". . hold onto yourself… "
She ignored them and listened for Riata’s voice. "Feel the presence of the other clocks…"
"I do." She could sense them all, scattered over the land yet tied to Lamh Shabhala with streamers of green-white energy. The channels led to the well within the cloch.
"Fill the cloch now," Riata told her, though other voices wailed laughter or warning. "Open it. ."
"You are the cloch," said another voice, fainter and paler: O'Deoradhain.
She imagined Lamh Shabhala transparent and without boundaries. Nothing happened. She drifted above the valley, snared in lambent splen-dor, but there was no change. She looked at her arm, saw light reflecting from it. A beam curled around her, and she willed it to enter her. Blue-green rays crawled the whorls of scars, and she gasped as the radiance entered in her and through her, surging into the cloch she held. Like a dam bursting under the pressure of a flood, the mage-lights suddenly whirled about her, following the path she had made, more and more of the energy filling her as she screamed in ecstasy and fear. Unrelenting, it poured inward. Lamh Shabhala was utterly full, too bright to gaze upon, shuddering and quivering in her hand as if it might break apart. And the pain came with the power: white, stabbing needles of it, driving deep into her flesh and her soul, a torment beyond anything she'd endured before.
The mage-lights were a thunderous cacophony into which she shouted uselessly. In a moment, she would be lost, swept away in currents that she could not control. She ached to release it, to simply let it pass through her, to end this.
"Hold onto the magic, Jenna!" The voice was Riata's or O'Deoradhain's or both. "You must hold onto it!" they shouted again, and she screamed back at them.
"I can't!"
"Jenna, Lamh Shabhala will open the way for the other clocks through you. It is too late now for anything else. The only choice to be made is whether you will use Lamh Shabhala or it you."
". . too young. . too weak. . she will die. ."
". . you see, even if she did this task, she would never have passed the Scrudu later. Best she die now…"
She couldn't hold the energy. No one could hold it. It clawed at her mind with talons of lightning, it roared and flailed and smashed against her. It bellowed and shrilled to be loosed. a moment longer… "
Her hand wanted to open and she knew that if she let go of the stone the force would fly outward with the motion, uncontrolled and explosive. Lamh Shabhala burned in her palm; she could feel its cold fury flaying the skin from muscles, the muscles from bone. It would tear her hand from her arm. She closed her left hand around the right.
". . Good! Turn it inward. Inward…"
Jenna squeezed the cloch tighter, screaming against the resistance and the torture. She closed her eyes, crushing fingers together and shouting a wordless cry.
The sky went dark. The mage-lights vanished.
For a moment, Jenna gaped upward, back in her body again. Light flooded around her cupped, raised hands as if she were grasping the sun itself.
"Now," O'Deoradhain said, his voice loud in the sudden silence. "Let it
Jenna opened her hands.
A fountain of multicolored light erupted: from the cloch, from the scarred flesh of her arm, from her open mouth and eyes. It blossomed high above the valley, gathering like an impossible star for several breaths. Then it shattered, bursting apart into meteors that jetted outward along the energy lines of the other clochs na thintri, the star fading as the mete-ors flared and faded themselves, arcing into the distance and away.
There was the sound of peal upon peal of thunder, then their echoes rebounded from the hills and died in silence.
The valley was dark under a starlit sky, and the sparks lifting from their fire under the dolmen stone seemed pallid and cold. Jenna lifted the cloch that had fallen back around her neck-it burned cold, but it was dark. She marveled at her hands, that they were somehow whole and unblood-ied. The pain hit her then. She fell to her knees, crying out, and O'Deoradhain and Seancoim laid her down gently. "Riata?" she called out.
'He's gone," O'Deoradhain told her. "At least I think so."
"It hurts," Jenna said simply.
I know. I'm sorry. But it's done. It's done, Jenna.
She nodded. Her right arm was stiffening now, the fingers curling into a useless fist, sharp twinges like tiny knives cutting through her chest. She cried, lying there, and let O’Deoradhain place his arm around her for the little comfort it brought her. A familiar smell cut through the smell of wood smoke: Seancoim crouched down by her, a bowl in his hand.
"Anduilleaf," he said. "This one time."
Jenna started to reach for it. Her fingers grazed the edge of the bowl and then stopped. She shook her head. "No," she told the old man. "I can bear this."
What might have been a smile touched his lips beneath the tangle of gray beard. His blind eyes were flecked with firelight; Denmark flapped in from the night and landed on his shoulder. Seancoim dumped the contents of the bowl on the ground and scuffed at the dirt with his feet.
"You have indeed grown tonight, Jenna," he said.
PART THREE: The Mad Holder
(Map: Inish Thuaidh)
Chapter 31: Taking Leave
A DIRE wolf howled its worship to the moon goddess from the next hill. A white owl with a wingspan as wide as a person's outstretched arms swooped down from a nearby branch and lifted again with a rabbit clutched in its talons. The wind brought the enchanting song of the trees at the heart of the forest. Mage-lights snarled the stars.
"I have to go," Jenna said.
Seancoim nodded. Denmark ruffled his wings on the old man's shoulder as Seancoim's pale eyes plucked moonlight from the air. "I know," he said.
"Do you know why?"
He sniffed, almost a laugh. "Well, let me see if I can fathom it… Because Lamh Shabhala aches to be used. Because Jenna herself is tired of hiding and sitting. Because you know that to the north are the people who are your father's fathers, and there also lies the knowledge that you lack as Holder. Because even though I tell you you're wrong, you're afraid that if you hide here too long, your enemies will come in too great a force for even Doire Coill to resist and you don't want harm to come to me or
the forest. Because the winter's chill is gone and the land calls you. Be-cause you see the magic at work here and want to see what it's done elsewhere. Because a blind old man is poor company for a young woman. Are those your reasons?"
Jenna laughed. "All but the last, aye. And more." And you'll be traveling with Ennis O'Deoradhain." It was more statement than question, and he was still smiling. "So that's the way it is, 'tis it? You've come to like the man."
"No!" The denial came quickly and automatically.
"Not at all. But he’s Inish, and knows some of the cloudmage ways and will help me get to the island. Do I trust him? I suppose I do to a point-he could have taken Lamh Shabhala from me easily when we were in Lar Bhaile and he didn’t but the man still has his own agenda and if I get in the way of that…" She shrugged. "And I don’t like the man, Seancoim. Not that way." And after Coelin’s betrayal, I’m not sure I’ll ever love anyone again that way, she wanted to add, but pressed her lips shut.
Jenna and O’Deoradhain had wintered in Doire Coill. Seancoim had scoffed at Jenna’s concerns that RI Gabair and Tiarna Mac Ard-or the RI Ard and Tanaise Rig themselves-might try to invade the forest. "The forest will take care of itself, as I told Tiarna Mac Ard when you first came here," he answered. "Now the magic is unleashed again, and the forest is more awake than ever. They bring their own death if they wander here."
And yet they had come. The mage-lights of the Filleadh had told those in Lar Bhaile where Jenna had gone after she fled the city. In the days immediately following her escape, troops were dispatched to search for her on the west side of Lough Lar and some even ventured into Doire Coill. As Seancoim had predicted, few of those who entered the oak forest returned. But strangely, after the initial fortnight,
no one came searching at all.
Jenna had wondered about that at first. Then she realized. .
Nearly every night now, the mage-lights flickered in the sky, no longer only above the locus of Lamh Shabhala but from horizon to horizon, and the newly-released clochs na thintri fed on them. The Riocha were scrambling for possession of the stones-and learning to control them- which created such turmoil and contention that finding Lamh Shabhala and Jenna was temporarily a secondary concern. The night of the Filleadh, Jenna had opened three double hands of the major clochs (the Clochs Mor, O’Deoradhain had said they were called) and a hand of the minor stones-or clochmions-for each of the Clochs Mor: almost two hundred clochs na thintri all told were now active.
Nearly every night, too, Jenna yearned for the anduilleaf and the solace it would bring against the continuing pain of holding Lamh Shabhala. But Seancoim would not offer it to her again, and she
remembered too well the fog it had cast over her mind.
Little news reached Doire Coill from outside, but O'Deoradhain would sometimes go to search out a traveler alone on the High Road. He would bring back their tales to Jenna and Seancoim. Twice during their stay, other Bunus Muintir came to visit Seancoim-from Foraois Coill in Tuath Infochla, and the great island of Inishcoill off Tuath Airgialla-and they brought news of their own. Jenna knew from those contacts that word had been sent from Dun Laoghaire to all the tuatha that the Holder of Lamh Shabhala had been driven insane, that she had murdered a score of Riocha in Lar Bhaile including the Banrion Cianna herself. A hefty blood rice had been placed on her head, and it appeared that the Tanaise Rig no longer had any interest in his marriage proposal.
Jenna was now the Mad Holder, to be killed upon sight.
Two months ago, near the time of the Festival of Fomhar, the three of them had watched from the western fringes of Doire Coill as an army approached from the west and another marched out from Lar Bhaille to meet it. They had seen in the distance the smoke and dust of battle, and Jenna felt the surge of power from several clochs na thintri wielded as terrible weapons. From the travelers, they learned that other armies had been seen battling south and east, as well.
The tuatha were fighting among themselves, and the clochs na thintri were among their implements of war.
Eventually, Jenna knew, someone would come searching for Lamh Shabhala, someone with an army or a few of the Clochs Mor or both at their backs, and they would stop at nothing to find her. Jenna had learned much about handling the cloch in the last months, but she didn't want to see Doire Coill at the center of a battle, even a victorious one.
And Seancoim was right. She was tired of hiding.
"When do you go?" Seancoim asked, his voice bringing her out of reverie. She shivered, then smiled at him.
"Tomorrow."
"Then 1 will enjoy tonight." Seancoim turned
solemn, twirling a finger in his beard before he spoke. "You must realize that I’m not the only one who can guess which way Lamh Shabhala would travel."
"I know that. We’ll be careful."
"Careful may not be enough."
She smiled at him and kissed his forehead. "Then come with us. I’d like that. Have you ever seen the Westering Sea, Seancoim? O’Deoradhain says that you look out, and see nothing but water and sky, all the way to the end of the world."
He shook his head sadly. "No. But this is where my destiny and my home are. I’m an old man, and I have my apprentice to train."
"Apprentice? Since when do you have an apprentice?" You’ve not met her. She stays on her own most of the time inside the forest. She’s learned most of what I have to teach her but not all. No, Jenna, thanks for your offer, but I’ll stay here and make certain that you have a place to which you can return one day."
They were standing at the northern edge of Doire Coill, near where Mac Ard, her mam, and she had first entered the forest-less than a year ago, though it seemed that everything had changed in that time. The High Road was less than a quarter mile away, turning here in a great sweeping curve to the north, where a day’s walk away waited Knobtop and Ballintubber. Jenna wondered about her home, wondered what they said about her and her mam when they gathered in Tara ’s Tavern of an evening. Perhaps there were already tales of the Mad Holder, and One Hand Bailey or Chamis Redface regaled anyone who would listen with fanciful tales of Jenna as a child.
"Even back then it was obvious that she was fey and dangerous. Why, once Matron Kelly scolded her, and Jenna made a motion like this, and Matron Kelly’s cows gave no milk for an entire week. Tom Mullin once caught her stealing apples from his orchard and chased her off his land, and the very next day as he rode to Aldwoman Pearce’s house, may the Mother-Creator rest her soul, his horse threw him for no reason at all and he broke his leg. He’s walked with a limp since that day. I tell you, we were all careful what we said and did around the Aoires… "
"You don't get to choose how you're remembered," Seancoim said, as if he sensed what she were thinking. "That's up to those who are left behind." He touched her right arm. "Come with me," he said.
He turned and walked back into the forest, Denmark flapping heavily ahead of them. He turned away from the faint path they'd followed, slip-ping into the darkness under the trees. "I can't see," Jenna said, hesitating.
"Then take my arm. ."
Holding onto the elbow of a blind man, she moved into the night landscape of the forest. They walked for nearly a stripe, it seemed, Jenna stumbling and occasionally pushing away a stray branch, while Seancoim was sure-footed and easy with Dunmharu’s guidance.
They skirted a fen, and Jenna realized that the sound of the forest had changed at some point. She could no longer hear the animals: the grunt of the deer, the occasional howl of a wolf, the rustlings and chirps of the night birds. Here, there were other sounds: leafy rustlings, the groan of shifting wood, the sibilant breath of leaves that sounded almost like words. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and she could see that she and Seancoim were surrounded by gigantic old oaks with gnarled, twisted branches and great trunks that it would take three men to encircle. They loomed over the two, and Denmark stayed on Seancoim's shoulder rather than roosting in any of these branches.
The trees spoke to each other. Jenna could hear them, could feel them. They were aware; they knew she was there. Branches moved and swayed though there was no wind, one limb sweeping down to wrap about Jenna's right arm. She resisted the temptation to brush away the woody fin-gers, the leafy touch, and a few moments later it uncurled and swept away. "Can you talk to them, Seancoim?" she asked, her voice a hushed whisper. It seemed sacrilegious to speak loudly here.
"No," he answered, his voice as quiet as hers. "They're the Seanoir, the Eldest, and their language is older than even the Bunus Muintir, nor do they experience life as we do. But this place is one of the many hearts of Doire Coill. These trees were planted by the Seed-Daughter herself when she gave life to the land, and they have been here since
the beginning, thousands and thousands of years. Here, feel. ." Seancoim took Jenna’s hand and placed it on the veined, craggy surface of the nearest trunk. She felt nothing for a moment, then there was a throb like the pulsing of blood; a few breaths later, another followed. "That’s the heartbeat of the land itself," Seancoim said. "Slow and mighty and eternal, moving through their limbs."
Jenna kept her hand there, feeling the long, unhurried beats, her own breath slowing and calming with the touch. "Seancoim, I never. ." She wanted to stay here forever, feeling this. There was a sorcery to the trees, an insistent lethargy, and she remembered. "When I was here before. ."
"Aye, it was their call you heard," Seancoim told her. "And if the Old Ones here wished it, you would remain snared in their spell until your body died of thirst and hunger. Look around you, Jenna. Look around you with your eyes open."
"My eyes are open…" she started to say, then blinked. For the first time, she noticed that there were gleams of moonlit white in the grassy earth of the grove.
She bent down to look and straightened with a stifled cry: a skull leered back at her, stalks of grass climbing through vacant eye sockets, the jaw detached and nearly lost alongside. There were dozens of skeletons in and around the tree trunks, she saw now: some human, some animal.
"The sun feeds their leaves, the rain slakes their thirst, and those who come here and are trapped by their songs nourish the earth in which their roots dig," Seancoim said. "This is where, when it’s time, I’ll come, too, on my own and by my own choice." Jenna continued to stare. She could smell the death now: the ripe pungency of rotting flesh. Some of the bodies were new, and the clothes they wore were dyed green and brown.
She should have been horrified. But she felt the throbbing of the trees and the earth and realized that this was as it should be, that the Seanoir fed on life in the same way Jenna fed on life. She ate the meat of animals that had once been alive, and soaked up their juices with bread from the wheat that had waved in fields under the sun a month before. This was simply another part of the greater cycle in which they were all caught There was no horror here. No malevolence, no evil. The trees simply did as their nature demanded. If they killed,
it was not out of hatred, but because their view of the world was far longer and broader than that of the races whose lives were impossibly fleeting.
A branch came down; it lifted the cloch at Jenna's neck and let it drop again. "They know Lamh Shabhala," Seancoim said. "It is nearly as old as they are. They know it lives again." He went up to the largest of the trees and lifted his hand. A branch above wriggled, and a large acorn dropped into his palm. "Here," he told Jenna. He folded the nut in her left hand, closing her fingers around the acorn and putting his own leathery hands over hers. "For the Seanoir, the mage-lights signal a time of growing. Even the seasons themselves are too fast for them. The lights are the manifesta-tion of a burgeoning centuries-long spring and summer for them, and this is their seed. Take this with you when you go, and plant this where you find your new home. Then you will always have part of Doire Coill with you. Make a new place for them."
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