Holder of Lightning

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Holder of Lightning Page 11

by S L Farrell


  With the mention of the mage-stones, Jenna’s hand went to her waist, where her own stone was hidden. She immediately let her hand drop back to her side, but the man’s eyes had followed her involuntary gesture. He almost seemed to smile.

  “Your arm—you’ve hurt it.” He nodded at the bandages wrapped around her arm; it seemed to throb in response.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “A cut, that’s all.”

  “Ah.” He nodded again. He glanced over his shoulder, as if making certain no one was close enough to overhear them. “One wonders,” O’Deoradháin mused, “where Lámh Shábhála will be found if the Filleadh has really come, since the eldest cloch was taken from the Order of Inishfeirm and could be anywhere in Talamh an Ghlas by now. But then, you probably realize that already, since Clannhri Sheehan tells me that you’re a Mac Ard. After all, your ancestors were once cloudmages themselves. I’m not surprised to see a Mac Ard on the road where the mage-lights have been seen. Not at all.”

  Jenna wanted to be away from the man, wanted to be alone, wanted to take the cloch out and hold it, wanted to throw it away and never see it again. She’d understood little of what he’d said—all that prattling about “Inishfeirm” and some Order, but he spoke of “Lámh Shábhála,” the same name Riata had used . . . “You’ve had your minute, Ennis O’Deoradháin, and I’m tired.”

  “True, I’ve had the minute, and more, and I’ve spoken honestly about things that I probably shouldn’t, out here in the open.” The man’s left hand moved close to the hilt of his knife, and Jenna wondered how quickly someone would get to her if she screamed. Not soon enough, she feared, if O’Deoradháin was skilled with his weapon. Her bandaged hand went again to the stone; she could feel its chill under the cloth, and her heart was pounding in her chest. If she brought the cloch out, if she could use it as she had with the men from Connachta . . .

  But O’Deoradháin only smiled, gave a short bow, and turned to walk back toward the fire. For a moment, Jenna wondered whether she should follow and tell Mac Ard and her mam what had just happened. But she couldn’t make herself go that way, not after what the man had said to her.

  Instead, she went to her tent, half-running. Her arm throbbed and burned, and she boiled water over the tiny cook fire inside and made herself another cup of the andúilleaf tea.

  The next morning, it was easy to forget the encounter. Maeve was there in the tent, sleeping alongside Jenna—she had wondered, after their conversation, if Maeve might stay in the tiarna’s tent that night. Jenna’s arm still ached, and she heated another cup of the brew to take away the hurt before her mam rewrapped the arm with fresh bandages. Outside, a warm, late autumn sun was shining, O’Deorad háin was nowhere to be seen, and they found that Mac Ard had haggled with Clannhri Sheehan for the purchase of three of the Taisteal’s horses. They looked old and slow, but a better prospect than walking the rest of the way to Áth Iseal. By the time the sun was well up in the sky, the Taisteal had packed away the tents into the wagons and were jangling and plodding south along the road while Jenna, Maeve, and Mac Ard rode north toward the ford of the Duán.

  They moved through a landscape of green: farmland mostly, with occasional patches of wood. The High Road meandered, following the line of Lough Lár closely. Not long after they’d left, as they rounded a bend in the road, they heard hooves and the nickering of a horse coming up from an intersecting lane; a moment later, a rider came into view between a line of beech trees, a man wearing a plain clóca over pants and shirt. The hood of the clóca was up; the face in shadow. The man waved at them, then kicked his horse into a trot to meet them.

  “Greetings, Tiarna Mac Ard, Bantiarnas. A beautiful morning. We seem to be going in the same direction, if Áth Iseal is your destination. May I join you? With brigands on the road, four is safer than one.” He pushed back the hood, and Jenna saw that it was Ennis O’Deoradháin. His eyes glittered as he glanced toward her, but he kept his attention on Mac Ard, who frowned.

  “It isn’t brigands I particularly fear,” he answered. “You have the advantage of me, since you seem to know me but your face isn’t familiar.”

  “My name is Ennis O’Deoradhain.” He gestured to the fields on either side of him. “This is my family’s land. Not much, but enough to keep us fed. We’re three generations freelanded, loyal to the Rí Gabair, and the name O’Deora dháin is well known around the west of the lough. And I know you because I was at the Taisteal’s camp last night seeing if they had anything useful, and Clannhri Sheehan has a mouth large enough to swallow all of Lough Lár itself.” He smiled and laughed at his own jest, and the harsh lines of his face relaxed in his amusement. “And if it allays your fears, I’m hardly a threat to you, Tiarna. I doubt my knife is a match for your sword.” O’Deoradháin swept his clóca aside, showing them that the only weapon he wore was the knife Jenna had seen the night before.

  “In my experience, a knife kills as easily as any weapon,” Mac Ard told the man, but his voice was easier. “But a freelanded man loyal to the Rí shouldn’t be left alone to brigands, and the High Road’s open to all, if you’d like to ride with us.”

  Jenna could have spoken. She saw O’Deoradháin’s gaze flick toward her again, and she set her mouth in a firm, thin line of disapproval. Yet she held back. O’Deoradháin flicked the reins, and his horse moved out onto the road. For a time, he rode alongside Mac Ard, and Maeve, and they conversed in low voices. Then O’Deoradháin dropped back to where Jenna trailed behind. “And how are you today?” he asked. “Is the arm better?”

  “It’s fine,” Jenna answered shortly. She didn’t look at him, keeping her gaze forward to the road winding along the lakeshore. Lough Lár was narrowing, now no more than a few hundred strides across as they neared the falls of the Duán.

  “So it seems you didn’t mention our encounter last night to the tiarna.”

  “I didn’t think it that important. I’d forgotten it myself until I saw you this morning.” She answered him with the haughtiness she thought a Riocha would display. Now she did look over at him, and found him watching her with a strange smile on his lips. “Interesting that you’d happen to be going to Ath Iseal today, and at the same time.”

  “What would you think if I told you that wasn’t entirely coincidence?”

  “I’d wonder if I should make up for my error last night and tell Tiarna Mac Ard.”

  “ ‘Tiarna Mac Ard?’ An awfully formal way to refer to your father,” O’Deoradháin commented. Her face must have shown something at that, for he lifted his eyebrows. “Ah . . . I see I’ve been mistaken. Evidently Clannhri Sheehan didn’t know as much as he pretended he did. You never can trust the Taisteal. I thought . . .”

  “I don’t care what you thought.”

  “This does shed a different light on things, though, I must say,” O’Deoradháin persisted. “What is your name, then?”

  She remembered that Mac Ard had commented on their name being Inish, and that O’Deoradháin had suggested that he thought her an Inishlander as well. She considered giving him a false name, but it didn’t seem to matter now. Her mam would probably tell him, if he asked, or Mac Ard. “Aoire,” she said. “Jenna Aoire.”

  The startled look on his face surprised her with its severity. For a moment, his eyes widened, and he seemed almost to rise up in his saddle. Then he caught himself, his features masked in deliberate neutrality. “Aoire. That’s an Inish name, ’tis. So my guess wasn’t so wrong after all.”

  “Aye,” she admitted. “My father’s parents were from the island, or so he claimed, though Mam says that they left the island when they were young.”

  O’Deoradháin’s head nodded reflectively. “No doubt,” he said. “No doubt.” He shifted in the saddle, adjusted his clóca. “We should be in Áth Iseal by midafternoon,” he said. “We’ll be passing the falls in a bit; they’re not as pretty this time of year without all the green, but they’ll be impressive enough if you’ve never seen them before.” It was obvious that he in
tended to change the subject, and Jenna was content to allow that to happen.

  They heard the falls long before they saw them. Here, the High Road lifted in short, winding rises up a low series of hills, until they stood well above the level of Lough Lár. Away to the south stretched the dark waters of the lough; to the north, the road was hidden behind yet another set of low hills. Westward stretched checkered patches of farmland, meadow, and woods, and beyond that, like a green wall, was the forest of Doire Coill, lurking on the horizon.

  A trail ran away from the High Road to a ledge overlooking the falls, and Mac Ard turned his horse in. “We’ve made good time this morning, and there’s not a better day to see the falls,” he said. “We’ll eat here.” As Mac Ard rummaged in the saddlebags for the food, Jenna and her mam walked to the end of the ledge, where the land fell off steeply toward the lough, so that they were looking down at the tops of the trees below. Ahead and to their left, the River Duán splashed and roared as it spilled down a deep cleft in the green hills, cascading white and foaming to the lake below while a white mist rose around the waters. The sunlight sparked rainbows in the mist that wavered, gleamed, and disappeared again. “Ah, Mam, ’tis beautiful,” Jenna breathed. The wind sent a tendril of mist across her face, and she laughed in shock and surprise. “And wet.”

  “And dangerous, if you get too near the edge.” O’Deora dháin spoke, coming up next to them. He pointed down toward the lake. “Not two months ago, they brought up a man from Áth Iseal who slipped over the edge and went tumbling down to his death. He was looking at the falls and not his feet, unfortunately.”

  Both Jenna and Maeve took a step back. “The mist has a way of enchanting, they say,” O’Deoradháin continued. “The Duán weeps in sorrow here.”

  “Why in sorrow?” Jenna asked, interested despite herself.

  “ ’Twas here, they say, well back in the Before, that an army out of Inish Thuaidh met with the forces of the Rí of what was then the kingdom of Bhaile; Rí Aodhfin, I think his name was. The river ran red with blood that day, the stain washing pink on the shores of the lough itself, and the skies above were bright with the lightnings of the clochs na thintrí. Lámh Shábhála itself was here, held by an Inishlander cloudmage whose name is lost to the people around here.”

  The name of the cloch made Jenna narrow her eyes in suspicion, and she thought she felt the hidden stone pulse in response. Aye . . . The voice, a whisper, sounded in Jenna’s head. Eilís, I was . . . “Eilís,” Jenna said, speaking the name. “That was the Holder’s name. Eilís.”

  O’Deoradháin raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps. It’s as good a name as any, I suppose. You know this story, then?”

  “No,” Jenna answered, then shook her head. The voice was gone, and Jenna wondered whether she’d actually heard it, or if she imagined it in the sound of the falls. Maeve was looking at her curiously, as well. “Maybe I heard it at Tara’s one night. One of Coelin’s songs—he was always singing about battles and romances from other times.”

  O’Deoradháin shrugged. “Whatever the name, Aodhfin wrested Lámh Shábhála away from the Inishlander cloudmage during the midst of battle; then, for two hun dred and fifty years, Lámh Shábhála was held here in Talamh an Ghlas. They say that the mist of the falls is the tears of the cloudmage who lost Lámh Shabhala, and that’s why it’s dangerous. He, or she,” he added with a glance at Jenna, who was watching the water spilling down the ravine, “still seeks revenge for the loss.”

  “That’s a pretty tale,” Maeve said. “And an old one.”

  “This is an old place,” O’Deoradhain answered. He gestured straight out from the ledge. “They say that back when the first people came here to the lough, the falls were out here. But the river’s hungry, and it eats away a few feet of the cliffs every year and so the lough keeps growing at this end. One day, thousands and thousands of years from now, the falls will be all the way back to Áth Iseal. We look at the land, and from our perspective, it all seems eternal: the mountains, the rivers, the lakes—they are there at our birth, and there looking the same at our death. But the stones themselves see that everything is always changing, and barely see us or our battles and legends at all. We’re just ghosts and wisps of fog to them.”

  “Ah, you have a poet in you,” Maeve said. “ ’Tis well said.”

  O’Deoradháin touched his forehead, smiling at Maeve. “Thank you, Bantiarna. It’s my mam’s gift. She had a wonderful way with tales, especially those from the north. She was from Inish Thuaidh, as I told your daughter.”

  Jenna refused to look back at him. “An Inishlander?” Maeve said. “So was my late husband—or his parents were from there, anyway. But he wasn’t one for stories, I’m afraid. He didn’t speak much about his family or the island. I don’t think he’d ever been there himself.”

  “Perhaps not, but I’ve heard the name Aoire before, in some of the tales my mam used to tell me.” He seemed as though he were about to say more and Jenna looked away from the falls toward him, but Mac Ard came striding up, and O’Deoradháin went silent at the tiarna’s approach.

  “I have our lunch unpacked,” Mac Ard said. “We could bring it out here, and eat while watching the scenery.”

  “That sounds lovely,” Maeve said. “Excuse me. We’ll go help Padraic. Jenna?”

  “Coming, Mam.” She turned away from the falls, catch ing O’Deoradháin’s gaze as she did so. “What is it you want?” she asked him, as her mam walked away.

  O’Deoradháin shrugged. “Probably the same thing you want. Maybe the same thing you’ve already found.” He nodded to her and smiled.

  She grimaced sourly in return, and followed her mother.

  12

  The Lady of the Falls

  THEY finished their lunch, and lay in the soft grass under a surprisingly warm sun. Jenna’s arm was starting to throb again with pain, and she stood up. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I’d like to take a walk.”

  “I’ll go with you,” O’Deoradháin offered, and Jenna shook her head.

  “No,” she said firmly. “I’d prefer to go alone. Mam, do you mind?”

  “Go on,” Maeve told her. “Don’t be long.”

  “I won’t be.” Jenna walked away north, around the curve of the cliffs toward the falls. As she approached, the clamor of the cascading water grew steadily louder, until it drowned any other sound in white noise. Greenery hung over the edge of the ravine so that it was difficult to tell where the ground ended, and the mist dusted Jenna’s hair and clothes with sparkling droplets. She moved as close to the edge as she dared. Foaming water rushed past below her, spilling down to the lough. With the touch of the mist, she thought she heard faint voices, as if hidden in the roar of the falls was a distant, whispering conversation.

  At the same time, her right arm began to feel cold and heavy under the bandages, and the cloch na thintrí snuggled next to her skin flared into bitter ice. Jenna stopped, rubbing at her arm and flexing her suddenly stiff fingers, moaning slightly at the renewed pain. She started to turn back, thinking that she would fix herself more of the nasty-tasting andúilleaf, but stopped, blinking against the mist. There, just ahead of her, was a break in the greenery, a narrow trail leading down toward the Duán right where it plunged over the cliff edge. She wondered how she could have missed seeing it before.

  Follow . . . she thought she heard the water-voices say. Follow . . .

  She took a tentative step forward, steadying herself against the bushes to either side. The path was steep and ill-defined, the grass underfoot slick and only slightly shorter than anywhere else, as if the trail were nearly forgotten. Once she slipped and fell several feet before she could stop herself. She almost turned back then, but just below, the path seemed to level out, curving enticingly behind a screen of scrub hawthorns. Follow . . . The voices were louder now, almost audible.

  She followed.

  Around the hawthorns, she found herself on a ledge below the lip of the falls. Water thundered in fron
t of her, foaming and snarling as it thrashed its way over black, mossy rocks. The ledge continued around, cutting underneath the overhanging rocks at the top of the waterfall and disappearing into darkness behind the water.

  Follow . . . Her arm ached, the stone burned her skin with cold. Her hair and clothes, soaked by the mists, clung to her face and body. She should go back, she knew. This was insanity—one slip, and her body would be broken on the rocks a hundred feet below.

  Follow . . .

  But there were handholds along the cliff wall, looking as if they’d been deliberately cut, and though the ledge was crumbling at the edges, the flags appeared to have once been laid by someone’s hands. She took a step, then another, clinging to the dripping wall as the water pounded a few feet in front of her.

  Then she was behind the falls, and the ledge opened up. Jenna gasped in wonder. She was looking through the shimmering veil of water, and the falls caught the sunlight and shattered it, sending light dancing all around her. The air was cool and refreshing; the sound of the falls was muffled here, a constant low grumbling that seemed to emanate from the earth itself. The rock underfoot trembled with the sound. As her eyes grew accustomed to the twilight behind the falling water, Jenna saw that the ledge on which she stood opened up behind her, sloping down and into the cliff wall: a small, hidden cave. Something gleamed well back in the recess, and Jenna moved toward it, squinting into the dimness.

  And she stopped, holding her breath. In a stony niche carved from the living rock of the cliff, a skeleton lay, its empty-socketed eyes staring at Jenna. The body had once been richly dressed—a woman, adorned with the remnants of brocaded green silk, with glistening threads of silver and gold embroidered along the edging. The arms were laid carefully along her sides, and under her head was a pillow, the stuffing spilling out from rotting blue cloth, a few strands of golden hair curling below the skull. Rings hung loose on the bones of her fingers; jeweled earrings had fallen to the stone alongside the skull.

 

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