by S L Farrell
The truth was enough. Jenna felt Gairbith’s focus shift and with that the defenses he’d set around himself weakened. Jenna cried out, releasing a new flood of energy from Lámh Shábhála. It raged forward, overwhelming Gairbith. The mental connection between himself and his cloch snapped. Through her true eyes, she saw one of the men sway in his saddle and fall. In the middle of the field, O’Deoradháin and another man were fighting, steel clashing as a sword rang against the Inishlander’s long dagger.
Jenna nearly fell with Gairbith. The sudden release of pressure made her gasp and Lámh Shábhála was nearly drained. Weary, she turned her attention to Mac Ard.
“We don’t have to do this, Jenna.” She heard Mac Ard’s voice as if he whispered in her ear. “I don’t want to hurt you. Give up the cloch. Let me take it and I’ll let you go or take you back to your mam. Whatever you want. I swear it.”
The thought of losing the cloch was worse than conte mplating death. “No,” she answered. “Lámh Shábhála is mine. It stays mine.”
She heard no more words, but she felt his sadness.
Jenna could feel Mac Ard’s cloch opening and knew he was readying a strike. She didn’t wait for it; she grasped at the dregs of power within Lámh Shábhála and flung them at him. The energy shattered against his cloch, absorbing the lightning he hurled toward her. As it crackled around him, she could feel Lámh Shábhála sucking the rest of the life from his cloch until there was nothing left. She saw Mac Ard’s face go suddenly wide-eyed with fear.
Mac Ard’s horse reared up as he yanked at the reins. Faintly, she heard his cry of pain and frustration as he fled, galloping into the trees and over the rise. Within Lámh Shábhála, there was still power left, enough that she could feel Mac Ard’s cloch moving away until she could no longer sense it at all.
She let go of the cloch. It was a mistake, she realized immediately, for it was only the residual energy within Lámh Shábhala that was keeping her upright. With the release of contact, a doubled wave of severe pain and exhaus tion swept over her. She could still see O’Deoradhain fighting close by, but the edges of her vision had gone black, the scene before her shrinking and condensing until it was only a pinpoint. Thunder roared in her ears, and the drumbeat of her blood. Her right arm felt as if it were on fire. She tried to lift it, tried to call out, but the darkness closed in around her and she felt herself falling.
She didn’t feel the impact of the ground at all.
34
The Gifting
“YOU see,she’sweakandstupid.Shedoesn’tdeserve ‘to be Holder . . .”
“You can’t be seriously thinking she could survive the Scrúdú . . .”
“Next time they come after her, she’ll die. The only thing that saved her was the inexperience of the others, and they’ll learn . . .”
“She doesn’t have the discipline . . .”
“Lámh Shábhála has chosen poorly this time . . .”
“Be quiet, all of you. She will learn, she may take the Scrúdú in time, and she is stronger than you think . . .”
“Riata?” With the word, the voices faded. She could see nothing. Her eyes refused to focus though there was a whiteness all around her, and she was being jostled. She tried to move her hands or her legs and could not—something held her. She remembered the last thing she’d seen: O’Deoradháin and the other man fighting. If O’Deor adháin had lost . . . had she been captured? Had Lamh Shábhála been taken from her? She closed her eyes, gathering her strength.
This time, she could see. The whiteness was a cloth draped over a wooden framework above her face, the sun shining through it. She could lift her head, and saw that she was reclining on a crude carrier—canvas stretched and tied between two saplings. She could hear the slow clopping of two horses’ hooves and smell their ripeness—the carrier she was in was being dragged along behind one of the animals, the saplings evidently tied to the saddle, and the jostling was the device bumping and lurching over the broken ground. Someone had tied her into the frame as well.
Her body felt as if it had been bruised and battered and she could easily have slipped back into unconsciousness. Her right arm throbbed as if someone were rhythmically pounding it with a hammer of ice. She wanted to scream for someone to bring her andúilleaf, the old yearning for the drug rising from the suffering. She gritted her teeth to stop from crying out, forcing herself to take long, slow breaths, sending her awareness deeper. She did cry out then, in relief rather than pain.
Lámh Shábhála was still around her neck. She could feel the cloch, as drained as she was, but alive and with her. It will always be part of you now . . . The last of the voices whispered to her. . . . to lose your cloch is like losing your child. You can’t imagine that pain . . . “O’Deoradhain?” she called. Her throat felt as if someone had scrubbed it with a steel file.
The horse came to a sudden halt. She heard someone dismount, then footsteps. The cloth was pulled away from the frame, and Jenna was blinking up into a bright sky as a dark face eclipsed the sun.
“You’re finally awake.” The voice was familiar and deep.
“Finally?”
“It’s been nearly two days,” he told her.
“Two days?” She repeated the words wonderingly. “So long?”
“You learn to bear using the cloch against others as it happens more. At least that’s what I was taught. We can hope that Tiarna Mac Ard suffered the same fate, though I suspect he’s had more practice than you.” He crouched down in front of her. “Can you stand? Here, let me loosen these ropes . . .” He unlashed her, and helped her out of the contraption. Her knees were wobbly but they supported her; O’Deoradhain, after helping her to rise, let her go as she took a few tentative steps. She recognized none of the landscape around her: tall, grassy peaks with steep rocky outcroppings, and limestone-boned ground underfoot. There was an odor in the air that she couldn’t identify, a fresh, briny scent. “Where are we?”
“In Tuath Connachta above Keelballi, near the northern border with Tuath Infochla. We’re perhaps five or six miles from the sea. I’m hoping to reach a fishing village where we can find someone who’ll take us to Inish.”
“Mac Ard? The others?”
“I don’t know what happened to Mac Ard or the other one who fled. The rest . . . are dead.”
Jenna touched the cloch. O’Deoradhain’s eyes followed the gesture. “The cloch Gairbith had . . . ?”
“Was that the man’s name?” O’Deoradhain shrugged, then reached into a pocket under his clóca. “Here . . . It’s yours now.” He took her left hand, turning it palm up and placing in it a gold chain. At the end of the chain was a turquoise gem, faceted and gleaming and far larger than Lámh Shábhála. “There’s his cloch na thintrí. I took it from the body after . . .” He stopped.
Memory of the battle was coming back now. Jenna remembered Gairbith’s cloch going silent, and the man falling from his horse. “He wasn’t dead,” she said. “The cloch was drained, but Gairbith wasn’t dead.”
“He is now.” O’Deoradhain’s lips pressed together.
She stared at him; his eyes, nearly the color of the gem in her hand, returned the gaze, as if daring her to object. “You could have let him go,” she said. “Taken the cloch from him, aye, and his horse—”
“Jenna . . .”
“. . . but you didn’t have to kill him. Without the cloch, he wasn’t—”
“Jenna!” he said sharply, and Jenna blinked angrily, closing her mouth. “I don’t expect the person who murdered the Banrion to lecture me about the choices I made. We aren’t children playing a game, Holder. What do you think this Gairbith would have done with you, had the positions been reversed? Do you believe the Banrion’s assassin was only going to threaten you? Do you think the Connachtans who came to Ballintubber would have left you alive after they plucked Lámh Shábhála from your neck? Frankly, from what I’ve been taught, a cloudmage would prefer to be killed rather than have his or her cloch taken.”
&n
bsp; He snorted derisively, his hand slashing air in front of her. “You did the right thing with the Banrion, because if you’d left her alive she might have been the one to kill you later, or more likely, to have ordered your death. Now she can’t. And as for Gairbith—he doesn’t have to bear the pain of having his Cloch Mór ripped away from him, and he won’t be able to seek revenge.”
Jenna looked at the gold links pooled in her hand. She closed her fist around them. “I’m sorry for you, O’Deorad hain. I’m sorry that you live in such a harsh, self-centered world. There is a time for mercy.”
“I’ve learned that mercy and forgiveness will usually get you killed, Holder. I notice that you ‘murdered’ the riders with Mac Ard without worrying overmuch about that action.”
The lightning striking them down . . . “I did what I had to do. The difference is that I regret that action, even if it was necessary.”
“I also do what’s necessary to keep me—and you—alive, and I don’t regret that. I don’t intend to die because I was too busy worrying about whether I should defend myself.”
Jenna lifted her head. “We all die, O’Deoradháin, when the gods say it’s our time.” Gairbith’s cloch na thintrí was heavy in her hand. She looked down at the stone: beautiful and clear all the way down into its emerald depths, captured in a finely-wrought cage of silver and gold. Unlike Lámh Shábhála, this gem would be precious even if it couldn’t draw the power of the mage-lights from the sky. She looked back at O’Deoradhain. “Why did you give me this?”
“It’s yours. I didn’t win that battle. You did.”
Her fingers closed around it again. “Can I . . . can I use it?”
“No,” he told her. “A Holder can use only one stone, and you have Lámh Shábhála—why would you take a lesser stone? But while you keep this one, no one else can use it against you. It’s one of the Cloch Mór; better you have it than your enemies.”
Her gaze went back to him, and she suddenly felt ashamed of her doubt and suspicion of the man. He’s done nothing but tell you the truth: about Coelin, about Mac Ard, about everything. He helped you even when it put him in danger, and he could have taken Lámh Shábhála from you several times now. He could have taken this clock na thintrí just as easily, and yet he hands it to you . . . “O’Deoradhain, I’m sorry if it seems I don’t trust you. I certainly—”
He wouldn’t let her finish, shaking his head into her words. “You should be careful with your trust, Holder. You haven’t exactly made good choices in the past.”
“Give me your hand,” she told him. His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened again. He held out his right hand, and she took it in her own. She placed Gairbith’s cloch in his palm and closed his fingers around it. “Tonight when the mage-lights come,” she told him, “take this and fill it as I fill Lámh Shábhála. Become its Holder.”
Her hand stayed on his, and he didn’t move it away. His gaze searched her face, and she felt herself blushing under the scrutiny. You like this man more than you want to admit, and the realization brought more heat to her cheeks. What she felt wasn’t what she had once felt for Coelin; the heat inside her was different. With Coelin, the attraction had come from his flattery of her and his handsome face, and she knew now how false and shallow that had been. What she was feeling now came at her from all directions, and she found herself looking at O’Deoradháin with new eyes, and wondering if he were feeling what she was.
“This isn’t the cloch I want to possess,” he said gruffly. “You know that.”
“Aye,” she answered. “I know. I also know that if you take the one you want, it will be because I can no longer use it. And I also know that will be due to some other person’s deed, not yours.” She pressed his fingers more tightly around the stone, and smiled at him. “I think I’m making a good choice, this time.”
Slowly, he nodded. His hand slid from her grasp and he put the cloch na thintrí’s chain around his neck. The jewel gleamed on his chest for a moment before he placed it under his tunic.
“If you can ride,” he said, “we should be moving. I’d like to make the coast by tomorrow evening. He won’t let us rest.” O’Deoradháin didn’t need to tell Jenna who “he” was—she knew. “He’ll follow us, as soon as he’s able, and the next time he attacks he’ll be more careful.”
“I know he will,” she agreed. “But we’ll be stronger.”
35
O’Deoradháin’s Tale
THEY stopped to eat and rest near a narrow and long lough cradled between close green hills. The sun was high and peeked out occasionally between the clouds sweeping across the sky. Cloud shadows raced over the slopes, and the smell of the sea was in the wind from the west. Well out toward the western end of the lake, two fishing boats bobbed on the waves where the lough curved north and away toward the endless water of the ocean. Dark fingers of smoke smeared across the sky around the hills behind them, and underneath was a cluster of white dots.
“People,” Jenna said. “I’m not sure I remember how to react around them anymore.”
“If we’re lucky, we won’t meet too many of them,” O’Deoradháin answered. “We’ll make for that village. Maybe there’s an inn where we can stay and clean up, and if we’re lucky, find someone to take us up the coast. But they’ll be asking questions of strangers.” He nodded at Jenna’s right arm and the swirl of scars. “You’ll need to cover that arm of yours, and we’ll need to devise a story to give them. And we can’t show the clochs. Ever. Not here.”
“I agree. But let’s rest here for a bit. ’Tis beautiful, this.”
“Aye. If you’d like to look about, go on. I’ll take care of the horses and our food.”
Jenna walked down to the shore of the lough as O’Deor adháin hobbled the horses. The lough’s waters were fairly clear, not peat-stained like the waters of Lough Lár, and the water shifted from green to deep blue as the bottom fell away quickly. She sat on a rock that protruded out a bit into the water, taking off her boots and leggings and letting her feet splash in the cold water. She stroked the smooth surface of Lámh Shábhála: she had renewed its reservoirs with the mage-lights the night before, and O’Deora dháin had done the same with his cloch. She opened Lámh Shábhála slightly, letting its aura spread out over the lough, feeling for the presence of other clochs na thintrí. She could sense O’Deoradháin close by and feel the powerful emana tions of his cloch even through the wall he had tried to erect around it; she could perceive the fisherfolk in their boats, their thoughts altering the pattern of faint energy she placed around them; and at the very edge of Lámh Shábhála’s range, the clustering of many people in the village. But there was no one else. No one with intentions toward her.
Except . . .
There was something. Rising toward her, drawn to her, its attention steady on her.
Rising from below . . .
Fingers gripped Jenna’s ankles, still dangling in the water. They pulled, hard and sudden.
Jenna had no time to cry out. Instinctively, she turned her body, trying to cling to the rock even as she was dragged down into the lough. Frigid water hammered at her lungs; she took a gulping breath as her head went under, her hands still scrabbling for purchase. Invisible, frigid hands pulled at her legs, her waist, her breasts, and finally closed around the chain of Lámh Shábhála. Her desperate fingers found a knob of rock, and she pulled herself up even as the hands tried to hold her down and rip away the cloch from around her neck. Gasping, Jenna’s head broke the surface as she flailed for a higher handhold, pulling herself up. She screamed, letting go with her left hand and striking at her assailant.
She saw her attacker now, and shock nearly stole the breath from her. The creature’s torso had risen from the water with her, its arms around her—the face nearly featureless, its body the blue-black of the depths as if it were made of the water itself. A finned row of spines ran from its smooth-featured crown down the back of its sinuous body, and the hands that encircled Jenna and snagged the cloch�
�s chain were webbed, long-fingered, and wide. The eyes were dead black and shining—emotionless, cold shark eyes—and thin fanged teeth glistened in a gaping round mouth. Jenna tried to scream once more but the creature folded its arms around her and with a powerful wriggle of its body and a splash, yanked her away from the rock and back under the water. Lámh Shábhála’s chain broke and tore away; she grabbed for the cloch, but it vanished, drifting down.
Eyes open in terror, Jenna struggled, trying to strike at the creature though the water softened and slowed her blows. She pulled at the thing’s hands, and felt it bite at her shoulder and neck. It bore her down to the bottom, turning her under its body. She felt rocks and mud on her back and she knew that she had only seconds, that the first breath she took would be her last. She saw another dark form speed toward them, churning white foam on the dappled surface, and she despaired. Yet at the same moment she was about to give up and take the breath that would mean her death, the form above dove and struck her assailant hard. The creature shrilled in pain, releasing Jenna to respond to this new attack. Jenna pushed herself up from the rocky bottom, surging toward the rippling promise of sunlight above. Her head broke the surface and she took a desperate breath, her arms slapping at the waves. She could feel herself going under again, the weight of her clothing dragging her down. She gulped water . . .
A hand caught hers and pulled her up: O’Deoradháin. She choked and gasped, bleeding and coughing up water, as he helped her onto the shore. “Lámh Shábhála,” she managed to say. “They took it . . .” She started to plunge back into the lough, but he held her back, grasping her from behind. She struggled in his arms now, trying to get loose, screaming and crying as she fought to dive back in and find the cloch, but he was too strong.
“Jenna, you can’t go back in there . . .” he was saying to her, his lips close to her ear as he hugged her to him. “You can’t . . .”
She continued to try to break free, but exhaustion took hold and she hung limp in his arms, struggling to catch her breath. The surface of the lough showed nothing, then a silken head surged up through the small wind-driven waves several yards out: a seal. It roared at them once and dove again, surfacing closer to the shore. Bright blue highlights glinted in its ebon fur where the sunlight touched it. Metal glinted in the animal’s mouth and Jenna cried out word lessly. She pushed out of O’Deoradháin’s grasp and floun dered into the water toward the seal. It waited for her; wading in waist-deep, Jenna snatched at the broken chain with the silver-caged stone. Her hand closed around Lámh Shábhála; the seal opened its mouth and released the necklace at the same moment. Sobbing, Jenna clutched the stone in her hand. The seal stared at her with its bulbous chocolate eyes, its whiskered snout wriggling as if it were sniffing the air. “Thank you,” Jenna told the seal, tightening her right hand around the cloch.