizing each of the Cloch Mórs and strangling the link to the power of the mage-lights, spilling the energy within them. Savage, unfocused energy exploded, striking the earth around them, scoring the black rock of the statue, charring the trees at the edge of the clearing, hissing over the cliff into the cold ocean. Jenna held them all, and they could not escape.

“You’ve all betrayed me,” she said into their fear and despair. “You’ve all shown your true faces. Now . . . now is
my
time.”

They were huddled together: O Liathain, Mac Ard, Máister Cléurach, Aithne. Jenna reached out with Lámh Shábhála; behind them, the statue of An Phionós shuddered, tilting as she ripped it from the ground that had held it for so long. She brought it high overhead, dirt and rocks falling from the encrusted base. Its shadow was dark and massive. In Jenna’s head, the dead Holders shouted:
“Let it fall . . . kill them . . . you must smash them to end the threat . . .”
And Riata’s voice:
“. . . you must live with what you do . . .”

“All I need do is release the monument,” she told Mac Ard and the others, “and this is over. Do you think, Ta naise Ríg, that your armies will stay when I return your broken and crushed body to them? Will they continue to fight when they see the full might of Lámh Shábhála before them, or will they flee back to their Tuatha like scolded dogs? Tiarna Mac Ard, I won’t have to worry about you ever again. Banrion, Máister Cléurach, I won’t have to wonder whether your advice and actions are intended to help me or yourselves. I’ll demonstrate to everyone—
everyone
—that the Holder of Lámh Shábhála is not to be trifled with.”

The energy within her could no longer be held. Jenna shuddered with the effort of holding it. With a cry half of fury and half of pain, she smashed the statue down with all her pent-up anger. The cliffside shuddered and rocks and boulders fell away into the sea. The crash was deafening, the impact so hard that the massive stone of the statue itself cracked, a fissure opening along the creature’s back.

Jenna sobbed.

The others stared at the statue, now plunged at an odd angle into the ground back where it had been. None of them spoke. None of them dared.

Finally, Jenna took a breath. “There is always a choice, and we cloud-mages have chosen the path of vengeance and death too many times already. I choose another. I was told that the First Holder can sometimes change the course of her time, and perhaps that can be done without the Scrúdú. Tanaise Ríg . . .”

His voice was small. “Holder?”

“You said that no matter how this ended, you would take your armies back. It’s ended, and I charge you to keep that pledge and to add to it: swear that you will never lead another army here to Inish Thuaidh. Will you do that?”

“Do I have a choice?” His face was grim and twisted, as if he were tasting sour milk. He glared at her. “Aye, Holder,” he answered. “You have my word.”

“Then go and keep your oath.” Jenna closed her eyes for a moment. In the cloch-vision, she found the thread of his Cloch Mór and released it from her hand, letting it free. She heard a gasp and a cry, and there was a sense of something torn away from her, leaving her weak. When she opened her eyes again, O Liathain was no longer there.

“Máister Cléurach?” The old man would not look at her. “Stormbringer fits you. Take your gloomy presence back to Inishfeirm, with your pledge that you will remain there for the rest of your time.”

Máister Cléurach nodded; Jenna released him and with a crackle of distant lightning, he was gone, and with him, more of the power of the clochs.

“And what of me?” Aithne asked. A wry smile touched her lips. “Holder, I’d tell you that I was sorry, but that would be false. I made my choice, too.”

Jenna’s eyes were still closed from the effort of releasing Máister Cléurach. Wearily, she forced them open. “Would you make it again?”

The smile wavered, then steadied. “I tell you ‘no’ as I stand here and I mean it. But I don’t expect you to believe that. And if the moment came again, in a different time and place, who knows?”

“That, at least, is honest,” Jenna answered. She took a long breath, considering. “The Comhairle must elect a new Rí,” she said finally. “Once I would have said that you should take your husband’s place and simply be Banrion. But not anymore. I ask for your pledge that the Comhairle elect someone more suited to the task.”

Aithne glanced at MacEagan before answering. “I give you my word,” she said.

Jenna turned to MacEagan, holding out her left hand to him. She hugged him once, fiercely. “Husband,” she said, smiling. “I would send you back with the Banrion, with my thanks for your help.”

MacEagan grinned. “It was my duty,” he answered. “And my desire.” He nodded to Mac Ard, going somber. “But I don’t want to leave you with him.”

“I hold him,” Jenna answered, “and you’re needed more in Dún Kiil. Alby will be worried.”

“Then send me there, and I’ll do what should be done.”

Again, Jenna submerged herself in the cloch-vision, find ing Aithne and Kyle and loosing them from Lámh Shábhála’s grasp. Their departure burned her with its swiftness. Now the mage-energy no longer filled her, and she could feel the pain of her body: the wounds, the ravagements of wielding Lámh Shábhála, the weariness from lack of sleep and worry, the loss and grief.

She opened her eyes. Mac Ard stared at her. “So it’s just the two of us,” he said. “What do you ask of me, Holder? What is
my
punishment?”

“Be my mam’s husband,” Jenna answered. Exhaustion throbbed in her voice. The gift given to her was almost gone, and Jenna felt only relief. “Marry her.”

“That’s all?”

Jenna nodded. It was too much effort to speak. She couldn’t hold Mac Ard’s cloch much longer; it shivered in her mind, struggling.

“Then I will do that. I give you my word.” Mac Ard sniffed, wiping his bloodied lips with his sleeve. He shook his head. “You should not be the Holder, Jenna,” he said. “Everything you do tells me that. You’re weak.”

Jenna’s cheeks colored. Her lips tightened. “Leave me, then,” she said. She started to release him, to send him back as she had the others. But where the rest had departed willingly, Mac Ard did not. His cloch remained, burning red before her, the glow growing rather than diminishing. “You’re too weak,” she heard his voice repeat, almost sadly. “Especially right now. But I will keep my word to you, Jenna. Take that with you to the Mother-Creator as some comfort. I will marry your mam, afterward.”

She felt his cloch open and turn its power toward her. “No!” she screamed at him, but an inferno had already erupted. The mage-energy licked hungrily at her, the heat taking her breath. Mac Ard was sending everything toward her, emptying his cloch. She tried to throw up shields but they were weak and late, the fire burning through them in an instant. There was little left in Lámh Shábhála, and Jenna knew that if she miscalculated here, if she did not use enough of what remained to her, then Mac Ard would win. He would take Lámh Shábhála from her—he would kill her.

He would kill the life inside her. He would kill all that was left of Ennis.

“No!” Jenna screamed into the assault. She sent herself spiraling deep into the cloch, gathering all that she could of the mage-energy. There was no subtlety or finesse to her response; it was a blunt weapon, wielded with all the remaining strength she had. Even as the fires surrounded her, she sent it out, hurtling multicolored lightnings into the red center of Mac Ard.

They struck, blinding her. She heard him scream as the fire of his cloch vanished.

For several seconds, there was no sound but the wind and the faint crash of the waves far below, though her ears still rang with the furious sound of the clochs. Jenna blinked into the starlight above Bethiochnead. Mac Ard was lying on the ground a few feet away. She went to him, looking down into the open, staring, sightless eyes. His mouth was open, his chest still. Kneeling beside the body, she closed his eyes and took the Cloch Mór from his fisted hand.

“This,”
she said, “was never yours.”

Jenna straightened. The movement made her momentarily dizzy, and she had to close her eyes to stop the world from spinning around her. She wanted nothing more than to collapse. But she couldn’t. Not yet. Not here.

Only the dregs of the mage-energy were left. Lámh Sháb hála couldn’t take her back to Dun Kiil or return Mac Ard’s corpse. She lifted her head, looking toward the moonlit oaks ringing the cliffside. “Protector Lomán!” she called. “I know you’re there watching. Step out!” There was no answer for several breaths and she started to call again. Then two figures emerged from the shadows and began walking slowly toward her, one of them leaning on an oaken staff. The Bunús Muintir stopped several feet from her.