Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  “Holder of the All-Heart!” Jenna heard Treoraí’s voice, mingled with the warbling sound of its true language. “We tasted the need of the All-Heart, and so we came.” Jenna wanted to answer, but the clochs had not forgotten her with the appearance of the Créneach; as she heard the call and felt Treoraí’s presence approaching from behind her, they attacked again as one. Forms and shapes and colors swept over her like a tide, too quickly for her to do more than glimpse them. A dire wolf flew at her; she split it asunder with a blade of energy; lines of bright color wrapped around her like a snake; she tore them away. The yellow dragon coiled above her; the black funnel began to draw power from her; Mac Ard’s fire spitting at her like great glowing meteors.

  In the cloch-vision, an ebon wall interposed itself between Jenna and the others. They shattered against it, energy flaring in a mad explosion. For a moment, the wall held, but the massed clochs continued to strike, battering it. With her own eyes, she saw Treoraí shamble forward to stand facing her, and she heard the shrill trill of Treoraí’s voice. “The Soft-flesh must give in to the heart that you hold in your hand,” it said. “Find Céile inside. You must—”

  “I can’t,” she told Treoraí, not knowing if the Créneach could hear or understand her. “It’s too late.”

  “If not for you, then for the life you carry,” Treoraí answered. “You can, if—” Its hand plunged into its own chest, ripping a fissure in its body, and emerged again hold ing a tiny blue crystal. “Give this to her . . .” Treoraí’s voice went silent as the clochs broke down the wall. Jenna heard the sound of falling stone; before her, the bodily form of Treoraí collapsed into a heap of rocks and boulders. The crystal fell to the ground.

  The Clochs Mór surged toward her.

  60

  The Gift of Death

  THEY hammered her down. They took her cowering to her knees.

  Jenna shrilled her pain to the world, nearly losing her grip on Lámh Shábhála as she fell. Her own sight was gone now; there was only the terrible light and agony of the cloch-world, and she sank down inside Lámh Shábhála as she had with An Phionós at Bethiochnead, desperately seeking a place to hide from the assault. The voices of the Holders shrieked at her or laughed or shouted contradictory advice.

  She burrowed deeper, seeking escape. The Clochs Mór followed her. She tumbled into a crystalline, twisting well. The faces of the ancient cloudmage Holders flashed past her: the Daoines, then the Bunús Muintir, then tribes and peoples for whom she had no names at all, falling deeper into the past. And there, at the bottom . . .

  Lámh Shábhála throbbed like a live thing, waves of colors pulsating around her. This was the place she had glimpsed during the Scrúdú, the place she’d not been able to reach. She went toward it as the Clochs Mór continued to pummel her, and again she was held back. “No . . .” a voice whispered. “You’re not allowed here. You have not passed the test.”

  “Then I’ll die!” she shouted back.

  The voice sounded amused. “We thought that no longer mattered to you.” The energy of the Clochs Mór crackled around Jenna, and she pushed back at them. She could feel the baby in her womb, frightened and in pain because Jenna was in pain, suffering because she suffered. The voice at the heart of Lámh Shábhála seemed amused. “So that’s why you fight, even though you still don’t understand. What have you brought me?”

  Jenna could only shake her head in confusion and terror. “I don’t know what you mean? The cloch?”

  “No. There, in your hand.” Jenna could see blue light radiating from between the fingers of her left hand—the crystal that Treoraí had pulled from itself. She held it out, felt the presence take it from her. The light danced away in darkness. “Ah, such a gift . . .” The voice seemed to sigh. “So my children ask me to help you. How can one refuse one’s own . . .” The voice faded, and Jenna thought it had gone. Then the feeling of nearness crawled over Jenna’s skin again. “All the hearts of my children connect to the mage-lights through you. You fight yourself when you fight them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I will give you a gift for the sake of my children, though I don’t know if you are capable of using it. This once, in this moment, you must accept what they give you,” the voice answered. It was sounding fainter now, and Jenna felt herself being pushed away, rising through the levels of the cloch once more back to reality. “Accept it . . .” the voice said again, a whisper.

  Jenna lay like a broken doll on the cold ground before the keep. The power of the Clochs Mór played around her, keeping away the Inish soldiers who were trying to reach her and pull her free. The pile of stones that had been Treoraí were at her right hand, and the mage-lights had appeared in the sky above. She could feel the threads con necting all the clochs na thintrí: running through Lámh Shábhála and into the sky, creating loops of energy, endless circles and spirals . . .

  “This once, in this moment, you must accept what they give you . . .” That’s what the voice of Lámh Shábhála had said.

  Jenna let the shields fall. The energy poured into her and through her. She marveled at the feel of it. She seemed to have been thrown entirely away from her body into some new reality where she was with all the clochs, and their energy filled her, but it no longer hurt, not with the mage lights in the sky. Instead, she had become a vessel, and they filled her to overflowing. She held the power in her hand.

  She rose. She found five of the Clochs Mór and took hold of them.

  She thought.

  The wind blew cold and salty. The mage-lights flared and vanished, but their radiance seemed to remain, illuminating the cliffside and the weathered, ruined statue of Bethiochnead.

  Six people stood there, each with a cloch na thintrí in his or her hand, all of them battered and bruised and bloody, all but one of them with confusion on their faces.

  “Where are we?” Banrion Aithne asked. She stood next to MacEagan and Máister Cléurach, both of whom stared up at the statue. “Holder, did you do this?”

  “Aye, I did,” Jenna answered. “I think I did. I’m not entirely certain.” Power filled Lámh Shábhála as it never had before, so potent that her body seemed to vibrate with it. She felt like a piece of parchment trying to hold back a frothing torrent. Is this what it would have been like if I’d passed the Scrúdú? she wondered. How can anyone handle this? The energy buzzed in her head, making her giddy and delirious. Her face burned with it so that she was surprised that she wasn’t literally glowing. Her voice seemed too loud and too fast. She wanted to laugh. “Banrion, Tiarna Mac Eagan, Máister Cléurach, this is Nevan O Liathain, the Ta naise Ríg, and Tiarna Padraic Mac Ard. And this,” she swept a hand about to indicate the cliffside on which they stood, “is the place they call Bethiochnead, in Thall Coill.”

  Before she’d finished talking, she felt O Liathain’s Cloch Mór open; before he could use it, she clamped an ethereal hand around it, letting the power flow not to his stone but to her, the Tanaise Ríg gaping in astonishment as nothing happened. The feel and color of the energy was all too familiar to Jenna, and she did laugh now, high and mania cal. “Why, Tanaise Ríg,” Jenna said. The power of his cloch wriggled in the grasp of her mind, and she saw him grimace in pain and cry aloud, falling to his knees. “So it was you who wielded the mage-demon. I should have known. I’m sorry, I really can’t allow him to walk here.”

  Mac Ard and O Liathain were truly frightened; she could see it in their faces. MacEagan, Aithne, and Máister Cléurach seemed bewildered, uncertain of whether they should attack the Tuathians or wait. Jenna could feel all the clochs; she held the strings to them in her mind like puppets, but they were puppets who had wills of their own and who fought the control. She could not hold them long, not when the energy ached to be used, rattling the bars of her mind. She heard her voice again. “Tanaise Ríg, you were right to name me the Mad Holder. You were right to call me dangerous. But you want to know why you’re here now, don’t you?” Jenna realized she was babbling, bu
t she had to talk, had to find some way to dissipate at least some of the energy or it would consume her utterly. “That’s simple enough. I will have an end to this war. Now.”

  Mac Ard and O Liathain looked at each other; O Liathain had risen shakily to his feet again. His voice, even through the fear, was still oily and smooth and dangerous. “That’s what we all want, isn’t it, Holder? But it wasn’t us that started this, after all. After Lár Bhaile . . .” A shrug; a glance at Aithne. “Even the Banrion understands that, I’m sure. After all, Cianna was your niece.” His gaze went back to Jenna, but he kept glancing at the others. “Killing us also won’t end the war, Holder. It will only convince everyone of how dangerous you are. Everyone.”

  Jenna was trembling now. “I give you a gift for the sake of my children, though I don’t know if you are capable of using it . . .” Jenna closed her eyes, trying to stop the buzzing in her head. Her scarred arm felt as if it were aflame, the pain crawling along the lines the mage-light had carved into her flesh; she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. She could tell that the clochs wanted to return to where they had been; it was only Lámh Shábhála holding them here. It was as if she had lifted all five of them into the air: if she let go, they would return, falling back in stantly to Dún Kiil; but the effort of holding them was draining her.

  “You are Tanaise Ríg,” she said to O Liathain, and her voice was a shout, tearing at her throat. “You will be Rí Ard one day. You can end this. You will end it, or—” Jenna stopped.

  “Or you will kill him?” Mac Ard finished for her. He stepped forward, putting himself between Jenna and the Tanaise Ríg. One side of his mouth lifted. “I’m sure you could, Jenna. That seems to be your answer for any dis agreement. Kill me, kill the Tanaise Ríg. Then what hap pens when the Banrion or your new husband or the Máister do something you don’t like. Do you kill them also?”

  “Be quiet!” Jenna shouted at Mac Ard, wondering if he could even hear her over the shrilling, singing energy that filled her. The cloch pulled at her, struggling to be free of her grasp. The strain of holding them here was too much, too much.

  “Don’t you see?” Mac Ard continued, and he was no longer talking to her but the others. “We are dealing with a rogue Holder. That isn’t something I want to admit since Jenna’s the daughter of the woman I love, but none of us can deny it. She’s a danger to everyone around her. She can—she will—kill those she perceives as standing against her. She is mad. How long before it’s one or all of you that she turns on?”

  “Shut up!” Jenna roared at him. She ached to strike at him.

  Mac Ard glanced at her, almost pityingly. “I love her mam,” he said to all of them. “I would have loved Jenna as a daughter, if she would have let me. I tried to be a guide for her, tried to be like a da. But she rejected all of that. Even her mam is frightened of her now—she would tell you that if she were here. Holding Lámh Shábhála has been too much for Jenna. It’s turned her fey.”

  “No!” Jenna lashed at Mac Ard with the denial, the power arcing around him, and throwing him backward so that he slammed into the base of the statue. He fell on his side on the ground. He spat blood.

  “End this?” Mac Ard said, speaking not to her but to the others. He wiped at his mouth, trailing red over the sleeve of his léine. “Aye, we can end this, if all of us work together. Lámh Shábhála is strong, but not as strong as all five of us.”

  Mac Ard struggled back up, one hand on the centuries-blurred stone of the statue, the other still holding his cloch. His hair was matted and bloody, and his dark eyes were intent on Jenna. She could feel him reaching for the energy within his cloch. She started to reach for it as well, knowing she could stop him, knowing that it didn’t matter that O Liathain was preparing to attack as well. But the others . . . Aithne was staring at her, and Máister Cléurach, and Mac Eagan. In the charged atmosphere of Lámh Shábhála, she could hear them, could feel their doubt and hesitation.

  “Aye,” O Liathain said. “If we are together, one of us will be the new Holder, and I promise this as well: however it ends, whichever one of us takes Lámh Shábhála, I will take the armies of the Tuatha home. Remove the Mad Holder, and we will have peace.”

  There was the same hunger in all of them. Despite the strong ties to their own clochs, the lust to hold Lámh Sháb hála was still greater. Mac Ard knew the desire better than any and had tapped it. Jenna felt the change. No one spoke, but in that moment, four clochs attacked as one. The strands running from them through Lámh Shábhála to the mage-lights brightened and came together in Jenna’s mind as if like a sinuous, multicolored dragon. The mage-demon snarled near the statue, fire burned near her, storm clouds gathered and lightnings flickered overhead, even a pale copy of Lámh Shábhála appeared.

  They came at her at once. Jenna tried to hold them, tried to turn the energy but still it came, the mage-creature raking claws over her, fireballs slamming into her, the storm thundering . . .

  A creature of fire arose, standing in front of Jenna, and it leaped at the mage-creature, taking it down. “I promised I would stand with you no matter what,” MacEagan’s voice said. “My wife.”

  With MacEagan’s sudden defense, Jenna felt momentary doubt grip the others. Their attack, for a moment, faltered. It was enough.

  Jenna imagined her hand, seizing each of the Cloch Mórs and strangling the link to the power of the mage-lights, spilling the energy within them. Savage, unfocused energy exploded, striking the earth around them, scoring the black rock of the statue, charring the trees at the edge of the clearing, hissing over the cliff into the cold ocean. Jenna held them all, and they could not escape.

  “You’ve all betrayed me,” she said into their fear and despair. “You’ve all shown your true faces. Now . . . now is my time.”

  They were huddled together: O Liathain, Mac Ard, Máister Cléurach, Aithne. Jenna reached out with Lámh Shábhála; behind them, the statue of An Phionós shuddered, tilting as she ripped it from the ground that had held it for so long. She brought it high overhead, dirt and rocks falling from the encrusted base. Its shadow was dark and massive. In Jenna’s head, the dead Holders shouted: “Let it fall . . . kill them . . . you must smash them to end the threat . . .” And Riata’s voice: “. . . you must live with what you do . . .”

  “All I need do is release the monument,” she told Mac Ard and the others, “and this is over. Do you think, Ta naise Ríg, that your armies will stay when I return your broken and crushed body to them? Will they continue to fight when they see the full might of Lámh Shábhála before them, or will they flee back to their Tuatha like scolded dogs? Tiarna Mac Ard, I won’t have to worry about you ever again. Banrion, Máister Cléurach, I won’t have to wonder whether your advice and actions are intended to help me or yourselves. I’ll demonstrate to everyone—everyone—that the Holder of Lámh Shábhála is not to be trifled with.”

  The energy within her could no longer be held. Jenna shuddered with the effort of holding it. With a cry half of fury and half of pain, she smashed the statue down with all her pent-up anger. The cliffside shuddered and rocks and boulders fell away into the sea. The crash was deafening, the impact so hard that the massive stone of the statue itself cracked, a fissure opening along the creature’s back.

  Jenna sobbed.

  The others stared at the statue, now plunged at an odd angle into the ground back where it had been. None of them spoke. None of them dared.

  Finally, Jenna took a breath. “There is always a choice, and we cloud-mages have chosen the path of vengeance and death too many times already. I choose another. I was told that the First Holder can sometimes change the course of her time, and perhaps that can be done without the Scrúdú. Tanaise Ríg . . .”

  His voice was small. “Holder?”

  “You said that no matter how this ended, you would take your armies back. It’s ended, and I charge you to keep that pledge and to add to it: swear that you will never lead another army here to Inish Thuaidh. Will
you do that?”

  “Do I have a choice?” His face was grim and twisted, as if he were tasting sour milk. He glared at her. “Aye, Holder,” he answered. “You have my word.”

  “Then go and keep your oath.” Jenna closed her eyes for a moment. In the cloch-vision, she found the thread of his Cloch Mór and released it from her hand, letting it free. She heard a gasp and a cry, and there was a sense of something torn away from her, leaving her weak. When she opened her eyes again, O Liathain was no longer there.

  “Máister Cléurach?” The old man would not look at her. “Stormbringer fits you. Take your gloomy presence back to Inishfeirm, with your pledge that you will remain there for the rest of your time.”

  Máister Cléurach nodded; Jenna released him and with a crackle of distant lightning, he was gone, and with him, more of the power of the clochs.

  “And what of me?” Aithne asked. A wry smile touched her lips. “Holder, I’d tell you that I was sorry, but that would be false. I made my choice, too.”

  Jenna’s eyes were still closed from the effort of releasing Máister Cléurach. Wearily, she forced them open. “Would you make it again?”

  The smile wavered, then steadied. “I tell you ‘no’ as I stand here and I mean it. But I don’t expect you to believe that. And if the moment came again, in a different time and place, who knows?”