Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  “Who is buried in this place?” Mac Ard asked. “These must be the graves of kings and heroes, yet I’ve never heard anyone speak of this valley.”

  “You’re not supposed to know it,” Seancoim answered, “though a few Daoines have been here and seen the graves. We’ve kept it hidden, in our own ways, because the last chieftains of the Bunús Muintir rest here.” He nodded in the direction of one of the mounds. “Maybe you would know this one. In there is Ruaidhri, who fought the Daoine at Lough Dubh and was wounded, and died weeks later.”

  “Died from the wounds from Crenel Dahgnon’s sword,” Mac Ard said. To Jenna, the name seemed to draw echoes from the hills around them, like clouds running before a storm, and she thought she heard the angry whispers from the mouths of the passage graves, or perhaps it was only the wind blowing across the entrances.

  Seancoim shook his head, while Dúnmharú flapped his black wings angrily. “That’s not a name one should speak here, but aye, that’s the Daoine Rí whose blows shattered Ruaidhri’s shield and killed him, and Lough Dubh would be the last time any of the Bunús Muintir chieftains would put an army on the field.” Seancoim pointed to the largest grave, aligned directly with the dolmen at the far end of the valley. “There is Riata. Do you know of him?”

  Jenna shook her head, as did Maeve, but Mac Ard took in a breath that caused Seancoim to laugh. “Ah,” he said, “so you have listened to some of our old tales. Riata—he was the last, and perhaps the most powerful, of the Bunús cloudmages. The mage-lights vanished for us a scant three generations before you Daoine came. If they hadn’t, if we had our mages wielding the clochs na thintrí when the Daoine came, then perhaps all that would be left of your people would be a few haunted barrows. Or perhaps if we hadn’t become so dependent on that magic, we would not have been so easily displaced when you came.” He lifted his hands and let them fall again like wounded birds. “Only the gods can see down those paths.”

  “Do we have to stay here?” Jenna asked. “It’s getting late.” The entire valley was in deep shadow now, and Jenna felt cold, though the sky above was still bright.

  “It’s late,” Seancoim agreed, “and it’s not safe to travel here at night. We’ll stay there.” Seancoim pointed to the ridge beyond the valley.

  Mac Ard grimaced. “That’s a long climb, and close to this place.”

  “They say restless ghosts walk here, and Ruaidhri is among them,” Seancoim answered. He cocked his head at Mac Ard. “If I were Daoine, I might be afraid of that.”

  “I’m not afraid of a spirit,” Mac Ard said, scowling. “Fine, old man. We’ll stay here.”

  “Aye, we will,” Seancoim told him, “unless you want to go back on your own.” He turned away, calling Dúnmharú back to him, then walking on through the dolmen. After a moment, Jenna and the others followed, though Jenna walked carefully around the dolmen rather than going under its capstone, and didn’t look into the cold archways of the barrow graves at all.

  Jenna had thought that it would be impossible to sleep that night, unprotected under the oaks and so near the Bunúis tombs. Exhaustion proved stronger than fear, and she was asleep not long after she lay down near their tiny fire, only to be awakened sometime later by a persistent throbbing near her leg and in her head. She opened her eyes, disoriented. The fire had died to embers. Her mam and Mac Ard were asleep, sleeping close to each other and not far from her; Seancoim and Dúnmharú were nowhere to be seen. Jenna blinked, closing her eyes against the throbbing and touching her leg—as she did so, her hand closed on the stone under the cloth. It was pulsing in time with the pain in her temples. As she lay there, she thought she heard her name called: a soft, breathy whisper wending its way between the trunks of the trees. “Jenna . . .” it came, then again: “Jenna . . .”

  Jenna sat up in her blankets.

  There was light shifting through the leaves: a rippling, dancing, familiar shining high in the sky and very near. She thought of calling to her mam, then stopped, knowing Mac Ard would awaken with Maeve. Part of her didn’t want Mac Ard to see the lights, didn’t want his interference. Jenna rose to her feet and followed the elusive glimmering.

  A few minutes later, she stood at the rim of the valley of Bunús tombs, looking out down the steep, treeless slope to the circles of graves and the dolmen at its center. She could see them very clearly, for directly above the valley the mage-lights were shimmering. Their golden light washed over the mounds of earth and rock in waves, as if she were watching the surface of a restless, wind-touched lake. The valley was alive with the light.

  “Jenna . . .” She heard the call again, more distinctly this time, still airy but now laden with deeper undertones: a man’s voice. It came from below.

  “No,” she whispered back to it, afraid, clutching her hands together tightly. The stone pulsed against her hip, cold fire.

  “Jenna, come to me . . .”

  “No,” she said again, but a branch from the nearest tree touched her on the back as if blown by a sudden wind, pushing her a step forward. She stopped, planting her feet.

  “Jenna . . .”

  The lights flared above, sparks bursting like a log thrown on a bonfire, and a tree limb crashed to the ground just behind her. Jenna jumped at the sound, and her foot slid from under her. She took another step, trying to recover her balance, only now the ground was tilted sharply down, and she half ran, half fell down the long, grassy slope to the valley floor, landing on her knees and hands an arm’s length from the rear of one of the barrows.

  “Come to me . . .”

  The mage-lights splashed bright light on the dolmen, sending black shadows from the standing stones twisting wildly over the mounds. Jenna could feel the stone throbbing madly in response, and she took it in her hand. The pebble glowed with interior illumination, bright enough that she could see the radiance between her fingers as she held the stone in her fist. Having the stone in her hand seemed to lend her courage, and she walked slowly between the graves toward the dolmen, though she could feel every muscle in her body twitching with a readiness to flee.

  As she stepped into the open circle around the dolmen, she saw the apparition.

  It stood before the barrow of Riata: a man’s shape, long- haired and stocky, clad in a flowing clóca of a strange design which left one shoulder bare. The form shifted, wavering, as if it were formed of clear crystal and it was only the reflection of the mage-lights on its polished surface that rendered it visible. But it moved, for one hand lifted as Jenna recoiled a step, her back pressed up against the carved surface of the standing stone. There were eyes watching her in the spectral face. It spoke, and its voice was the one that had called to her. The words sounded in her head, as if the voice was inside her.

  “You hold the cloch na thintrí,” it said, and there was a wistful yearning in its voice. Its face lifted and looked up at the mage-lights, and she could see the glow playing over the transparent features. “They have returned,” it said, its voice mournful and pleased all at once. “I wondered if I would see them again. So beautiful, so cold and powerful, so tempting . . .” The face regarded Jenna again. “You are not of my people,” it said. “You are too fair, too tall.”

  “My people are called the Daoine,” Jenna answered. “And how is it you know our language?”

  “The dead do not use words. We lack mouth and tongue and lungs to move the air. I speak with you mind to mind, taking from you the form of the words I use. But I feel the strangeness of your language. Daoine . . .” It said the word slowly, rolling the syllables. “I knew no Daoines when I was alive . . . There were other tribes, we knew, in other lands, but here there were only the Bunús Muintir. My people.”

  “You’re Riata?” Jenna asked. She was intrigued now. The ghost, if that’s what it was, had made no threatening moves toward her, and she leaned forward, trying to see it more clearly. The ghosts and spirits of the tales she’d heard in Ballintubber were always bloody, decaying corpses or white vapors, and they cursed and terrifi
ed the living. This, though . . . the play of light over its shifting, elusive form was almost beautiful, and its voice held no threat.

  “I was called that once,” the specter said, sounding pleased and sad at the same time. “So that name is still known? I’m not forgotten in the time of the Daoine?”

  “No, not forgotten,” Jenna answered, thinking that it might be best to mollify the spirit. After all, Tiarna Mac Ard had known of him.

  “Ahh . . .” it sighed. A hand stretched out toward Jenna, and she forced herself to stand still. She could feel the chill of its touch, like ice on her forehead and cheek, then the hand cupped hers and Jenna let her fingers relax. In her palm, the stone shot light back to the glowing sky. “So young you are, to be holding a cloch na thintrí, especially this one. But I was young, as well, the first time I held it . . .”

  “This one?” Jenna asked. “How . . . ?”

  “Follow me,” it said. Its hand beckoned, and from fingertips to elbow the arm seemed to reflect the intricate curls and flourishes of the lights above, as if the patterns had been carved into the limb. The phantom glided backward into Riata’s tomb, its cold touch fading.

  “I can’t,” Jenna responded, holding back from the yawning mouth of the barrow. She glanced up at the lights playing over the valley, at the stone in her hand.

  “You must,” Riata replied. “The mage-lights will wait for you.” Then the presence was gone, and nothing stood in front of the passage. “Come . . .” whispered the voice faintly, from nowhere and everywhere.

  Jenna took a step toward the barrow, then another. She put her hand on the stone lintels of the opening: they were carved with swirls and eddies not unlike the display in the sky above and on Riata’s arm, along with lozenges and circles and other carved symbols. She traced them with her fingers, then walked into the passage itself. Darkness surrounded her immediately and Jenna almost fled back outside, but as her eyes slowly adjusted, she could see in the illumination of the mage-lights and the answering glow from the cloch na thintrí that the walls were drystone, covered with plaster that was now broken and shattered, the stones piled to just above the height of her head and capped with flat rocks. The passage into the burial chamber was short but claustrophobic. The walls leaned in, so that while two people could have knelt side by side at the bottom, only one standing person could walk down the corridor at a time. Once, the walls must have been decorated—there were flecks of colored pigment clinging to the plaster and her touch caused more of the ancient paintings to crumble and fall away. Here and there were larger patches where she could see traces of what, centuries ago, must have been a mural. Jenna was glad to finally reach the relative spaciousness of the burial chamber. She glanced back: through the passage, she could see the dolmen awash in the brilliant fireworks of the mage-lights.

  The burial chamber itself had been constructed with five huge stones, forming the sides and roof. The air was musty and stale, and the room dim, touched only by the reflec tions of the lights, the cloch na thintrí’s illumination. At the center of the room was a large, chiseled block of granite, and set there was a pottery urn, glazed with the same swirls and curved lines carved on the lintel stones. Around the urn were beads and pieces of jewelry, torcs of gold and braided silver that glistened in the moving radiance. Clothing had once lain here as well; she could see moldering scraps of brightly-dyed cloth. These had been funeral gifts, obviously, and the urn undoubtedly held the ashes and bones of Riata. But his specter had vanished.

  “Hello?” she called.

  Air moved, her hair lifting, and she felt a touch on her shoulder. Jenna cried out, frightened, and the sound rang in the chamber, reverberating. She dropped the cloch na thintrí, and as she started to reach for it, the pebble rose from the floor, picked up by a hand that was barely visible in the stone’s glow.

  “Aye,” Riata’s voice said in her head, full of satisfaction, the tones dark and low. “ ’Tis true. This was once mine.” Pale light stroked the lines of his spectral face, sparking in the deep hollows where the eyes should have been. His voice seemed more ominous, touched with hostility. “Or more truthfully, I once belonged to it. Until it was stolen from me and found its way to another.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” Jenna protested, shrinking back against the wall as the shadowy form of Riata seemed to loom larger in front of her. “I found it on the hill near my home, the first time the mage-lights came. I didn’t know it was yours; I never even knew of you. Besides, it’s only a little stone. It can’t be very powerful.”

  Cold laughter rippled the dead air of the tomb, and the stench of death wafted over Jenna, making her wrinkle her nose and turn her face away. “I don’t accuse you of stealing it,” Riata’s voice boomed. “This cloch na thintrí has owned many in its time and will own many more. Dávali had it before me, and Óengus before him, and so on, back into the eldest times. And it may be little, but of all the clochs na thintrí, it is the most powerful.”

  “It can’t be,” Jenna protested. “Tiarna Mac Ard . . . he would have said . . .” Or he didn’t know, she suddenly realized. She wondered if he would have handed it back to her, if he had.

  “Then this tiarna knows nothing. This cloch even has a name it calls itself: Lámh Shábhála, the Safekeeping. The cloch was placed here when I died, on the offering stone you see in front of you. And it was taken over a thousand long years ago—I felt its loss even in death, though I didn’t have strength then to rise. For hands upon hands upon hands of years I slumbered. Once, centuries ago, the lights came again to wake me and I could feel that Lámh Sháb hála was alive with the mage-lights once more. I called out to Lámh Shábhála and its holder, but no one answered or they were too far away to hear me. With the mage-light’s strength, I was able to rise and walk here among the tombs when the mage-lights filled the sky, but few came to this place, and though they were Bunús Muintir, they appeared to be poor and savage, and seemed frightened of me. None of them knew the magic of the sky. I realized then that my people had declined and no longer ruled this land. But someone held Lámh Shábhála, or the lights could not have returned. For unending years I called, every night the lights shone. Then, as they have before, the mage-lights died again, and I slept once more.” The shape that was Riata drew itself close to her. “Until now,” he said. “When the mage-lights have awakened again.”

  “Then take the stone,” Jenna said. “It’s yours. Keep it. I don’t want it.”

  Riata laughed again at that. “Lámh Shábhála isn’t mine, nor yours. Lámh Shábhála is its own. I knew it wanted me to pass it on as it had been passed to me. I could feel its desire even though the mage-lights had stopped coming a dozen years before I became sick with my last illness, but I held onto it. There were no more cloudmages left, only people with dead stones around their necks and empty skies above. I believed my cloch to be as dead as theirs; in fact, I prayed that it was so. I should have known it wasn’t. Lámh Shábhála is First and Last.” The voice was nearly a hiss. “And a curse to its Holder, as I know too well, especially the one who is to be First.”

  The stone hung in the air in front of Jenna, held in invisi ble fingers. “Take Lámh Shábhála,” Riata said. “I pass it to you, Jenna of the Daoine, as I should have passed it long ago. You are the new First Holder.”

  Jenna shook her head, now more afraid of the stone than of the ghost. Yet her hand reached out, unbidden, and took the cloch from the air. She fisted her hand around the cold smoothness as Riata’s laughter echoed in her head.

  “Aye, you see? You shake your head, but the desire is there, whether you admit it or not. It’s already claimed you.”

  Jenna was near to crying. She could feel the tears starting in her eyes, the fear hammering at her heart. The cloch burned like fiery ice in her hand. “You called it a curse to its holder. What do you mean?”

  “The power of the land is eternal, as is the power of the water. Their magics and spells, for those who know how to tap and use them, are slower and les
s energetic than that of the air, but more stable. They are always there, caught in the bones of the land itself, or in the depths of the water. The power within the sky ebbs and flows: slowly, over generations and generations of mortal lives. It has done so since before my people walked from Thall Mór-roinn to this land and found Lámh Shábhála here. No one knows how often the slow, centuries-long cycle has repeated itself. There were no people here when we Bunús Muintir came to Talamh an Ghlas, but there were the standing stones and graves of other tribes who had once lived here, and we Holders could hear the voices in the stone, one tribe after another, back and back into a past none of us can see. The mage-lights vanished for the Bunús Muintir four times, the last time while I was still alive. The sky-power returned once for you Daoine, then vanished again. Now the mage-lights want to return again.”

  Jenna glanced down the passage of the tomb. Multicolored light still touched the dolmen, brightening the valley. “The mage-lights have already returned,” Jenna said, but Riata’s denial boomed before she could finish.

  “No!” he seemed to shout. “This is but the slightest hint of them, the first stirrings of Lámh Shábhála, the gathering of enough power within the stone to open the gates so that all the clochs na thintrí may awaken and the mage-lights appear everywhere. For now, the lights follow Lámh Shábhála—and that is the danger. Those who know the true lore of the mage-lights also know that fact. They know that where the lights appear, Lámh Shábhála is also there. And they will follow, because they want to hold Lámh Shábhála themselves.”