Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  The wind lifted her hair and brushed the forest with an invisible hand. She thought she could hear voices, singing not far away: a low, susurrant chant that rose and fell, the long notes holding words that lingered just on the edge of understanding. Jenna leaned into the night, listening, caught in the chant, wanting to get closer and hear what they were singing . . .

  . . . aye, to get closer . . .

  . . . to hear them, to touch their gnarled trunks . . .

  . . . to be with them . . .

  Beating wings boomed in her ears: Dúnmharú touched her shoulder with his clawed feet and flew off again, startling her. Jenna blinked, realizing that she stood under the gloom of the trees at the bottom of the slope, a hundred strides or more from the cavern, and she had no idea how she’d come to be there. She whirled around, suddenly frightened at the realization that she hadn’t even realized that she was walking away. The last few minutes, now that she tried to recall them, were hazy and indistinct in her mind.

  Small with distance, Seancoim beckoned at the cavern entrance, and Jenna ran back up the hill toward him, as if a hell hound were at her heels.

  “So you do hear them,” he called to her, as the crow swept around her again before settling back on the old man’s shoulder. “Some don’t, or think it’s only the wind moving the trees. But they sing, the oldest trees, the ones that were planted by the Seed-Daughter after the Mother-Creator breathed life into the bones of the land. They remember, and they still call to the old gods. It’s dangerous for those who hear: the enchantment in their old voices can hypnotize, and you’ll find yourself lost in the deepest, most dangerous parts of the wood. Most who go to listen don’t return.”

  Jenna looked over the forest, listening to the eerie, breathy sound. “Should we leave?” she asked.

  The old man shrugged. “The unwary should be careful, or those whose will isn’t strong enough. That last, at least, doesn’t describe you, now that I’ve told you the danger.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Oh, I know you well enough,” he chuckled.

  Jenna shook her head. The wind shifted and the tree-song came to them louder than before, the chant rising in pitch. “What is it they’re singing? It sounds so sad and lonely.”

  Seancoim leaned heavily on his staff, as if he were peering into the dark. “Who knows? I certainly don’t. They speak a language older than any of ours, and their concerns aren’t those of humans.” He turned, and his blind eyes stared at her. “There are other magics than the sky-magic you can capture in a cloch na thintrí,” he told her. He extended his hand toward Jenna. “Let me hold it,” he said to her.

  Jenna took a step back, clutching at the stone hidden in her skirt. “I know you have the stone,” Seancoim said. “I saw the lights over the hill there, through Dúnmharú’s eyes.” Seancoim pointed at Knobtop. “I could feel the power crackling in the sky, as it has not in many lifetimes, and I feel it now close to me. You can’t hide a cloch na thintrí from me, or from any of the Bunús Muintir. I can feel the stone. All I ask is to hold it, not to keep it. I promise that.”

  Jenna hesitated, then brought the stone out and laid it on Seancoim’s lined palm. He closed his fingers around it with a sigh. He clasped it to his breast, holding it there for several long breaths, then holding out his hand again, his fingers unfolding. “Take it,” he said. “Such a small stone . . .”

  “I’m sure it’s not powerful, like the ones the cloudmages in the songs had,” Jenna said, and Seancoim laughed.

  “Is that how you imagined them, with stones the size of their fists hung on chains around their necks, the way the songs and tales tell it?” The crow cackled with him. “Is that the source of your knowledge?”

  Jenna nodded. “You must know how to use the cloch,” she said. “You have magic, too: using the crow for your eyes, the way you broke the tiarna’s arrow or how you knew I had the stone . . .”

  “I gave you the answer just a moment ago, but evidently I need to repeat it: there are other magics than that of the sky.” He stared upward, as if looking at a scene only his blind eyes could glimpse. “Once my people knew them all: the slow, unyielding power of earth; the shimmering, soft gifts of water. Some of them we know still. Others aren’t for us humans at all, but belong to others, like the oldest of the oaks here in Doire Coill, or other creatures who are sleeping for the moment.” His chin tilted down once more, and he seemed to laugh at himself. “But you asked if I know how to use your cloch na thintrí, didn’t you? The answer to that is ‘No.’ Each stone teaches its owner in its own way; yours has already begun to teach you.”

  “You talk as if the stone were alive.”

  “Do you know that it’s not?” Seancoim answered. He smiled, a darkness where teeth once had been, the few teeth left him leaning like yellow gravestones in his gums. The wind died, and the tree-song faded to a hush, a whisper, then was gone. “There, they’ve finished. We should go inside—it’s late, and there are things walking out here that you don’t want to meet. Your tiarna will want to leave with the morning, and you need sleep after this day.”

  Jenna could feel exhaustion rise within her with Seancoim’s words. She yawned and nodded, following the man through the cavern’s entrance. Seancoim continued on into the darkness past the fire, but Jenna stopped. Her mam and Mac Ard were asleep, next to each other even though on different pallets. Her mam’s hand had trailed out from underneath her blanket, and it rested near Mac Ard’s hand, as if she were reaching for him. She could sense Seancoim’s attention on her as she stared, her breath caught in her throat. She wanted to smile, happy that her mam wasn’t ignoring Mac Ard as she had the others, and yet afraid at the same time, wondering what it might mean for her.

  “She is a woman and he a man, and both of them handsome and strong,” Seancoim whispered, his voice echoing hoarsely from the stones. “I can tell that your mam is attracted to the tiarna, even if she resists the feeling. That’s natural enough. It’s been a long time for her, hasn’t it, to feel that way about a man?”

  Jenna swallowed hard. “Aye,” she said. “A long time. I just wonder . . . Does he feel the same? After all, he’s Riocha, and we’re . . . nothing.”

  Seancoim took a step forward. Bending close, he seemed to peer at the sleeping Mac Ard with his blind eyes before rising with a groan. “I think he does, as much as he can. He’s a hidden man, this tiarna, but there’s room in him for love, and if he’s Riocha, he’s perhaps less prejudiced than many with his lineage. But—” he stopped.

  “But?”

  Seancoim shrugged. “He’s also a man with his own ambitions.”

  “How can you know all that? You can’t see . . . I mean, is that magic, too?”

  “Perhaps.” Seancoim grinned at her. “Isn’t it what you want to hear?”

  “I want my mam to be happy. That’s all.”

  “What about yourself?” he asked.

  Jenna could feel heat rising from her neck to her throat, her cheeks burning. Her mam stirred on the pallet, turning, her hand sliding away from Mac Ard. Jenna let go of the breath she was holding. Twin tears tracked down her face.

  “Too much has changed for you today,” Seancoim said. Somehow, he was standing next to her again. “Too much changed in the space of one sun.” His hand went around her shoulder. She started to pull back, then allowed herself to sink against him, the tears spilling out. His chest smelled of herbs and leather and sweat. She clung to Seancoim, weeping; still holding her, he went to the box next to his pallet. “Wait a moment,” he said, and lifted the lid. A sweet, spice-filled aroma filled the air with the movement. Inside were several small leather bags, and Seancoim shuffled through them, muttering, before snatching one up with a cry and handing it to Jenna.

  “Here,” he said. “One day, you will need this.”

  “What is it?” Jenna asked, sniffing.

  “Brew it as a tea, and drink it, and you will forget what is most painful to you,” Seancoim told her. “There are s
ome things that no one should remember, be it in song or tale or memory. When that time comes for you, you’ll know.”

  Jenna glanced again at her mam and Mac Ard. “I don’t think I want to remember today,” she said, and the tears started again. Seancoim let the lid of the box close, sat on it, then drew her to him again. They sat, and Jenna stayed with him, crying for Kesh and her home, for her innocence and for her mam, letting Seancoim rock her until sleep finally came.

  In the morning, Jenna found herself curled up on a pile of straw and old cloth close to the fire, which had dwindled to glowing coals. Seancoim’s small leather bag was still clutched in her hand. No one else was in the cavern, and pale light filtered in through the entrance. Jenna got up, put the bag in her skirt with the stone, wrapped her coat around her, and padded outside.

  Below her, the forest was wrapped in white mist and fog, the sun a hazy brightness just at the horizon. Seancoim was nowhere to be seen, but Mac Ard and Maeve were standing a few feet down the slope, talking with their heads close together. She started to go back inside, not wanting to interrupt them, but the rock under her foot tilted and fell back with a stony clunk. Maeve turned. “Jenna! Good morning, darling.”

  “ ’Morning, Mam. Where’s Seancoim?”

  “We’re not certain,” Maeve answered. “He was gone when we woke. He refilled the water bucket, though, and left some fresh berries on the shelf.”

  We’re not certain . . . Jenna nodded and found herself smiling a bit, hearing the plural. Mac Ard was smiling at her as well, teeth flashing behind the black beard, the smile slightly crooked on his face. She wanted to know what he was thinking, wanted to know that her mam would be safe with him, wanted to know that they could, perhaps, be a family.

  But she knew there could be no answer to those questions. Her bladder ached in her belly. Jenna shrugged, turned, and left them. Later, having relieved herself behind a convenient screen of boulders, she came back to find that Seancoim had returned with Dúnmharú on his shoulder.

  “. . . riders on the High Road,” he was saying to Mac Ard and Maeve. “They were tiarna—had to be, with those great war steeds, the heavy swords at their sides, and that fine clothing—but they weren’t showing colors on their clóca.”

  “Which way were they riding?” Mac Ard asked.

  “That way,” Seancoim answered, pointing south, away from where Knobtop would have been, had they been able to see it through the fog.

  Mac Ard nodded, the lines of his face deepening and a scowl touching his lips. Jenna saw his right hand tighten around the hilt of his sword. “The Connachtans are looking for us well away from Ballintubber, then, and the High Road’s not safe. I’d hoped . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “There are other ways,” Seancoim said.

  “Other ways?”

  Seancoim shrugged. The crow flapped its wings to keep its balance. “The forest you call Doire Coill goes away east and south from here, until it meets the tip of Lough Lár. A loop of the High Road passes close by again, as well, and it’s not far from there to Áth Iseal and the ford of the Duan—a few miles. No more. I can lead you there in a day and a half.”

  “You would do that for us?” Maeve asked.

  “I would do it for her,” Seancoim answered. He pointed to Jenna, his blank white eyes looking in her direction.

  “Why me?” Jenna asked.

  Seancoim gave Jenna his broken smile. “Because the Bunús Muintir have our songs and tales also.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Mac Ard said.

  “It means what it means,” Seancoim answered. The smile vanished as he looked at Mac Ard. “That’s all.”

  “I’m suspicious of those who hide their intentions in riddles,” Mac Ard retorted. “I’m especially suspicious when that person’s a Bunús Muintir.”

  Seancoim snorted. “If I wanted you dead, Tiarna Mac Ard, you would already be dead.”

  Mac Ard scowled. “Are you threatening us?”

  “It’s no threat at all. Only the truth. All I had to do was leave you where you were in the forest—that would have been enough on a night when the trees were singing. If I wanted to be more certain, I could have led you into the truly dark places farther in, or I could have poisoned the food I gave you, or murdered you while you slept, or led your enemies here to find you. I could have had the trees call you, or sent for the old spirits who haunt this place, or sent the beasts that dwell here, or used the little magic I have of my own. There were a dozen ways and more for you to die, Tiarna. I could have avenged a few of the Bunús deaths at the hands of you Daoine, if that was my intent. Yet it seems to me that you’re still breathing, because I hear you spouting paranoid nonsense. This is my home in which you walk, and it doesn’t care if you are Riocha or not, Daoine or Bunús Muintir. Those things aren’t important. They aren’t even important out there, where they often seem to be. You have no idea what you risk here. You also have no idea of the greater events in which you’ve been caught.”

  “Then tell me,” Mac Ard said. “Enlighten us.” Jenna found that she disliked the mocking tone in the man’s voice. For the first time, she started to wonder, seeing the way he treated Seancoim. She remembered what Seancoim had said last night: “He’s also a man with his own ambitions.

  Seancoim shook his head. “You’re not ready to hear that tale yet. You’re not ready to understand or believe it. You’re not even capable of seeing who is your real enemy.”

  The crow cawed and fluttered away to a nearby branch. Seancoim glared at Mac Ard with his dead eyes, his staff clenched tightly in his hand as he pulled his bowed back more erect. Mac Ard glowered back, and Jenna thought for a moment that he would draw his sword or shout a challenge. But the anger in the Mac Ard’s eyes slowly faded, and at last he bowed to Seancoim: a swift, passing inclination of his head. “I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t offend someone who offered aid when we were in need.”

  Seancoim tilted his head toward Mac Ard. “You’re still in need,” he said. There was no acknowledgment of Mac Ard’s apology in his voice, but the corners of his mouth turned up.

  The irritation flashed again in the tiarna’s eyes, and Jenna stepped close to Seancoim, putting her hand on his arm. “Aye, we are still in need,” she said, looking pleadingly at her mam. “We understand that.”

  “Aye,” Maeve echoed. “We do.”

  Seancoim seemed somewhat mollified. His posture re laxed, and Dúnmharú returned to his roost on the old man’s right shoulder. He sniffed again. “And I will help you,” he said. “I will do what I can.”

  “These men who are looking for us,” Mac Ard said. “If they realize we’re in Doire Coill, or if they suspect that we’re here, they will come after us. This isn’t simply a walk in the woods.”

  Seancoim coughed, Dúnmharú cackled with open beak. “The forest takes care of itself,” he said to Mac Ard. “A few men? They’re no threat to Doire Coill, not even if they all carry axes and fire.”

  Mac Ard looked dubious at that statement, but Jenna remembered the singing of the trees. Seancoim glanced up at the sky, as if he could see the fog-shrouded sun. “If you don’t wish to follow me through the forest, you could stay here in my cave. I have business to the east, but I can come back here and lead you to the High Road in a few days.”

  Jenna watched her mam glance at Mac Ard and shake her head slightly. “We’ll go with you,” Mac Ard said. “The sooner we reach the Rí’s city, the sooner we’ll be safe.”

  “Sometimes there is no such thing as safety, wherever you go,” Seancoim answered. “But we’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

  8

  The Cairn of Riata

  EVEN by day, the forest was dim. They moved through valleys of fog-shrouded trees, pacing alongside fast-moving brooks whose foam made the dark water seem almost black by contrast. They caught rare glimpses of sky, blue now that the high mist had burned off, and every so often walked through columns of gold-green light, their boots crushing a thousand
tiny images of the sun on the forest floor.

  Jenna had often walked through the woods near Ballintubber, but they felt different: lighter, airier, with the trees spaced farther apart and well-worn paths meandering among them. They were old, too, those woods, but Jenna had never felt that the forest itself watched her, judging her and deciding whether it would allow her to stay.

  She felt a Presence here. Here, there were musty vapors rising from the ground, and red-crowned, sinister mushrooms peering from between piles of decaying leaves decades old, screens of mistletoe and bramble that tugged at her with thorny fingers, vine-wrapped hollows between close-set oaks in which night nestled eternal. There were trails that Seancoim followed: thin, narrow paths that might have been made by deer or other animals, twisting through the underbrush and vanishing suddenly. Doire Coill was a maze where they found themselves walking the bottom of a hollow with sides too steep to climb, all white fog ahead and behind, so that they moved between walls of brown and green until Seancoim turned into a hidden break that Jenna knew she would have missed, a narrow pass through to another fold of land bending in a slightly different direction, all of them leading to some unseen destination. And if she had found herself suddenly alone and lost, it would do no good to cry for help. The forest swallowed sound, muffling it, making words indistinct and small. Jenna was certain that she would call only whatever fey creatures Doire Coill held within its confines.

  By the time the sun had reached its height and started to decline, Jenna knew that if Seancoim were to vanish into the fog around them, they would never find their way back. She said nothing, but the scowl that lurked on Mac Ard’s face and the frown twisting Maeve’s lips told her that the other two realized it as well.

  As evening approached, the hillsides spread out slightly to either side of them before curving back in to each other, so that they walked in the center of a bowl several hundred strides across, the trees all around them with open sky directly above. In the center of the bowl, gray with the persistent fog, a dolmen loomed, a pair of massive, carved standing stones two people high with another block laid over the top, large enough that several people could walk between them abreast as if through a door. Arrayed around the central stones in a circle were six cairns covered with earth and grass, the narrow entrances of the passage graves arranged so that each looked out onto the central stones. Seancoim continued to walk between the graves toward the dolmen as Dúnmharú flew away to land on the capstone, but the others stopped at the entrance to the valley of tombs. Jenna stared at the dolmen, at the notches carved in them that were Bunús Muintir writing, wondering what was inscribed there.