Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  She had stopped at the entrance, though Seancoim continued on. Treoraí gestured for her to come forward. “Soft flesh, bring the All-Heart,” it said, the words sounding in her head while her ears heard the musical trill of its voice. Jenna hesitated, but Seancoim was standing there also, with the Créneach around him and seemingly unconcerned. Dúnmharú flew over to Jenna, circled her once with a harsh caw, then flew back to Seancoim. She took a hesitant step forward as the Créneach gathered around her like a crowd of strangely-sculpted children. They sniffed and their tongues flicked out to touch her right hand, curled protec tively around Lámh Shábhála. The touch of them was strange: cool and smooth, yet strangely hard—like fired and glazed pottery that was impossibly pliable. She could hear the whispers as they huddled close, their voices crowding inside her head.

  “. . . the All-Heart . . .”

  “. . . ahh, the taste . . .”

  “. . . it comes back to us . . .”

  “. . . bring the Littlest to see . . .”

  Jenna saw one of the Créneach push forward as the others made way. It carried a small form in its arms: an infant Créneach, the tiny body smooth and marbled with color, its arms waving as each Créneach they passed touched it with its tongue. There was a brilliance in the cloch-vision: the Cloch Mór was within the child.

  “This is our Littlest,” Treoraí said. “Given to us in the return of the First-Lights. It carries a Great-Heart within it, so we know that the All-Heart is pleased with us and our long wait.” Treoraí took the infant from the other Créneach, cradling it close. “It will have life while the First-Lights stay, and when the lights return to their search, it will go with them.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jenna said, shaking her head. “The All-Heart, the lights . . . I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Then listen,” Treoraí answered. Its tongue ran along the child’s face, like a caress, and the infant mewled in soft contentment. “You bear the All-Heart, so you should know . . .”

  Back when there was only stone in the world and the First-Lights gleamed, before the coming of the soft-flesh things, there was Anchéad, the First Thought. Anchéad wanted a companion, and so took a pebble from Itself and let the First-Lights wrap around it. The First-Lights gave the pebble of Anchéad life and awareness, and from this piece grew the god we call Céile. Within Céile, Anchéad’s pebble grew, always pulling the First-Lights toward it. For a long time, Anchéad and Céile dwelled together, but Ceíle found that Anchéad still sometimes yearned for Its solitude and would often go wandering by itself, leaving Céile alone for years at a time. So Céile also became lonely, and like Anchéad, broke away a pebble from Itself and held it out to the First-Lights, and they came and gave it life and shape also, though the fire of its life did not burn as deeply as Céile’s. Each time that Anchéad went wandering, Céile would break off another part of Itself, until there were a dozen or more children of Céile. Sometimes her children even broke off fragments of themselves and made their own children, but their hearts were even weaker than their own and shone only dimly.

  The children and grandchildren of Céile were the first of the Créneach.

  One day, though, Anchéad went wandering and never returned, and Céile sorrowed though the Créneach tried to give It comfort. The First-Lights felt the grief and loss of Céile, and in sympathy they left and went to search for Anchéad. As they faded, so did Céile’s life and those of the Créneach. When the First-Lights had gone completely, Céile and Its children and grandchildren fell down lifeless, and the wind and rain wore away the form of their bodies until all that was left were their gleaming hearts.

  The soft-flesh things came, and they took away many of the hearts they found for themselves, for they loved the way the hearts looked—Céile’s heart was one of those that was taken.

  And so it was until finally the First-Lights returned again from their unsuccessful search for the lost Anchéad. The First-Lights found Céile’s heart and they went to it, filling it once more. But the soft-flesh things held the heart now and the First-Lights could not bring Céile back, nor any of Its children or grandchildren who had also been taken. But the All-Heart that had been within Céile was able to stir and waken the hearts of all Its children and grandchildren: those hearts the soft-flesh things possessed could hold the power of the First-Lights, but only the few who had not been touched by the soft-flesh things could revive and have form and shape again as Créneach.

  Without Céile, though, none of the Créneach could take of themselves and make children. The First-Lights saw that and sorrowed, and so they gave a gift to the Créneach: they found a pebble that was like the heart of the Créneach and gave it life and form, and that one was the Littlest, and its light shone as bright as the first children of Céile.

  That is the way it has been ever since: the First-Lights go to search now and again for Anchéad and we Créneach die. Our bodies crack and crumble to pebbles and dust, and the hearts within us fall away. Those hearts the soft flesh things find and take will never live again as Créneach. When the First-Lights return from their search, they go first to the All-Heart and awaken it once more, and the All-Heart in turn awakens all of Its children and grandchildren. Then the First-Lights find the hearts that have not yet been touched and bring us back.

  And they also wake a new Littlest or two . . .

  Jenna found herself staring at Lámh Shábhála as Treoraí finished the tale, still cradling the infant in its arms. She tried to imagine her cloch burning with the mage-lights en ergy inside the god Céile, only to be found after the long, slow erosion of her body. She thought of all the clochs na thintrí—Cloch Mór or clochmion—having first been born in the Créneach . . .

  Truth or fable . . . There was no way to know. All she knew was that the Créneach believed it, as Jenna believed in the Mother-Creator and Seed-Daughter, as Seancoim believed in the god he called Greatness, as Thraisha believed in her WaterMother. Perhaps they were all mingled, all shades of the same truth. Jenna looked around her at the Créneach, and inside each of them burned an undeniable cloch na thintrí: that, at least, was truth.

  “I hold the All-Heart that was inside Céile,” she said, and Treoraí nodded with slow precision.

  “I am Eldest here,” it said. “This is my twelth Awakening. I’ve seen the quick growth of soft-flesh things like you, who can change the very land. I have felt the All-Heart close by twice before: when I was Littlest, and also at the end of my last life.” Jenna could hear the awe enter its voice, then, and its eyes were on the stone in her hand. “But this is the first time any of us here have actually seen it. It is a great gift for all of us, and for the Littlest.”

  “. . . my twelth Awakening . . .” The import of that staggered Jenna—if true, the Créneach before her was unimaginably old. From Riata’s time to her own was thirteen centuries or more, and that would have encompassed only a portion of two of Treoraí’s “awakenings.” Most of the voices within Lámh Shábhála were the more recent Hold ers; of the Bunús Muintir Holders, only Riata’s voice was easily heard, and he had been the last active Bunús Holder. There must be older, fainter voices buried deep within the cloch, going back and back to the dim mist of legend and myth.

  And here, one of the legends walked.

  Jenna glanced at Seancoim, who was leaning placidly on his staff, and then she bent down, looking at the smooth, shiny face of the Littlest in Treoraí’s arms. She could feel the Cloch Mór shining in the chest of the infant, a jewel with a radiance stronger than the moon. She dangled Lámh Shábhála over it, as she might have with a child. It didn’t reach for the cloch, but its tongue darted from its mouth, sliding over the stone in its silver cage and withdrawing. The Littlest chirped then, birdlike, as if in satisfaction.

  “It will remember,” Treoraí said. “We will all remember the taste of the All-Heart. Soon enough, when the Littlest has grown, we will leave here, each on our own, to search for Anchéad while the First-Lights still glow in this land, but
we will remember.”

  Treoraí handed the Littlest to one of the other Créneach, and clapped his hands together again. “But I forget that the soft-flesh things are always in a hurry, for your lives are short. We could stay here for several darknesses, remembering all the old tales of the All-Heart and our long search, but you would grow old in that time, so—” Treoraí stopped, abruptly. He turned away from her, as if he’d forgotten she was there, and lifted his gaze toward the sky.

  The first wisps of the mage-lights glimmered into exis tence, a feathery curtain dancing in the sky, and the Créneach responded, clapping their hands together once in unison. The resulting boom was deafening, and both Jenna and Seancoim put hands to ears as the Créneach clapped again, the explosion of sound repeating from the nearby peaks, each time fainter and more distant. The Créneach lifted their hands toward the sky and the brightening mage lights, as Jenna felt the insistent pull of Lámh Shábhála and mirrored the gesture with her own right hand. The mage lights curled and fused above the valley, lowering until their slow lightning flowed around them in multicolored stream ers. One stream wrapped itself around Lámh Shábhála, fill ing it eagerly; around her, Jenna saw the Créneach standing surrounded by the glow, their mouths open and the mage lights swirling in as if they were swallowing them. The Créneach crooned, a twittering, musical sound almost like chimes stirring in a wind.

  Lámh Shábhála filled quickly, and Jenna released it with a gasp of mingled pleasure and pain. The Créneach paid no attention to them at all, their attention all on the bath of light in which they were immersed. Seancoim came up to her, his arm supporting Jenna as she slowly let the cloch-vision recede.

  “We’ll stay here tonight,” he said. “Go on and rest, and I’ll watch . . .”

  52

  The Protector

  SHE was more exhausted than she’d thought. She fell asleep quickly and when she woke, it was dim morning, the sun lurking behind a thin smear of charcoal-gray cloud. The valley, in the daylight little more than a narrow canyon, was empty. Seancoim was poking at a tin pot boiling on a small campfire while Dúnmharú pecked halfheartedly at the ground. Jenna’s right arm ached and throbbed. She grimaced as she sat up, rubbing at the scarred flesh.

  “Where are the Créneach?” Jenna asked.

  Seancoim pulled the pot from the fire with a stick. He sprinkled herbs from a pouch into the boiling water and Jenna caught the scent of mint. He set the tea aside to steep. “Still here,” he answered. He pointed with the stick in the direction of a rock pile against the cavern wall. “That is Treoraí, I think.”

  Jenna went over to the pile: undistinguished broken granite, glinting here and there with flecks of quartz—she would have walked past it unknowingly a hundred times. The rocks were loose and in no semblance of any shape: ordinary, plain and common, as if they had tumbled from the cliff walls years ago and been sitting there since. The only hint that this might be something out of the ordinary was a lack of weeds or grass growing up in the cracks between the boulders. She started to reach toward it with her right arm, but a flash of pain ran through her with the movement, and she cradled the arm to herself, stifling a moan. When the spasm had passed, she touched one of the larger boulders with her left hand: it was rough and broken, not at all like the skin of the Créneach had been. “You’re certain?”

  “Aye,” Seancoim answered. “When the sun rose, they all sat. As the light came, they seemed to just melt into what you see now. Before they went to sleep, though, Treoraí told me that we would find the path to Thall Coill through the other end of the valley. It also said to tell you that the Créneach will always honor the All-Heart, and even the Littlest will always remember.” Seancoim poured the tea out into two chipped-rim bowls and handed one to Jenna. “Here. You’ll need this: it’s kala bark.”

  “Not andúilleaf?”

  He didn’t answer that, simply gave her a grimace of his weathered face. “We have a long walk today.”

  Jenna nodded, sipping her tea and staring at the rock pile as if it might reassemble itself again into Treoraí. “We did see them, didn’t we, Seancoim?”

  The old man smiled briefly, the beard lifting on his flat, leathery face. “Aye,” he told her. “We did.”

  “And is it true, what they told me—that each of the clochs na thintrí is the heart of a dead Créneach?”

  Seancoim shrugged. “It’s what they said.” He took a long draught of his tea, and tossed the dregs aside. He wiped the bowl and placed it back in his pack. “We should go. These mountains are best passed through in daylight.”

  They packed quickly, then set off again. The path led upward toward a saddle between two peaks. Eagles soared above them, huge and regal, and Dúnmharú stayed on Seancoim’s shoulder, not daring to challenge them. Their pace was slow as they made their way through broken, trackless ground, sometimes needing to detour around cliffs and slopes too steep to climb. They reached the ridge by midday, and finally looked down over a long, curving arm of forested land spread out into the distance before them. Fogs and vapors curled from the treetops, indicating hidden streams and rivers and bogs below the leafy crowns. The sea pounded white against the rocky coastline, until it all merged into indistinct haze. It was cold in the heights, as if summer had never reached here, and Jenna shivered in her clóca.

  “Thall Coill,” Seancoim said, though he appeared to be looking well out into the distance. “And there—on the coast—can you see the open rise where the cliffs lift from the sea? I can see it with Dúnmharú’s eyes, but . . .”

  Jenna squinted into the distance, where there was a speck of brown and gray against the green. “I think so. Is that where . . . where I must go?”

  “Aye.” He exhaled, his breath white. “That place is called Bethiochnead, and it’s our destination. But we won’t get there standing here. Come on, at least it will be warmer farther down.”

  They took the rest of the day to toil downward over the intervening ridges, through fields of bracken and hawthorn into glades dotted with firs, and finally into the shadow of Thall Coill’s oak-dominated fastness. There was no sharp demarcation, no boundary they that they crossed, but they could sense the ancient years lying in the shadows, the long centuries that these trees had witnessed, unmoving and untouched. By evening, clouds of wind sprites were flowing between the trunks of the oaks like sparkling, floating rivulets, and a herd of storm deer swept over the last stretch of open field, their hooves drumming the earth.

  Jenna felt as she had in Doire Coill. This was a land alive in a way that she could not understand. There were places here older even than the ancient forest near the lough. As if guessing at her thoughts, Seancoim halted next to her. “We’ll have no fire here tonight,” he said. “I don’t think the forest would like it, and I don’t know what it can do. And beware the songs you might hear. Thall Coill is said to have a stronger, more compelling voice than the Doire. These trees were here when we Bunús came to Inish Thuaidh; they will still be here after you Daoine are as scarce as we are now. Thall Coill doesn’t care about us—only about itself.”

  Jenna shuddered, feeling the truth of the statement. “We can’t get to that place you saw tonight,” she said. “I think we should stay here and not go any deeper into the forest tonight.”

  “I think there may be a better place to stay.” Seancoim plunged the end of his staff into the loamy earth. He took a long breath, and called out into the gathering dark as Jenna watched him curiously. There was movement in the shadows, and from under the trees, two Bunús Muintir emerged.

  They were both male, one nearly as old as Seancoim; the other much younger. Like Seancoim, they were dressed in skins, their feet wrapped in leather. They had the wide, flattened faces of the Bunús, their skin the color of dried earth. The young one, with a matted and tangled beard, was armed with a bow and a bronze-bladed sword; the older, his chin stubbled with patchy gray, had only a knife and an oaken staff. The expressions on their faces were suspicious and decidedly unfriendl
y. The old one held out his staff and spoke a few words in their guttural language. Jenna understood none of the words but the intent was clear: they were not welcome here.

  Seancoim replied in the same language, and Jenna belat edly reached for Lámh Shábhála, so she could understand what was being said. The gesture drew the attention of the younger man; he pointed to Jenna’s arm as he spoke to his companion, evidently noticing the scars there. He nocked an arrow and started to pull back the string of his bow. Jenna’s fingers closed around the cloch, ready to defend herself and Seancoim, but the older one grunted and ges tured to his companion. The younger Bunús slowly released the tension on the bow, though he kept the arrow fitted to the string.

  The old one spoke in the Daoine language, his voice even more heavily accented than Seancoim’s, his words slow and full of effort as he tried to find the words. “Go back,” he said. “You should never have been brought here.” He glared at Seancoim.

  “She holds Lámh Shábhála, Protector Lomán,” Seancoim told him.

  “I know what she holds, and I know who you are, too—Seancoim Crow-Eye. A Protector should stay with the forest he has been given to guard.”

  “My pledge-daughter Keira watches in my place,” Sean coim answered. “I’m old, and Dúnmharú is ancient for his kind. Soon I’ll be blind again. The Greatness has given me another task. Doire Coill is Keira’s, now.”

  Lomán scoffed. “So Seancoim has abandoned his charge . . .” He nodded to his companion. “You see, Toryn, this is what comes of being too close to the Daoine. You fail in your duty and give it over to someone who’s not yet ready, who is still learning the slow magics. Doire Coill will fail, like so many of the other old places.” He lifted his grizzled chin. “But not Thall Coill.”