Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  “Maybe we should leave this room, Banrion,” Jenna suggested, but Cianna drew herself up, her haunted, umber-circled eyes widening.

  “No. Listen to me, Jenna. There is talk. I hear it, though they think I don’t listen or care. But I do. They want you for one thing, Jenna, and one thing only: to open the other clochs to the mage-lights. They know that the First Holder always suffers more than the Holders who follow—they’re content to let you take that pain for now, even though some of them intend to take the cloch you hold, once you’ve opened the others.”

  “Who?” Jenna asked. “Who wants it?”

  “Some I know for certain,” the Banrion answered. “Nevan O Liathain, the Rí Ard’s son, covets Lámh Shábhála—he’s made no secret of that. My husband does, as well; he’s more ambitious than you might think. Galen Aheron, the tiarna from Infochla who arrived a few days ago, has said things that make me suspect he would try for it as well. And even Padraic Mac Ard . . .”

  “You’ve heard him talking?” Jenna asked, her eyes narrowing. “Tiarna Mac Ard?”

  Cianna shook her head. “No, in truth, though I think that’s why the Rí called for the song, because he knew that Mac Ard had said nothing to you regarding his ancestors’ history with Lámh Shábhála. The Rí is always careful with Mac Ard, because he knows that a Mac Ard was once Rí and that Padraic could contend for the throne of Tuath Gabair. My husband and Padraic aren’t enemies, but they also aren’t entirely allies. Mac Ard’s said nothing against you that I’ve heard, but when he rode away from the keep weeks ago, when the mage-lights first came, I know he was eager to find the cloch. And if you were . . .” Cianna paused. Coughed. “. . . no longer the Holder, aye, I believe he would try for the cloch himself.”

  Jenna’s right hand, the fingers stiff and painful to move, closed around Lámh Shábhála on its necklace. Cianna noticed the gesture, and her fingers touched Jenna’s. “Your skin there is so cold and so hard, like the scales of a snake.” She touched her cheek. “And so warm and smooth here.” The Banrion smiled gently. “You’re so young to carry such a burden, Jenna. But I was a cycle and more younger when I was sent to marry the Rí and was a mam by the time I was your age. Women often carry their burdens early.” She smiled again. “And long.”

  Cianna picked up the torc from the shelf, brushing away the dust with a hand and pursing her lips to blow away the rest, though the effort cost her another fit of coughing. She held out the golden artifact to Jenna, though Jenna only looked at it, puzzled. “We have nothing of Rowan’s or of Bryth’s, but this torc was Sinna Mac Ard’s, great-mam of Rowan Beirne. I don’t know if she could give you answers to the questions you might have, but you may try. Take it, use it if you can.”

  “Banrion, I can’t . . .”

  “If anyone asks why you have it, tell them to come to me. That’s all you need say. Keep it.” She gestured around her, at the gray-covered shelves, at the dim recesses filled with hundreds of unseen items. “You can see how much the past is revered here.” She reached out and touched the cloch where it rested between Jenna’s breasts. “But they will grab for what they see as the future,” she said. “And some of them are quite willing to kill anyone who would get in their way.”

  19

  An Assassin’s Fate

  SHE could feel the strong tingling of a presence when she held the torc, and she knew that Cianna had spoken true—this had once been a Holder’s beloved possession. But even though she found herself alone in the apartment when she returned, Jenna didn’t let the cloch call the presence forth. The experience with Riata had been frightening at first yet ultimately rewarding, but the ghost of Eilís had scared and nearly killed her and as for her da . . . seeing him hurt too much and left her unsatisfied and feeling more alone than ever.

  She doubted that Sinna’s specter could help her at all.

  She placed the torc among her clothes where Aoife was unlikely to find it, thinking that she might use it that evening. But the mage-lights came again and she went to them, and afterward Jenna was in too much pain for anything but andúilleaf and bed. After Maeve had fussed over her for a bit (with Mac Ard hanging in the background at the door of the room, staring at her, Jenna thought, strangely), she lay in her bed, holding the cloch in her hand and staring into the darkness of the ceiling, seeing not the room but Lámh Shábhála. She gazed into the crystalline matrix of the cloch, seeing the nodes gleaming and sparking with the stored power of the mage-lights, flickering tongues of blue-white lightning arcing between the facets. She let herself drop deeper into Lámh Shábhála’s depths toward the seething well at its heart, and she seemed to stand on a precipice, looking down into a maelstrom, a thunderstorm so bright that it nearly blinded her. The well was nearly full now—no more than three or four more nights, and it would overflow, filling the cloch . . .

  . . . then . . .

  She knew what was supposed to happen, knew that Lámh Shábhála was to “open the other clochs na thintrí.” But she didn’t know how, didn’t know what that would do to her, how it might feel or how it might hurt her or what it would be like afterward. She wondered if Tiarna Mac Ard might know, but she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—ask him. She was grateful to him for what he’d done to save her and her mam, and she knew that Maeve loved the man and seemed to be loved in return, yet she found herself holding back when she might speak to him. There was no one she trusted enough to ask that question who would know the answer.

  There were the dead Holders, of course. Riata she might ask, but she had nothing of his to bring him back; Eilís was too fey. Her da she’d already asked, but he had never held Lámh Shábhála while it was alive—he knew less than she did.

  She trembled, looking down into the depths, at the raging energy trapped there. She ached to know, she needed to know, if only to steel herself for the ordeal.

  She let go of the cloch, and the image of it faded in her mind, leaving only the darkness of her room. She threw aside the bedclothes, shivering in the cold, and went quickly to the chest holding her clothing, pulling out the torc Cianna had given her. Her hands tingled with the feeling of the presence within it, and she thought she heard her name called, a yearning summons. They feel you just as you feel them . . .

  She went back to her bed, wrapping the quilts around her and snuggling her toes under the heated plate of cotton-wrapped iron Aoife had placed beneath the covers to warm the bed. She placed the torc around her own neck, grimacing as the cold, burnished metal touched her skin.

  Sinna . . . ?

  Torchlight swam in the darkness.

  Sinna, come to me. . . .

  Jenna trembled, tugging the blankets tightly around her. She was in her room, but the portion in front of her was overlaid with a hazy image of another time. There, the fireplace was roaring; torches were set in their sconces along the walls, and embroidered hangings covered stone walls no longer plastered and painted. In the shadows, someone moved, a woman with plaited, long gray hair, wearing a léine of yellow under a long clóca of green. Around her neck was the torc Jenna wore and from under the gold a fine chain held Lámh Shábhála. She stepped forward into the firelight, and Jenna saw that her movements were slow, her posture stooped, her face lined with the furrows of age. Her right arm was marked to the elbow with swirling curves of scars, in the pattern Jenna knew all too well.

  “Ahh,” the specter said, looking around. “I remember this room, though it’s much changed. So it’s happening to me, now—new Holders are calling me back.” The smile was bittersweet. “I’m to be used as I once used others.” Jenna felt the touch of the woman’s mind on her own, and at the same time Jenna reached into her. “You’re Jenna . . . and a First.”

  “Aye. And you’re Sinna.”

  The woman nodded. “Aye. And long dead, it would seem. Nothing more than dust and a memory. Have you called me back before?”

  Jenna shook her head, and the apparition sighed. “Good,” she said. “At least I’m not replaying an old scene. I always hated
that, myself, having to explain again who I was and what I knew. No wonder the dead are often so angry and dangerous. You’ve already learned to keep most of your mind closed off, so I assume at least one of us has given you a nasty fright before. And the cacophony of voices within the cloch . . .” She shivered and yawned. “It’s summer here, and I’m still cold, and every joint in my body is aching. Being old is worse than being dead . . .” She shook herself out of her reverie and peered at Jenna again. “You’re young, though—have they married you off yet, Jenna? Is that why you’re here in Lár Bhaile’s Keep?”

  “No,” Jenna answered. “And they won’t marry me against my will. I won’t allow it.”

  Sinna laughed at that, her voice husky. “Then you do live in a different age. In my time, you were fortunate if you married for love. I was lucky enough to have loved once: my dear, poor Ailen, who gave me this.” She lifted the cloch, and at the same time, Jenna felt Lámh Shábhála pulse on her own chest, as if the cloch remembered the touch. “But the second time . . . Well, a Holder is a political prize, and Teádor Mac Ard was Rí.”

  It gave Jenna a strange satisfaction to learn that Sinna hadn’t fallen in love with Teádor, as Padraic had told them, that it had only been a marriage of convenience. “You were the Holder of Lámh Shábhála. How could they make you marry him?”

  Sinna shrugged. “I suppose they couldn’t, not if I utterly refused. But a Holder who is a woman must also know how to play the game, if she wishes to stay the Holder. A Banrion is a powerful thing, too, and to be both Holder and Banrion . . .” Sinna smiled. “Teádor and I found love elsewhere, but we were well suited to be Rí and Banrion. What we had wasn’t love, but we understood each other well enough, and for the most part we both wanted the same things. That was enough. And when my daughter was old enough, we used her to strengthen an alliance.” She sighed and smiled inwardly, then her gaze focused on Jenna, who saw that one eye was cloudy and white with a cataract. “Why did you call me back, First Holder? What is it you wanted to ask me? Ask, and let this ghost go back to sleep.”

  Jenna flipped away the bed quilts. Suppressing a shiver as the cold air touched her, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked to where the old woman stood. “I’m First, as you said. And the other clochs na thintrí aren’t yet opened. I want . . . I want to know what will happen when Lámh Shábhála is full and wakes the other stones.”

  “No one has told you?”

  “They hint, but they don’t say. Or perhaps they truly don’t know,” Jenna answered. “I’ve even talked to the Ald here. He says he doesn’t know—it’s been so long since the mage-lights came that the knowledge is lost.”

  Sinna sighed. Her hand lifted as if she were about to touch Jenna, then dropped back. “So they do use you,” she said. Her voice was soft. “Your time isn’t so much different, then. I wasn’t a First, Daughter. When I held Lámh Sháb hála, the clochs had been active for generations and generations, nearly all the way back to when the first Daoine came to this land. I can’t help you with that . . .” She stopped, turning slightly from Jenna and holding her hands out to the image of the fire, as if warming them. “Tell me, did I give the cloch to Bryth, or did someone else take it?”

  “No,” Jenna answered. “Bryth was the next Holder, and her son after that, your grandson.”

  Sinna nodded, firelight reflecting on her wrinkled skin and over the coarse gray hair. “That’s good to know,” she said. “It’s a comfort, even though I’ll forget as soon as you release me. I’m going to Tuath Infochla in a fortnight to meet her, and I intend to pass it to her then. So it seems I manage to do so.”

  “Another Mac Ard would like to hold Lámh Shábhála now,” Jenna said, and with that Sinna turned back to her. “Ahh . . .” she breathed. “So the line continues.”

  “Not Bryth’s,” Jenna told her. “Your son’s. Slevin.”

  Her face changed with that, as if she’d tasted sour fruit. “Slevin,” she said, and the word sounded harsh and bitter.

  “Strange how distant we can become from our own children . . .” She stopped. “Jenna, do you feel that?”

  “What?”

  Sinna turned, her half-blind eyes peering toward the south window of the room. “Perhaps I can teach you something after all. See with the cloch, Jenna. Imagine . . . imagine that your skin is alive with its power, that it’s like a shell around you, expanding, and you can feel everything that it touches, can see the shape of it as the power within you wraps around it. Can you do that?”

  “Aye . . .” Jenna breathed. “I can.” Perhaps it was be cause Lámh Shábhala remembered Sinna’s touch, perhaps it was because Sinna’s mind and hers were open to each other, but Jenna could feel her presence expand, filling the room so that in her mind she could see everything in it as clearly as if it were day. She let it expand farther, moving her awareness outward.

  And stopped with a gasp.

  “Aye,” Sinna said. “Even the dead can feel that threat.”

  Outside, on the wall, a dark form crept upward in the night, hands already on the balcony and death lurking in his heart. The intruder pulled himself silently over the rail—with her eyes, Jenna saw nothing but the closed doors leading to the balcony, shut against the night and the cold air. But with the cloch, she saw the man crouch, then stand, and she saw the small crossbow in his hand and the quarrel smeared with brown poison.

  “You see,” Sinna said softly. “Lámh Shábhála can do more than throw lightnings. Watch; let me use the cloch . . .”

  One of the balcony doors swung open, and a night-wrapped form slipped in with a breath of cold wind. At the same time, Jenna felt the stone around her neck respond as the ghost of Sinna moved forward, her body changing as Lámh Shábhála’s energy surged through her, her shape suddenly that of Jenna herself, young and brown-haired, the torc gleaming around her neck. “You!” Sinna shouted, and the intruder turned, firing the crossbow in the same motion. The quarrel went through Sinna’s chest, burying itself in the plaster behind her. Sinna laughed, and she was herself again, an old woman. Behind the dark wrapping of the assassin’s head, his eyes were wide, and he looked from the ghost of Sinna to Jenna, standing near the bed. A knife flashed in his hand, but before he could move, Jenna felt Sinna’s mind close over her own and—like a skilled teacher’s hand guiding a student’s—she let energy burst forward from the cloch, shaping the force as it flew, and the assassin was picked up as if in a giant’s hand and slammed against the wall, grunting in pain and shock. A wisp of the cloch’s power ripped the cloth from his head, so that Jenna could see his face.

  “Do you recognize him?” Sinna asked.

  Jenna shook her head—his features were those of a stranger.

  “Then he was hired, and he has a name to tell you.” The man was struggling, trying to push away from the wall and move, but Jenna held him easily. “There, you have him,” Sinna said, and Jenna felt Sinna’s mind leave hers.

  “I’ll tell you nothing,” the man grated out, writhing in the grip of the cloch. His gaze kept slipping from Jenna to the ghostly image of Sinna.

  “No?” Sinna said. “Tighten the power around him, Jenna. Go on. Squeeze him, Jenna. Make him feel you.”

  Jenna did as Sinna instructed, imagining the tendrils of Lámh Shábhála’s energy snaking around him, pulling tight like a noose. The man grimaced, the lines around his eyes and forehead deepening, and he spat defiantly.

  “Good. I like defiance,” Sinna said. “It increases the pleasure when he finally gasps out the name we want. I wonder if he’s ever felt his ribs crack inside him, snapping like a dry branch into a dozen knives of bone. I wonder if he’ll whimper like a kicked dog when the eyes pop from his skull, or scream as his ballocks are crushed and ruined.”

  Sinna/Jenna yanked at the cords of energy, pulling them tighter still. The man moaned, and Jenna glanced at Sinna. “I can’t—” she began, appalled, but with the shift of attention, the assassin momentarily pulled away from his invisibl
e bonds. Before Jenna could respond, the knife still in his hand moved. With a cry, he plunged it into his own chest. Blood welled around the wound, and flecks of red foamed at his lips. He wailed, his eyes rolled upward.

  He fell. The wind from the balcony brought the fetid smell of piss and bowels.

  Sinna sniffed. “Not a common assassin, then, but a loyal and devoted retainer, to kill himself rather than talk,” she said. Her voice sounded eerily emotionless. “I would guess that someone’s becoming impatient.”

  Jenna gaped in horror at the foul corpse on the floor. “Would you have done that, what you told him you would do?”

  Sinna laughed. “If he had come to me, in my time, rather than to you? Aye, I would have done that and more to stay alive. I have done it. And so will you, Daughter, if you want to remain the Holder.”

  “No, I won’t,” Jenna said, the denial automatic. Sinna only smiled.

  “Jenna!” Maeve’s voice called from outside the room, and she heard footsteps pounding toward her. Jenna pulled the torc from her neck, and Sinna vanished as Maeve and Mac Ard rushed in, Mac Ard with his sword drawn. He stopped at the doorway, gazing at the crumpled body of the assassin. He hurried over to the man as Maeve went to Jenna. He prodded the assassin’s body with the tip of his sword, then knelt and pressed his fingertips against the neck just under the jaw, grimacing at the smell. She saw him glance at the small crossbow on the floor near him. “Dead,” he said, rising again. “And by his own hand, it would seem. Jenna, are you all right?”