by S L Farrell
There was a crash as the doors to the hall were thrown open. Everyone turned, and even the Rí looked up sleepily. A bedraggled garda entered, looking travel-stained and tired. He held up a leather pouch toward the Comhairle. “For the First Holder,” he said. The Banrion gestured for the man to come forward; a moment later, the Rí did the same. He moved through the press of tiarna, who stepped aside, and placed the package in front of Jenna. “We fol lowed Tiarna Ó Dochartaigh’s path from Dun Kiil,” he said. “He had a dozen riders with him, at least. They stopped at Néalmhar Ford to water their horses. We found this hanging on a tree branch at the crossing, with a note that it was to go to you, Holder.” He gestured at the bag. “I rode here as quickly as I could. None of us opened it.” He said that last sentence quickly, as if he feared that Jenna would strike him down with Lámh Shábhála.
“Thank you,” she told him, as gently as she could. The Comhairle was staring at the pouch, knotted shut with a leather cord. Jenna untied the cord and opened the flap. She turned the pouch and a necklace slid out along with a sheet of parchment on which she could see the black scrawl of words. The necklace was silver and a cage of fine silver wire hung from one end. The cage was empty, but Jenna knew what had once sat there: Ennis’ cloch, the one she had taken from Mac Ard.
“Oh, Ennis . . .” she breathed, hand over her mouth to stop the cry that wanted to wail and shriek its way forth. “Don’t,” Mac Ard had pleaded when she took the cloch from him. “It would be like tearing away part of yourself to lose it. Don’t . . .” Now it was Ennis who had had his cloch na thintrí ripped from him, it was Ennis who must have cried out in pain and loss, suffering more than if Árón had cut him open with his sword and left him to bleed to death. “Ennis . . .” Tears dripped onto the paper, the sepia ink running where the water touched, and Jenna blinked furiously, grasping the necklace in her hand, wishing she could read the words and also glad that she could not. She handed the note to Máister Cléurach. “Máister, what does the note say?”
He read it slowly, aloud:
“To the First Holder Aoire—
“I send you this token as proof that I hold Holder O’Deoradháin as hostage against the blood payment you owe for my daughter’s murder. The éraic I demand is this: you will give me Lámh Shábhála, for you have shown that you are not fit to hold it. You will send the cloch to me via my sister, the Banrion, who will bring it to Rubha na Scarbh. Once I have the cloch in my possession, I will release my hostage. If I do not have Lámh Shábhála by the Festival of Méitha, I will send back your lover’s body for you to mourn as I mourned my daughter.”
Máister Cléurach laid the paper down on the table as if with great weariness. “It is signed,” he said, “by Tiarna Árón Ó Dochartaigh.”
They were all staring at Jenna. She could feel their gazes, hot against the aching cold dread that had seeped deep into her with each word. “The Festival of Méitha is in ten days,” the Rí said, the first words he had spoken all morning, and it brought everyone’s attention to him. The Rí shrugged as if surprised. “We have a lot to do before then,” he said. “All the preparation for the festival . . .” He lapsed into silence, his mouth shutting abruptly. He waved a hand indulgently. “But go on. Go on.”
Banrion Aithne audibly sighed.
Tiarna Kianna Cíomhsóg rose and pointed to the parchment in front of Jenna. “This changes everything,” she said. “Árón has made the affair not treason but éraic, a personal matter of honor between himself and the First Holder in which the Comhairle needn’t involve itself.” Several of the other tiarna around the table muttered in agreement. Jenna saw annoyance flit over the Banrion’s face; Aithne nodded to MacEagan, who immediately interjected.
“He may have tried to do so. But it remains that Tiarna Ó Dochartaigh disrupted the holiday, destroyed the Rí’s property, and killed several of his subjects. That isn’t éraic; that is lawlessness and a breaking of the oaths of fealty and peace we’ve all sworn to the Comhairle and the Rí. The Comhairle should still recommend that the Rí issue the warrant against him.”
Banrion Aithne rose then, nodding to MacEagan. “And I, sadly, must agree with Tiarna MacEagan.” Her voice was tinged with soft regret. “Even though Árón is my brother, he has violated the peace of the Rí and deserves to pay for that . . .”
Jenna wondered why Aithne would argue against Árón, but Máister Cléurach leaned toward her and whispered. “Oh, she’ll make him pay—by bleeding his personal estate dry to come up with the honor-price against the warrant and replacing him in the Comhairle with another tiarna whose gratitude will give her his vote. Leave it to the Banrion to turn her brother’s rash judgment to her own advantage.”
The Banrion continued to speak. “. . . but Tiarna Cíom hsóg is also correct in that the hostage taking is now éraic, and neither the Comhairle or the Rí can interfere in that.” Aithne looked directly at Jenna, and though the sorrow still throbbed in her voice, her gaze was as hard as flint. “I wish it were different, First Holder. I wish the decision weren’t so painful and difficult for you, or that I had wise counsel to give you. I don’t. You must make your own decision as to how to respond to the éraic’s demands. I can only offer myself as your servant to carry Lámh Shábhála to my brother, if that is what you decide.”
47
Voices
SHE wished she could speak with Seancoim. She wished she could sink into her mam’s arms and simply sob. She wished Ennis were there, warming the other side of her bed.
But the night was cold and empty, and there was no one but Jenna herself and the voices inside Lámh Shábhála. She stroked the stone, listening . . .
“. . . give it up! Aye, it will hurt and may even kill you, but holding the cloch will end up being more pain for you than this, and death is a final release. Save the man you love . . .”
“. . . give up Lámh Shábhála, and you’ll die unhappy and young. You’ll hate him for having made you lose the cloch, that wonderful love of yours will turn sour and bitter and you’ll end up with nothing. Nothing at all . . .”
“. . . go there yourself and attack the man. If you lose, at least you’ve fought . . .”
“. . . only a stupid fool would give up Lámh Shábhála for a lover . . .”
“. . . only an utterly selfish one would keep it at the cost of a lover’s death . . .”
“Riata, talk to me,” Jenna said, but if his voice was there in the babble, she couldn’t distinguish it from the dozens of others. Jenna rolled from the bed, grimacing as the healing wounds and burns pulled and complained, and went over to a chest at the foot. Under the clothing were nestled the torc of Sinna Mac Ard and the carved blue seal her father had made. She picked up the seal, caressing it and holding it against Lámh Shábhála. A moment later, the moonlight streaming in from the windows shimmered, and she was looking at the interior of her cottage in Ballintubber, and her da glanced up in surprise. “Who are you?” he asked, as he had every time.
And as she had every time, she told him, and watched his disbelief slowly turn to acceptance. She told him about Mac Ard and Maeve, about Ennis. “I don’t know what to do, Da,” she said finally, unable to stop the tears. “I don’t know . . .”
Niall put down the block of wood he was carving. He walked toward her and a hand went out to touch her in comfort, but it moved through her as if Jenna were no more substantial than air. He looked at his hand as if it had somehow betrayed him. “What if it were you, Da?” Jenna continued as Niall stared at the offending fingers. “What if holding the cloch meant that you lost Mam?”
“I never held a cloch na thintrí when it was alive,” he answered. “It’s not hard to give up something that had little value to you. I would give away a thousand stones like that to keep Maeve.” He put his knife to the wood and a brown shaving curled away. “I’m sorry, Jenna. Truly I am. But I can’t help you; I can’t imagine needing to make the choice or the choice being that important.” His sad, lost eyes gazed at her, and she
was struck by the softness of his face and his hands. He wouldn’t have been strong enough to hold Lámh Shábhála. It would have destroyed him. The thought was so like the cold, judgmental voices she’d heard in her head that she gasped, knowing it was her own voice she heard. She opened her hand and the carving fell to the floor. “Da, I’m sorry . . .” she whispered as Niall and the cottage vanished, leaving her alone in the room.
She left the carving where it fell, picking up a shawl and leaving her chambers. The guards posted outside started to follow her, but she gestured to them to stay. She hurried down the stairs and corridors of the keep and outside to the courtyard. “I need to go down to the town,” she told one of the pages on duty there, and he scurried off to wake the stable master and bring a carriage. Half a stripe later, she left the carriage at one end of the wharf. “Stay here,” she said to the driver. “I’ll be back soon.”
In the darkness, the harbor area was quiet, though she could hear laughter and singing from the tavern facing the docks, and the waves lapped the piers as mooring ropes groaned and hulls knocked gently against pilings. Jenna strode quickly to the end of the wharf where she and Ennis had gone the night of the Feast of First Fruits. She walked from the planks onto the wet, dark boulders there and sat, staring out over the water. She touched Lámh Shábhála, her attention drifting with its energy over the sea, calling.
There was an answer. Several minutes later, as she sat shivering in the cold night breeze, a head appeared in the waves, the waves splashing white and phosphorescent around it. A grunting warble: “Sister-kin.” The Saimhóir hauled itself awkwardly out of the water and onto the pebbled beach.
“You knew,” Jenna said. It was not so much an accusation as a statement, nor did Thraisha deny it. “When we left, you told him ‘Farewell.’ You knew.”
The black eyes glinted in moonlight. Blue light shimmered in the satin fur, mottled with the pattern of the mage-lights. She smelled of brine and fish. “I knew that my land-cousin wasn’t with you in my foretelling, and I had the sense that I wouldn’t see him again.”
Tears filled Jenna’s eyes with that, and Thraisha waddled over until she could put her head in Jenna’s lap. Jenna stroked the silken fur, crying. A drop fell near Thraisha, and she lapped at the water, tasting it. “Why do you give the salt water?” Thraisha asked. “Is it an offering to your gods?”
“No,” Jenna answered, sniffing. “I’m crying because I know that I could change your vision. All I have to do is give up Lámh Shábhála.”
“You can’t do that.” It was not a warning or a caution, only a statement of fact.
“Why not?” Jenna railed. “Why shouldn’t I? What’s Lámh Shábhála brought me that’s so wonderful I can’t bear to let it go? I’ve lost my mam, lost my home. I’ve had to endure more pain than I thought possible; I’ve killed people and had them try to kill me.” She yanked the stone from around her neck, holding it in her hand, the chain dangling. “Why not give it up?” she shouted. She took her arm back, bringing it forward with a sharp, throwing motion.
But there was no answering splash out in the water. Her hand remained closed and when she opened it, the stone was still there, glinting in her palm.
“Jenna, stroke my back.” Jenna placed Lámh Shábhála around her neck again, and reached down to Thraisha, her fingertips grazing wet fur: “No—harder, so you can feel beneath,” Thraisha told her. Jenna rubbed the patterned fur, and underneath the skin of her back and sides, she could feel the lines of hard ridges. “Those are scars and wounds that are still healing,” Thraisha said. “Not from harpoons or the teeth of the seal-biter. These are from my own kind, because they wanted what I have and tried to take it from me. Because they think that I’m wrong in what I do.”
Her front flippers slapped rock as she moved, and Jenna saw that the left one was torn, as was her tail. “So it’s no different for you.”
“No, sister-kin.” In the cloch-hearing, Thraisha gave a bitter laugh, as Jenna’s own ears heard a soft warbling. “Stone-walkers and Saimhóir both came from the loins of the Miondia, and those lesser gods are all brothers and sisters from the womb of the same deity, even if we give Her different names. We are cousins and share more traits than we like to admit. There are a few who believe as I do, but only a few.”
“What is it that you believe?”
Thraisha looked up at Jenna. “That we’re to do more with the gifts we’ve been given than use them as weapons. That we who come First can mark this time and shape it so that it will be different and better than all the times the mage-lights have come in the past. That your fate and your choices—yours, sister-kin—are important to the Saimhóir because you hold Lámh Shábhála, who opened the way for all and who might still guide us.” She huffed, her nostrils flaring at the end of the dark muzzle. “But there aren’t many who agree with me. Most believe that Saimhóir and stone-walkers should stay apart, that our changeling land cousins are abominations, and that the Bradán an Chum hacht should be used only for the needs of the Saimhóir. ‘The stone-walkers live on the dry stones and their concerns aren’t ours. We only meet them at the water’s edge, and that’s not enough. Use your gift for your own kind.’ That’s what they tell me.”
“I hear the voices of all the old Holders,” Jenna said. “I’ve never heard any of them speak much of the Saimhóir.”
Again the laugh. “Then perhaps it’s time one did.”
“I didn’t want this,” she said. “I didn’t ask for it.”
“I know,” Thraisha answered. “I didn’t either. But it’s ours, and the question is what will we do with it.”
“You’ve already seen it in your foretelling. You’ve seen my death and yours. You’ve seen it all fail.”
A cough, a moan. “Perhaps. Or, as you said, maybe that was only a vision of what could be, not what must be.” Her head lay back on Jenna’s lap, as if she were tired. “What do you think Ennis would tell you?”
“He would tell me not to worry about him and to do what I felt was right.” She stroked Thraisha’s head. “It should have been Ennis with Lámh Shábhála. Not me. It would have been better that way.”
“It wasn’t what Lámh Shábhála wanted,” Thraisha answered. “It chose you, and there was a reason for that.”
“Then it should tell me what it is.”
“I think it has,” Thraisha answered. “You just haven’t listened. You need to listen now—to your head, not your heart.”
“But Ennis . . .”
“Ennis is lost,” Thraisha said. “I think you know that.”
“No!” Jenna shouted the denial, screamed the word as if she could burn away the void inside her with the fury as she scrambled to her feet, pushing Thraisha away. In the tavern, the singing stopped, and someone opened the door, spilling yellow light over the dock and silhouetting a man’s figure. “I won’t let him be lost!”
“Hello out there!” the figure called. A few other heads appeared behind it. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m . . . fine,” Jenna said, turning to wave at the people in the tavern door. “Sorry. I just . . . slipped.”
The door closed. After a moment, the singing started up again.
When Jenna turned back, Thraisha was gone. The waves lapped the stones silently.
48
Glenn Aill
THE party that left Dún Kiil on horseback was tiny: Jenna, Máister Cléurach, the Banrion Aithne and a quartet of gardai along with six attendants. They were escorted for the first day by the Rí and several tiarna and bantiarna of the Comhairle and their followers, but the others turned back when they came within sight of Sliabh Míchinniúint, where long ago Máel Armagh had been defeated by Severii O’Coulghan. The group traveled on alone: beyond the townland of Dún Kiil into Maoil na nDreas and Ingean na nUan, and finally past the leaning, gray stone marker of the Ó Dochartaigh clan.
Jenna could well believe that Rubha na Scarbh could effectively hide Árón Ó Dochartaigh or a thousand others. Th
e landscape was violent and wild, with sudden cliffs, great mountains of greenery-hung granite; boulder-clogged lowlands and hummock-strewn bogs. Mist and clouds draped the slopes and thunder rumbled in the valleys. They followed wandering sheep and goat trails or no path at all, coming upon “villages” of three or four houses where suspicious, grimy faces peered at them from shuttered windows. For every mile they traveled northwest, it seemed they traveled four up and down, or had to detour for half a day around an escarpment that flung itself across their path.
They saw a herd of storm deer, their hooves striking sparks from the rocks, the noise of their passage obliterating the storm. The next night, wind sprites lit the air around them in the mist and fog. From the pine forests bristling on the mountains came the howls of wolves that sounded like sibilant, long chants. Red, glowing eyes watched them from the darkness, and once there was a call that none of them could identify at all: a chilling long moan that raised the hair on the back of their necks, then was answered from across the valley.
“The land is changing,” Máister Cléurach said. “The Old Ones are slowly waking from their long sleep. You woke them, Jenna.”
A rider had come up to their party that morning, as they moved deeper into Ó Dochartaigh’s land. A white banner fluttered from his spear, and his scabbard was empty of its sword. He’d glanced at Jenna, Máister Cléurach and their escorts, then handed the Banrion a note. “I wasn’t told the Holder would be coming, or the Inishfeirm Máister,” the man said. “The tiarna . . .”
“Is my brother so defenseless that a dozen riders are a threat to him?” the Banrion asked, and the man flushed.
“The Holder—”
“—wishes to see that the hostage is delivered into her hands as was promised,” the Banrion snapped. “Nothing more. Tell Árón that she is here to give him the éraic he demanded. Or if he prefers, we can ride back to Dun Kiil and he can be content with nothing.”