Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  His regard came back to Jenna. “I’ll let you and O’Deor adháin take this man’s ship back to Inish Thuaidh,” he told her, gesturing at Meagher’s boat. “But Lámh Shábhála and Gairbith’s cloch must be given to me. Now.” He waited; Jenna only breathed, her mind whirling. “I need an answer, Jenna. You’re not going to get a better offer. It’s difficult, holding back bowstrings this long. I can see their fingers trembling. I’d hate to have one of them slip.”

  “You’ll just kill us anyway,” she said. “You would have killed me a few days ago.”

  Mac Ard shook his head. “Only if I’d had to. That time, I was defending myself from your attack and I seem to recall that it was you who struck first.” He shrugged, and a faint smile appeared in the curl of his lips. “Aye, I’d kill you if it means saving myself. I don’t apologize for that, either. If I wanted you dead, Jenna, I wouldn’t be standing here talking with you. I’d have struck before you ever saw us.”

  “You can’t leave us alive and go back to Tuath Gabair and the Rí, not with all these witnesses.”

  Mac Ard’s empty hand gestured to the men surrounding them. “These are my personal gardai, loyal to me and not Rí Gabair,” he responded. “They will see what I tell them to see. I don’t have many options here, however. I can’t take you back to Lár Bhaile with me—not after what you’ve done. For the Banrion’s death alone your life is forfeit, and there are the gardai you killed afterward at the bridge and the death of Gairbith and his men. And there were those we sent into Doire Coill to look for you who never came back.” He sighed, shaking his head. “All that would await you in Lár Bhaile is torture and an eventual execution; I couldn’t stand the torment and sorrow that would bring to Maeve. But I can take Lámh Shábhála back and tell the Rí that I killed you and O’Deoradhain in battle, and no one will challenge that tale. Then you and the Inishlander can go to your island, once I have your vow that you’ll stay there and never return here at all.” His scarred head cocked toward her questioningly. “Well, Jenna? I offer you your life and your friend’s as well as your mam’s future, all in return for the clochs na thintrí you have. Is that not a fair enough trade?”

  For a moment, Jenna considered the offer. She thought of how it would feel to take Lámh Shábhála from around her neck and give it to Mac Ard, to never hold it again, to never drink the addictive power of the magelights, to never see with its ferocious vision. To lose Lámh Shábhála for ever. Jenna glanced again at O’Deoradháin and knew that he saw the answer in her eyes. She looked back at Mac Ard.

  “No,” she said.

  And with the word, everything happened at once.

  . . . Bowstrings sang as Jenna reached for Lámh Shábhála and opened it with a mental wrench. The arrows arcing toward O’Deoradháin burst into flame, the wooden shafts seared to quick ash, the barbed heads clattering on the stone flags. Lightnings crackled from Jenna’s hands and she heard the screams from the gardai around her . . .

  . . . O’Deoradháin opened his own cloch with a shout and sent a burst of hurricane wind toward Mac Ard even as the tiarna attacked with his own cloch. Their energy met in a thunderous maelstrom between them, but Mac Ard was stronger and O’Deoradháin was enveloped in snarling, flickering fury. He shouted once, a voice full of hurt and failure . . .

  . . . Jenna saw O’Deoradháin fall to his knees and she struck with Lámh Shábhála as Mac Ard turned toward her. In the cloch-vision, she saw their two stones collide, like two giants formed of bright lightning wrestling with each other and grasping for holds. For several seconds, the tableau held, the power draining from their clochs with each moment. But slowly, slowly, Mac Ard’s attack weakened under Lámh Shábhála’s greater strength and endurance, giving way so suddenly that Jenna nearly stumbled herself. She could feel all the power spill from his cloch, and with her true eyes, she saw the tiarna fall. . . .

  That quickly, it was over. Jenna released Lámh Shábhála, and the shock sent her to the ground, sitting abruptly on the stones. She fought to retain consciousness, not daring to fall into night as she had the last time. Darkness threatened to take her, her vision shrinking and the world seeming to recede as she fought to hold onto it, bringing consciousness back slowly: Meagher and his crewman cowering behind the single mast of his boat; the moans of Mac Ard’s gardai; O’Deoradháin and Mac Ard both sprawled on the ground; the echo of thunder rumbling in the hills.

  Jenna took a long, slow breath and pushed herself back up. She went to O’Deoradháin; he was breathing but un conscious. “O’Deoradháin?” she said, shaking him slightly, but he didn’t wake. She took the long dagger from its scabbard at his waist, the keen edge ringing as it was unsheathed. “Come help me with him,” she shouted to Meagher and the other man. When they didn’t move, she lifted the cloch around her neck.

  “Now!” she commanded, and they scrambled over the ship’s side to her. “Put him aboard,” she told the wide-eyed and terrified fishermen. “You’ll be taking us to Inish Thuaidh, and be glad that I don’t strike you down right now for telling them we were here.” A quick intake of breath told her that she was right. “How much did Tiarna Mac Ard pay you, Flynn Meagher? Tell me,” she barked into his frightened eyes.

  “Four mórceints, mistress,” he finally mumbled, his head down.

  “Then you’ve been paid in full and more. Take my companion to the ship.” Meagher and the other man didn’t move, their heads still down as if they awaited an executioner’s stroke. “Do it now!” she ordered, “And gently.”

  “Aye, mistress.” Meagher and the other man lifted O’Deoradháin carefully. As they placed him on the boat, Jenna went to Mac Ard. She crouched beside him. He was barely conscious; his eyes fluttered, and he seemed to almost smile. His hand still clutched at his cloch. “It seems I’ve underestimated you as well, Jenna,” he said. His eyes moved to the dagger in her hand. He tried to lift his hand, but it fell back to his chest. “At least make it quick.”

  She pressed the keen edge against the side of his neck and blood drooled as Mac Ard inhaled and closed his eyes. But she only held it there, and his eyes slowly opened again. “Were you lying to me? Would you have let us go?” she asked him. She showed him Lámh Shábhála. “You know I can hear the truth, if I wish.”

  “It wasn’t a lie,” he answered. “I believe you’re an abomination and a great danger, but I would do nothing that would hurt Maeve so much unless I had no other choice.”

  She stared at his face, remembering the way he had looked at her mam, remembering the softness when she’d seen him sleeping with Maeve in his arms, back in Seancoim’s caves. She pulled the dagger back and put it in her belt. Then she reached down and wrapped the fingers of her left hand around the chain of his cloch, pushing his feeble hand away from the stone. “No,” he moaned. His lips were flecked with blood. “Ah, Jenna, don’t do this. Don’t take the cloch. Think of how Lámh Shábhála is part of you, how it would be like tearing away part of yourself to lose it. Don’t . . .”

  She could see genuine fright in his eyes now, surprising her. Would I feel this way, if it were me laying on the ground and Lámh Shábhála about to be taken from me? With the thought, a spear seemed to penetrate her heart, and she gasped with imagined terror.

  Aye, you would feel as he does, and worse . . .

  “You knew I couldn’t just give you Lámh Shábhála. You knew I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

  “I suspected it.” His eyes went to her hand, still clutching the chain of his cloch. “Now I know it.” His gaze searched her face. “I’m sorry, Jenna. I’m sorry you have to bear the burden. I’m sorry I could not be your da for you.”

  “My da?” Jenna shouted in rage. “You could never be my da!” Anger twisted her hand tight around the chain, and with the rising fury she tore the cloch from around his neck, the silver links parting as they ripped open his skin.

  He screamed, a sound that held loss and terror, a wail of grief and a shivering denial. His hands grasped for the cloch, his eyes
wide. “No . . . !” He was panting, and his eyes were wild. “I’ll kill you for this. I swear it!”

  She stared down at him. “The next time we meet,” she told him, clutching his stone in her hand, “one of us will die.” The words came to her with a sense of truth, as if she’d been given a glimpse of the future.

  He moaned and shrieked, his eyes not on her but on the cloch na thintrí she’d taken. Jenna turned and went to the boat, trying not to listen to the mingled threats and pleas he hurled at her back.

  “Cast off,” she told Meagher, and went to sit next to O’Deoradháin, staring back at the village as the wind snapped at the sail and bore them away.

  37

  The White Keep

  SHE expected him to be angry. He wasn’t. “You know it was a mistake to leave him alive,” was all he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “But you should know that in some ways, that was more cruel. He’ll always feel the loss. Forever.”

  “They’ll give him another Cloch Mór. Or he’ll find one,” Jenna answered.

  O’Deoradháin nodded. “Aye, I agree. He will. And he will come after you with it, because you have wounded him—on the inside, where it will never heal.”

  She only nodded, her hand at her throat, and he smiled sadly at her. “You made the choice. You can’t unmake it. And I’m not surprised that you couldn’t find it in yourself to kill a helpless man.” It was the last time he mentioned the incident.

  The first night out, with the headland of the bay still to be rounded, the mage-lights began to glow. Meagher and his friend were watching, their gazes on the two and the mage-lights that were beginning to swirl above them. “You saw what the clochs can do at the village,” Jenna told Meagher. She cradled her right arm, letting them see the patterns the lights had carved into her skin. “I’m telling you now that we can sense your intentions, also, while we’re calling the mage-lights or even when we’re sleeping. I will use the cloch if I feel threatened. Do you understand?”

  They nodded silently, meek and terrified. Neither looked inclined to test the truth of Jenna’s small lie. The mage lights strengthened, their glow touching the waves with color.

  “Jenna,” O’Deoradháin said as Jenna steeled herself for the ordeal of filling Lámh Shábhála once again. “If you’re willing, I’d like you to give me Mac Ard’s cloch.” She glanced at him, more quizzical than anything. “I’ll give you Gairbith’s in return,” he added.

  Jenna hesitated. “Why? They’re both Clochs Mór.”

  “Because he’ll come looking for that one,” O’Deorad háin answered. “And I want him to come to me, not to someone who may not understand or may not be expecting him.”

  “Are you sure it’s not just because he hurt you with it?”

  O’Deoradháin shrugged. “And that, too.”

  Jenna handed the rubied stone to him. His mouth tightened as he bowed his head to take Gairbith’s cloch from around his neck, and she heard him gasp as if stung when the chain was removed. “It’s only Mac Ard’s cloch in my other hand that lets me do this,” he said as he handed the green stone to her. He was sweating, the lines of his face carved deep. “Even this hurts, though I held Gairbith’s cloch for just a few days and have another cloch to immediately replace it. Take it from me, Jenna; I can’t . . . I can’t let it go.”

  Jenna reached over and pried his fingers from the stone until it dropped into her hand. O’Deoradháin took a long, shuddering breath, clutching Mac Ard’s cloch to him. After a few minutes, he lifted his head again and shook it. Jenna could see tears in his eyes. “They told me during the training that no one could give up his cloch willingly. I always thought that was an exaggeration, but that was harder than I believed. I couldn’t ever do that again,” he said softly. “Never. If I’d kept the other cloch any longer, if I’d used it more . . .”

  “Then fill Mac Ard’s cloch now,” Jenna told him. “Fill it and make it yours.”

  The mage-lights danced seductively, calling Jenna, and Lámh Shábhála’s need tugged at her. She turned away from O’Deoradháin and looked up, lifting the cup of the cloch to the mage-lights to be filled.

  The voyage took five days, hopping across the chain of small islands between Talamh an Glas and Inish Thuaidh.

  “There,” O’Deoradháin said finally, pointing ahead across the choppy gray waves. “That’s Inishfeirm. That’s where we’re going.”

  Jenna could see a gleam of brilliant white atop the blue-gray hump of the island, a white that shimmered in the pale sunlight filtered through thin gray clouds. As they approached the island, the patch resolved into stone towers perched precariously on the island’s steep cliffs. A road wound back and forth from a village clustered around the sheltering arms of a bay up to the ornate and imposing structure on the heights. “The town of Inishfeirm, where your great-mam once lived,” O’Deoradháin told her. The “town” looked small, larger Áthan Ballintubber, certainly, but not as imposing as even Áth Iseal. “And the Order of Inishfeirm,” O’Deoradháin continued, pointing to the high towers, “where I spent far too many years.” He laughed at the memory. “Máister Cléurach will be surprised. It’s been two years now I’ve been away, and I don’t think he ever expected to see me again.” He chuckled again, pointing. “There, see that dark speck making its way down the road? That’s one of the Order’s carriages—they’ve seen our ship and know it’s not one of the island’s, and have sent someone down to meet us.”

  A few stripes later, they pulled the ship up at the harbor, Meagher tossing a line to the crowd that had gathered to watch the strangers dock. Jenna thought their faces held suspicion and she saw O’Deoradháin glance up a few times at the buildings of the Order and frown, as if he spied something there that troubled him. But as they stepped onto the dock, the crowd suddenly parted and a blond haired, dark-bearded man dressed in a clóca of pure white linen came striding toward them. He stopped, his face registering amazement and disbelief. “Ennis? Is that really you?”

  “Mundy! By all the gods, you’re as ugly as ever.” The two men, laughing, met in the middle of the dock, hugging each other fiercely, kissing each other’s cheeks. “So you’re still here!”

  “I am. I doubt you’re going to believe this, but I’m now in charge of the acolytes—who’d have thought that someone as difficult as I was would end up having to herd the young ones and trying to keep them out of trouble.”

  “Who better? You know all the tricks, having done them yourself,” O’Deoradháin laughed. “How’s Máister Cléurach faring these days? And why aren’t you holding one of the clochs by now?”

  Mundy’s expression turned somber at that. “Máister Cléurach’s as well as can be expected, I suppose. These aren’t good times for the Order.”

  “What do you mean? Is that why everyone is looking at us like we’re tax collectors? With the mage-lights coming every night to the clochs now, I’d have thought—”

  Mundy shook his head warningly, raising his hand. “This isn’t anything to discuss here. I must ask you for some patience. In the meantime, you haven’t introduced me.” He glanced significantly at Jenna.

  “This is Jenna Aoire,” O’Deoradháin told him, and Jenna stepped forward. “Jenna, this is Mundy Kirwan, a Bráthair of the Order.” O’Deoradham leaned toward Mundy, speaking softly so that only Jenna and Mundy could hear him. “She is the First, Mundy. She holds Lámh Shábhála; she brought the Filleadh.”

  Mundy’s expression was simultaneously shocked and awed. “First Holder, I am honored. And Aoire . . .” He glanced again at O’Deoradháin with lifted eyebrows. “That’s a name that’s not unfamiliar here.”

  “I was told that my family was from here,” Jenna told him. “A few generations ago.”

  Mundy nodded. “The Máister will undoubtedly want to meet with you immediately. Do you have belongings?”

  O’Deoradháin lifted the pack he carried. “This is all.”

  “Then follow me. I’ll take you up to the mountain, and we can get yo
u rooms there . . .”

  Mundy escorted them to the carriage, little more than a flat cart with wooden seats attached, open to the weather without even the cover of an awning. A young boy in the same white attire waited there with the two horses, though the léine underneath his clóca was red, not white. Jenna looked out curiously as they ascended the narrow, winding switchback road up the steep hillside, more and more of the panorama spreading out below them as they rose. The sea was a rippling, shining carpet, dotted with a few nearby tiny islands; well out to the north, stony cliffs blue with distance rose on the horizon, the white line of distant breakers underneath. “The shore of Inish Thuaidh,” Mundy told her, noticing her gaze. “Those are the Bird Cliffs. Thousands and thousands of seabirds nest there.”

  “I’d like to see that sometime.”

  “Perhaps you will.” Mundy was sitting across from Jenna and O’Deoradháin, his seat facing them. He turned back from the scenery. “Aoire,” he said, almost musingly, but with an undertone that made Jenna’s eyes narrow. “An acolyte once stole a supposed cloch from the cloister and ran away with a local girl. In at least one version I heard, her family name was supposed to be Aoire.”

  Jenna glanced at O’Deoradháin. “We agreed that we wouldn’t try to hide anything from Máister Cléurach,” he told her. “And I trust Mundy.”

  The cart lurched in the ruts as they navigated one of the tight hairpin turns of the road. Jenna felt a momentary surge of irritation that O’Deoradháin would speak so openly, but she forced it down, knowing that it was mostly because she was uneasy about revealing the truth of how she’d come to acquire the cloch. “Then maybe that version’s the correct one,” Jenna told Mundy. “Her name was Kerys Aoire and she was my greatmam. And the cloch they took was this.” She pulled the stone out from under her tunic. “This,” she said, “is Lámh Shábhála.”