Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  “I don’t think so.”

  “The magic you’re trying to hold is powerful, but also full of pain. There’s no cure for it. You can look for ways, like the leaf, to dull it, or you learn to bear what it gives you. Either way, it will always be there. Better to accept the pain as it is, if you can.”

  “Do you charge for your platitudes, also?”

  Du Val grinned. “For you, I can afford to give the advice for nothing.”

  “And that’s exactly what it’s worth,” Jenna retorted. “I won’t be back.”

  She immediately hated the way the words sounded, hated the intention to hurt that rode in them: she sounded too much like some of the Riocha at the keep, the ones she despised for their haughtiness. If du Val had shown that her words stung, she would have felt immediate remorse. She would have apologized. But the dwarf shrugged and moved away behind the desk. He puttered with the flasks and vials there, ignoring Jenna. Finally, she turned and went to the door. When her hand touched the rope loop that served as a handle, du Val’s voice came from behind her.

  “I’m sorry for you, Holder. I truly am.”

  She took a breath. She opened the door, nodded to the relieved glances of the gardai, and closed the door behind her again.

  She spent another candle stripe or so in Low Town Market, desultorily pretending to shop as an excuse for the trip. The wind began to rise from off the lake, and she could see storm clouds rising dark in the west beyond the roofs of the houses, and finally told the gardai to fetch the carriage for the ride back. The carriage moved slowly through the twisting maze of narrow lanes, heading always up toward the stone shoulders of Goat Fell and the keep high above. Jenna lay back on the seat, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of vibrant, crowded life around her: the strident, musical calls of the vendors; shouts and calls from the windows of the houses she passed; the laughter from the pubs, seemingly on every corner; the sound of a fine baritone voice lifted in song . . .

  “Stop!” Jenna called to the driver.

  The carriage jolted to a halt, and she got out, the gardai hurriedly following her. She could still hear the voice, coming from the open door of a tavern just down the street. She strode down the lane to the pub, squinting into a hazy darkness fragrant with the smell of ale and pipe.

  So over the sea they sped

  From Falcarragh where the mountains loom

  From home and bed

  To Inish and their doom . . .

  She knew the tune: the Song of Máel Armagh. She had heard it once before she left Ballintubber. And she knew the voice as well.

  “Coelin!”

  The song cut off in mid-verse, and a familiar head lifted. “By the Mother-Creator . . . Jenna, is that you, girl?”

  “Aye. ’Tis me, indeed.”

  Laughing, he set down his giotár and ran to her. He took her in his arms and spun her around, nearly knocking over a few pints. He set her down again, holding her at arm’s length.

  He kissed her.

  “I thought you were dead, Jenna. That’s what everyone was saying. The damned Connachtans killed the Ald, and Tom Mullin, too, when he tried to stop them. Then there were the killings down by your old house, and the fires . . .” Coelin was shaking his head; Jenna’s finger still touched her lips. Now she placed the finger on Coelin’s lips.

  “Shh,” she said. “Quietly. Please.” That, at least, she’d learned from the Riocha: you never knew who might be listening to your words.

  Coelin looked puzzled, but he lowered his voice so that only she could easily hear him against the murmuring conversations of the pub. “Anyway, the Connachtans went off in a fury, and we heard they were looking for you and your mam, and that tiarna—what was his name? Mac Ard?—but everyone figured you’d either been burned up in your cottage, or lost in the bogs.” He stopped, looking at her closely, and glancing behind her at the trio of soldiers who watched carefully from the doorway. Coelin’s eyes narrowed a bit, seeing them. “All the rumors were wrong, obviously, and by the looks of you, you’re hobnobbing with the Riocha. And your arm—you have it all wrapped up. You owe me a tale, girl.”

  He was smiling, and she could still feel the touch of his lips on hers. “What about you, Coelin?” she asked. “How did you come to be here? And softly . . .”

  He shrugged, grinning, but he kept his voice low. “If you remember, that tiarna of yours said I was good, that I should be singing to larger audiences than poor little Ballintubber could give me, so after things settled down, I thought I’d take his advice.” He touched her cheek, though his gaze went quickly to the gardai. “After all, you were gone. Ballintubber just didn’t seem to be where I wanted to be anymore.”

  “You still have the gift of words, Coelin Singer,” Jenna told him, but she was smiling back. “Pretty and beguiling and too charming.”

  “But not false,” he answered. “Not false at all.”

  “Hah!”

  His face fell in mock alarm. “You don’t believe me, then? I am hurt.” He laughed again, and gestured at the corner where his giotár rested, a few copper coins in the hat placed near it. “Can you stay and listen? Maybe we can talk more? I wasn’t joking when I said that you owe me the tale of your adventures.”

  Jenna started to shake her head, then stopped. “I have a better idea,” she said. “Come with me. I’m on my way back to the keep. You can sing for the Riocha there, and we can talk. Tiarna Mac Ard will remember you.” She gestured at the hat with its coins. “And the pay’s likely to be better.”

  “To the keep? Really?”

  “Aye. Mam would love to see you again. We knew some of what happened in Ballintubber, but the Rí didn’t want it known that we were here, not after what happened, and so it’s been kept quiet. Mam will ask you a hundred questions, or more likely a thousand. Will you come?”

  He smiled. “I could never refuse anything you asked, Jenna,” he said.

  17

  The Rí’s Supper

  “COELIN!”

  ‘Co Maeve sounded nearly as glad to see him as Jenna had. She clasped the young man to her, then held him out at arm’s length. “When did you leave Ballintubber?”

  Coelin’s gaze wouldn’t stay with Maeve. It kept wandering past her to the rich embroidered tapestries on the walls of their apartment within the Rí’s Keep; to the expensive, dark furniture; to the glittering trinkets set on the polished surfaces. “Two hands of days ago,” he said. “By the Mother-Creator, I’ve never seen—”

  “You have to tell me everything,” Maeve said, pulling him toward a chair near the fire. Jenna laughed softly, watching Coelin marvel at the surroundings. “Start with the day the Connachtans attacked . . .”

  Coelin told her, spinning the tale with his usual adroitness, and—Jenna suspected—a certain amount of dramatic license. “. . . so you can see,” he finished, “I barely escaped with my life myself.”

  “That may still be the case,” a voice said from the doorway. Tiarna Mac Ard stood there, frowning at the trio gathered near the fire. His dark beard and mustache were frosted with ice, and the furs over his clóca were flecked with rapidly melting snow.

  “Tiarna,” Coelin began. “I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” Mac Ard interrupted. “What I don’t know is why you’re here.” He took off the furs, tossing them carelessly on a chair. As he did so, he grimaced— the wound he’d taken on the road to Áth Iseal hadn’t completely healed yet, and his right arm, Jenna knew, was still stiff and sore, its range of motion limited. He was dressed in riding leathers, and a short sword hung heavily from his belt. His left hand rested casually on the silver pommel of the hilt.

  “I brought him here, Tiarna,” Jenna said. “I happened to see him in the city, and we started talking, and I knew Mam would want to hear about Ballintubber, so . . .” She stopped, her eyes widening. “Did I do wrong?”

  “Aye,” Mac Ard answered, though his voice sounded more sad than angry. “I’m afraid that you did, Jenna.”

  �
�The boy isn’t to blame, Padraic,” Maeve said. “Or Jenna. She only did what I would have done, had I seen him.”

  “That may be,” Mac Ard answered. “The deed’s done, in any case. What we do now depends.” He stopped.

  “Depends on what?” Jenna asked.

  “On whether Coelin Singer knows how to keep his mouth shut about certain things.” Mac Ard strode up to the boy. He stood in front of Coelin, staring at the young man’s face. “For various reasons, we’ve been careful to make certain that it’s not common knowledge in the city that a certain two people from Ballintubber are here, or to know the circumstances under which they left the village. If I suddenly start hearing those rumors, I’d know where to place the blame and how to deal with the source. Am I understood?”

  Coelin’s lighter eyes held the man’s burning gaze, though he had to clear his throat to get his voice to work. “I can keep secrets, Tiarna. I know that certain songs should never be sung, or only in the right circumstances.”

  Mac Ard took a long breath. He rubbed at his beard, melting ice falling away. “We’ll see,” he said. “It’s a hellish evening out there,” he added. “Cold, and full of sleet and snow. A fine end to the year. But a song or two performed well might be welcomed at the Rí’s dinner tonight. Are you prepared to sing for a Rí, Coelin?”

  Coelin’s face broke into a helpless grin. “Aye,” he nearly shouted. “For the Rí? Truly?”

  Mac Ard seemed to smile back. “Truly,” he answered. “Though you’ll need to look better than you do now. Where’s that girl? Aoife!” he called, and a young woman came out from one of the doors, curtsying to Mac Ard.

  “Tiarna?”

  “Take this lad and get him proper clothes for the supper tonight with the Rí. He’ll be singing for us. Go on, then, Coelin, and practice until you’re called for.”

  Coelin grinned again. “Thank you, Tiarna,” he said. His gaze strayed to Jenna, and he winked once at her. She smiled back at him.

  “You can repay me by keeping quiet,” Mac Ard told him. “Because if you don’t, I will make certain you never talk to anyone else again. I trust that’s clear enough for you.”

  The grin had fallen from Coelin’s face like a leaf in an autumn wind. “Aye, Tiarna,” he said to Mac Ard, and his voice was now somber. “It’s very clear.”

  “Good.” Mac Ard glanced from Coelin, to Jenna, and back again. “I would not forget my place and my task, if I were you, Coelin Singer.”

  Coelin nodded. He left the room with Aoife, and did not look again at Jenna.

  The Rí’s suppers were in the great Common Hall of the keep, a loud and noisy chamber with stone walls and a high, dim ceiling. A trestle table was set down the length of the hall. Torin Mallaghan, the Rí Gabair, sat with his wife Cianna, the Banrion, at the head of the table, jeweled torcs of beaten gold around both of their necks.

  Arrayed down either side of the table before the royal couple were the Riocha in residence at the keep.

  Not surprisingly, there was a delicate etiquette involved in the seating. Immediately to the Rí’s left was Nevan O Liathain, the first son of Kiernan O Liathain, the Rí Ard—the High King in Dún Laoghaire. Nevan’s title was “Ta naise Ríg,” Heir Apparent to the Rí Ard. He had come to Lár Bhaile at his father’s request, as soon as the rumors of the mage-lights had reached the Rí Ard’s ears.

  Padraic Mac Ard sat at the Rí’s right hand next to Cianna, a sign of his current favor, and Maeve and Jenna were seated after him. There were Riocha from most of the tuatha present as well, and many of them wore prominent necklaces with stones that were reputedly cloch na thintrí, though none of them knew for certain. Jenna knew, however. She could open her mind to the cloch she held, and see the web of connection from her cloch to theirs. A good number of the stones were simply pretty stones, and those who owned them would be disappointed when the Filleadh came. But some . . . some possessed true clochs na thintrí. One of them was Mac Ard, even though the cloch he held was never visible.

  Farther down, below the salt, were the céili giallnai—the minor Riocha—then the Rí’s clients and a few prominent freepersons of Lár Bhaile.

  Jenna hated these suppers, and usually pleaded illness to avoid them. She hated the false smiling conversations; hated the undercurrents and hidden messages that ran through every word; hated the way Rí Mallaghan sat in his chair like a fat, contented toad contemplating a plate of flies before him; hated when his eyes, half-hidden in folds of pale flesh, regarded her with an appraising stare, as if she were a possession of his whose value was still in ques tion. She wanted to dislike Cianna, the Rí’s ailing wife, whose eyes were always hollow and sunken, ringed with dark flesh, but she couldn’t, more out of pity than anything else. Cianna was as thin as the Rí Gabair was corpulent yet she wheezed constantly, as if the exertion of moving her frail body about was nearly too much for her. Cianna, unfortunately, seemed to have fastened on Jenna as a fellow sufferer and talked to her often, though she treated Jenna like an addled child, always explaining things to her in a breath scented with the mingled odors of cinammon and sickness. She leaned toward her now, bending in front of Mac Ard and Maeve, the torc around her neck swinging forward, glinting in the torchlight. Her dark, haunted eyes fastened on Jenna’s. “How are you feeling today, dear? Did that healer I sent to you from Dubh Bhaile help you?”

  “Aye, Highness,” Jenna answered. “The arm feels a bit better today.” Actually, Jenna had endured the man’s prodding and poking, and had thrown away the potion he of fered, taking instead some of the andúilleaf she’d bought that morning. She could feel it easing the pain in her arm.

  Cianna looked pleased. “Good,” she said. “He’s certainly done much for me, though I still can feel the pain in my back.”

  Jenna nodded. The Banrion had gone through three new healers in the two months they’d been at the keep; each time the Banrion seemed to get a little better, but then she inevitably slumped back into illness and the current healer was dismissed and another summoned. If her back was hurting now, this healer would be leaving before another fortnight. The Rí himself never seemed to notice—he’d perhaps seen too many healers already, and no longer inquired after his wife’s health. She’d borne him a son and a daughter early in their marriage; both were away in fosterage—the son to Tuath Infochla, the daughter to Tuath Eoga nacht. The Banrion Cianna had performed her duty and could keep her title. As to the rest . . . well, the Rí had other lovers, as Jenna already knew from keep gossip. For that reason, she was careful when the Rí smiled at her—two of the Rí’s current lovers were as young as Jenna.

  The Tanaise Ríg, Nevan O Liathain, had evidently been listening to Cianna’s conversation with Jenna. He looked across to her as the servants set the meat trays on the table. “Perhaps the pain will lessen when the other clochs are opened, Holder,” he said. “Or perhaps there is another way to use the mage-lights that wouldn’t cause a Holder so much . . . agony.” Jenna could hear the words underneath what he said: Perhaps you are too stupid and too common to be the First. Perhaps someone of the right background would be better able to use it . . . O Liathain smiled; he was handsome, with hair black as Seancoim’s crow Dúnmharú, and eyes of glacial blue. Thirty, with a body hardened by training and an easy grace, his wife dead two years now leaving him still childless, he turned the heads of most of the available women in the keep, even without the added attraction of his title. He knew it, also, and smiled back at them indulgently.

  But not at Jenna. Not at Maeve. Jenna had overheard him talking to the Rí one night, a few days after his arrival. “Why do you keep them?” he asked the Rí, laughing. “Listen to them. Their accents betray their commonness, and their manners are, well, nonexistent. I can’t believe Mac Ard would be consorting with that stupid cow mother of the Holder—if I were going to take one of them to my bed, as disgusting a thought as that is, I would have chosen the girl, who’s at least trainable. Better to have left them back scrabbling in the dirt, which is all they
’re suited for. One of us should take the cloch from this Jenna now, before she truly learns to control it, and be done with the charade . . .”

  She hadn’t heard the Rí’s answer. She’d slipped away, steeling herself to fight for the possession of the cloch that night if she had to, trying to stay awake lest the Rí’s gardai enter her bedroom, but eventually exhaustion claimed her and she drifted off to sleep, awakening the next morning with a start. But the cloch was still with her, and the Rí Gabair, if anything, seemed almost conciliatory toward her when she saw him later that morning.

  She smiled at O Liathain now across the table, but her smile was as artificial and false as his own. “Each cloch tells its Holder the way to best use it, as the Tanaise Ríg might learn one day should he actually have a cloch of his own.” Her smile widened on its own; O Liathain wore what he thought was a cloch na thintrí around his neck; while it was certainly an expensive jewel worthy of a Rí, it pleased Jenna to know that it was simply that, not a cloch na thintrí.

  O Liathain frowned and fingered the polished facets of his stone on its heavy gilded chain. He looked as if he were about to retort, but the Rí guffawed at the exchange. “You see, Nevan,” he said to O Liathain. “The Holder is more than she appears to be. She has an edge on her tongue.”

  “Indeed, she does,” O Liathain replied. He inclined his head to her. “My pardon.” There was a distinct pause before the next word. “Holder,” he finished.

  Mac Ard speared a piece of mutton with his knife and set it on his plate. “The Tanaise Ríg is gracious with his apology,” he said, but Jenna and everyone else who heard it knew the tone of his voice and the hard stare he gave O Liathain added another thing entirely: and it was necessary if you didn’t want me to take offense. Maeve touched Mac Ard’s arm and smiled at him. Mac Ard, at least, seemed protective of them, though Jenna noted that while he might spend the night with Maeve, he also hadn’t offered to legitimize the relationship.