Holder of Lightning

HOLDER OF LIGHTNING

THE CLOUDMAGES #1 S. L. FARRELL

PART ONE: The Sky’s Stone

(Map: Talamh an Ghlas)

(Map: Ballintubber)

Chapter 1: A Fire in the Sky Chapter 2: A Visitor Chapter 3: A Song at the Inn Chapter 4: The Fire Returns Chapter 5: Attack on the Village Chapter 6: Bog And Forest Chapter 7: Seancoim’s Cavern Chapter 8: The Cairn of Riata Chapter 9: Through the Forest Chapter 10: The Taisteal Chapter 11: Two Encounters Chapter 12: The Lady of the Falls Chapter 13: Smoke and Ruin Chapter 14: Ath Iseal Chapter 15: Niall’s Tale PART TWO: Filleadh (Map: Lar Bhaile)

Chapter 16: Lar Bhaile Chapter 17: The Ri’s Supper Chapter 18: Secrets Chapter 19: An Assassin’s Fate Chapter 20: Love and Weapons Chapter 21: A Familiar Face

Chapter 22: Proposals

Chapter 23: Answers

Chapter 24: The Traitor Chapter 25: Preparations Chapter 26: A World Changed Chapter 27: Bridges Burned Chapter 28: A Return Chapter 29: Awakening Chapter 30: Release PART THREE: The Mad Holder (Map: Inish Thuaidh)

Chapter 31: Taking Leave Chapter 32: Ballintubber Changed Chapter 33: A Battle of Stones Chapter 34: The Gifting Chapter 35: O'Deoradhain's Tale Chapter 36: Ambush and Offer Chapter 37: The White Keep Chapter 38: The Vision of Tadhg Chapter 39: Training Chapter 40: The Ri's Request Chapter 41: Cloch Storm Chapter 42: Dun Kiil Chapter 43: The Dream of Thall Coill Chapter 44: Juggling Possibilities Chapter 45: Torn Apart PART FOUR: The Shadow R1 (Map: Dun Kiil)

Chapter 46: Decisions Chapter 47: Voices

Chapter 48: Glenn Aill

Chapter 49: Leave-taking

Chapter 50: Roads Taken

Chapter 51: The Tale of All-Heart

Chapter 52: The Protector

Chapter 53: Bethiochnead

Chapter 54: Fire and Water

Chapter 55: A Return

Chapter 56: Covenant

Chapter 57: The Battle of Dun Kill

Chapter 58: Retreat

Chapter 59: Death on the Field

Chapter 60: The Gift of Death

PART FIVE: Reunion

Chapter 61: The Banrion

APPENDICES

Characters

Places

Terms

Saimhoir Terms The Daoine Calendar History

The Holders of Lamh Shabala

The Known Clochs Mor, Their Current Manifestations & Holders

COPYRIGHT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This one'sfor Devon who made me write a "real" fantasy

And for Denise, who is part of all that I do.

PART ONE: The Sky's Stone

(Map: Talamh an Ghlas) (Map: Ballintubber)

Chapter 1: A Fire in the Sky

THE stone was a gift of the glowing sky. Jenna wasn't certain exactly when the first shifting curtain of green and gold shimmered into existence among the stars, for her attention wasn't on the vista above her. She shouldn't have been out this late in the first place-she should have been bringing the sheep into their pen even as the last light of the sun touched the hills. But Old Stubborn, their ancient and cantankerous ram, had insisted on getting himself stuck on a rocky ledge on Knobtop's high pasture, and Jenna had spent far too long pushing and prodding him down while trying to avoid being butted by his curled horns. As she shoved the ram's wooly bottom back down toward the winter scrub grass where the rest of the flock was grazing, her dog Kesh barking and growling to keep Old Stubborn moving, Jenna noticed that the silver light of the stars and crescent moon had shifted, that the landscape around her had been brushed by gold.

She looked up, and saw the sky alight with cold fire.

Jenna gaped, her mouth half open and her breath steaming, staring in wonder at the glowing dance: great sheets and folds of light swaying gracefully above like her mother's dress when she danced with Halden at the Corn Feast last month. The lights throbbed in a strange silence, filling the sky high above her and seeming to wrap around Knobtop.

Jenna thought there should have been sound: wailing pipes, or a crackling bon-fire roar. There was power there; she could feel it, filling the air around her as if a thunderstorm were about to break.

And it did break. The light above flared suddenly, a gold-shattered flash that dazzled her eyes, snatching away her breath and sending her stagger-ing backward with her hands before her face. Her heel caught a rock. She went down hard, the air going out of her in a rush and a cry, her arms flailing out on either side in a vain attempt to break her fall. The rocky, half-frozen ground slammed against her. For a moment, she closed her eyes in pain and surprise. When she opened them again, the sky above her was dark once more, dusted with stars. The strange lights were gone, and Kesh was whining alongside her, prodding her with his black-and-white muzzle. "I'm all right, boy," she told him. "At least I think so."

Jenna sat up cautiously, grimacing. Kesh bounded away, reassured. One of the rocks had bruised her left hip through her woolen coat and skirts, and her neck was stiff. She'd be limping back down to Ballintubber, and Mam would be scolding her not only for getting the sheep back so late, but also for getting her clothes so dirty. "It's your fault, you stupid hard-head," she told Old Stubborn, whose black eyes were gazing at her placidly from a few strides away.

She pushed angrily at the rock that had bruised her. It rolled an arm's length downhill. In the black earth alongside where it had lain, something shone. Jenna scraped at the dirt with a curious forefinger, then sat back, stunned.

Even in the moonlight she could see a gleam: as pure a green as the summer grass in the fields below Knobtop; as bright as if the glowing sky had been captured in a stone. Jenna pulled the pebble free. It was no larger than two joints of her finger, rounded and smooth. She rubbed it between fingers and thumb, scrubbing away the dirt and holding it up to the moonlight. With the touch, for just that second, another vision over-laid the landscape: she saw a man with long red hair, stooped over and peering at the ground, as if searching for something he'd lost. The man halted and looked toward her-he was no one she recognized, and yet. . She felt as if she should know him.

But even as she stared and the man seemed to be about to speak, the vision faded as did the glow from the pebble. Maybe, she thought, none of it had ever been there at all; the vision and the brilliance had simply been the afterimage of the lights in the sky and her fall. Now, in her hand, the stone seemed almost ordinary, dull and small, with no glow or spark at all, though it was difficult to tell under the dim moon. Jenna shrugged, thinking that she would look more closely at the rock later, in the morn-ing. She put the pebble in the pocket of her coat and whistled to Kesh.

"Let’s get ’em home, boy," she said. Kesh yipped once and circled the flock, nipping at their heels to get them moving. The sheep protested, kicking at Kesh and baaing in irritation, then started to move, following Old Stubborn down Knobtop toward the scent of peat and home.

By the time they came down the slope and crossed the ridge between the bogs and saw the thatched roofs of Ballintubber, Jenna had forgotten about the stone entirely, though the dancing, glowing draperies of light remained bright in her mind.

The expected scolding didn’t come. Her mam, Maeve, rushed out from the cottage when she heard the dull clunking of the tin bells around Old Stubborn’s neck. Kesh went running to her, barking and racing a great circle around all of them.

"Jenna!" Maeve said, her voice full of relief. She brushed black hair away from her forehead.

"Thanks the gods! I was worried, you were so late getting back. Did you see the lights?"

Jenna nodded, her eyes wide with the remembrance. "Aye, I did. Great and beautiful, and so bright. What were they, Mam?"

Maeve didn’t answer right away. Instead, she threw her shawl over her shoulders and shivered. "Get the sheep in, then clean yourself up while I feed Kesh, and we’ll go up to Tara’s. Everyone’s there, I’m sure. Go on, now!"

A while later, with the flock settled, her clothing changed and the worst of the mud brushed away from her coat and from her hands, and Kesh (and herself) fed, they walked down the lane to the High Road, then north a bit to Tara’s, the dirt cold enough to crunch under their boots, the moon frosted silver above. The tavern’s windows were beckoning rec-tangles of yellow, and the air inside was warm with the fire and the heat of bodies. On any given night, Tara's was busy, with Tara herself, gray-haired and large, behind the bar and pulling the taps for stout and ale. Often enough, Coelin would be there, playing his fiddle or giotar and singing, and maybe another musician or two would join him and later someone would start dancing, or everyone would sing along and the sound would echo down the single lane of the village and out into the night air.

Jenna liked to listen to Coelin, who was three years older. Coelin had apprenticed under Songmaster Curragh, dead of a bloody cough during the bad winter three years ago. Jenna thought Coelin handsome, with his shock of unruly brown hair, his easy smile that touched every muscle in his face, and those large hands that spidered easily over his instrument land which, aye, she sometimes imagined running over her body). She thought Coelin liked her, as well. His green eyes often found her when he was singing, and he would smile.

"You're too young for him," Mam had said one night when she noticed Jenna smiling back. "The boy's twenty. Look at the young women around him, girl, smiling and preening and laughing. Half of them have already lifted their skirts for him, I'll wager, and one day soon one of them will miss her bleeding and pop up big and there'll be a wedding. You'd be a piece of blackberry pie to him, Jenna, sweet and luscious, devoured in one sitting and as quickly forgotten. Look if you want, and dream, but that's all you should do."

Tonight, Coelin wasn't playing, though Jenna thought that half of Ballintubber must be pressed inside the tavern. Coelin sat in his usual corner, his instruments still in their cases. Aldwoman Pearce stood up alongside the huge fireplace across from the bar, a mug of brown stout close at hand, and everyone staring at her furrowed, apple-shaped face."… in the Before, the sky would be alive with mage-lights, four nights out of the seven," she was saying in her trembling voice that always reminded Jenna of the sound of a rasp against wood. When Jenna and Maeve walked in, she stopped, watching them as they sidled along the back of the crowd. Cataract-whitened eyes glittered under overhanging, gray-hedged brows, and she took a long sip of the stout's brown foam. Aldwoman Pearce was Ald-the Eldest-in Ballintubber, over nine double-hands of years old. "I've buried everyone born before me and many after," she often said. "And I’ll bury more before I go. I’m too old and mean and tough for the black haunts to eat my soul." Aldwoman Pearce knew all the tales, and if she changed them from time to time as suited the occasion, no one dared to contradict her.

Aldwoman Pearce set the glass down on the mantel again with a sharp clack that made half the people jump up, startled. The noise also narrowed Tara’s eyes where she stood behind the bar-mugs were expensive and chipped ones were already too common. Aldwoman Pearce didn’t notice Tara’s unspoken admonition; her gaze was still on Maeve and Jenna.

"In the Before, when the bones of the land were still alive, mage-lights often filled the sky," Aldwoman Pearce declared, looking back at the oth-ers. "They were brighter and more colorful than those we saw tonight, and the cloudmages would call down the power in them and use it to war against each other. In the Before, magic lived in the sky, and when the sky became dark again, as it has stayed ever since for hands upon hands of generations, the cloudmages all died and their arts were lost."

"We’ve all heard that story a thousand times before," someone called out. The voice sounded like Thomas the Miller, who lived at the north end of the village, but Jenna, craning her head to see over the crowd, couldn’t be sure. "Then what was that we saw tonight? I saw my shadow, near as sharp as in the sun. I could have read a book by it."

"Aye, that you could, if you owned a book and if you could read at all," One Hand Bailey called out, and everyone laughed. Jenna’s mam had a book, a fine old thing with thick pages of yellow paper and gray-black printing that looked more perfect than any hand could have written. Thomas claimed he could read and Jenna’s mam had shown him their book once, but he claimed it must have been written in some other lan-guage, because he couldn’t read it all. Sometimes Thomas read stories from the book bound in green leather that Erin the Healer owned, but Jenna wasn’t alone in wondering whether Thomas simply made up the things he supposedly read.

"Tonight we saw the signs of the Filleadh," Aldwoman Pearce declared. "The first whisper that the bones of the land have stirred and will walk

again, that what was Before will be Now. A hint, perhaps-" She stopped and glanced at Jenna's mam again; a few of the others craning their necks to look back as well. "-that things that were hidden will be found again."

Some of the people muttered and nodded, but Thomas guffawed. "That's nonsense, Aldwoman.

The Before is Before, and the bones of the land are dead forever."

"The things I know aren't written in any of your books, Thomas Miller," the Ald sneered, tearing her hard gaze away from Maeve. "I know because my great-mam and great-da told me, and their parents told them, and so on back to the Before. I know because I hold history in my gray head, and because I listened. I know because my old bones feel it, and if you had a lick of sense in your head, you'd know it, too."

Thomas snorted, but said nothing. Aldwoman Pearce looked around the room, turning slowly, and again she fixed on Maeve. "What do you say, Maeve Aoire?"

Jenna felt more than saw her mam shrug. "I'm sure I don't know," she answered.

The Ald sniffed. "This is a portent, I tell you," she said ominously. "And if they saw the lights all the way in Dun Laoghaire, the Riocha will be like a nest of hornets hit with a stick, and will be buzzing all around the whole of Talamh an Ghlas. The R1 Gabair will be sending his emissaries here soon, because we all saw that the lights were close and within his lands." With that, Aldwoman Pearce drained her stout in one long swallow and called for more, and everyone began talking at once.

By the time Tara's clock-candle had burned down another stripe, Jenna was certain that no one in the tavern really knew what the lights had been at all, though it certainly made for a profitable evening for Tara-talking is thirsty work, as the old saying goes, and everyone wanted to give their impression of what they'd seen. Jenna slipped outside to escape the heat and the increasingly wild speculation, though Maeve was listening in-tently. Jenna shook her head as the closing door softened the din of a dozen conversations. She leaned against the drystone wall of the tavern, looking up at the crescent moon and the stars, gleaming and twinkling as if their stately transit of the sky had never been disturbed.

She smelled the odor of the pipe a moment before she heard the voice and saw the glowing red circle at the corner of the tavern. "They’ll be going for another stripe, at least."

"Aye," Jenna answered, "and they’ll all be complaining of it in the morning."

Laughter followed that remark, and Coelin stepped out from the side of the tavern, his form outlined in the glow from the tavern’s window. He took a puff on the pipe, exhaling a cloud of fragrant smoke. "You saw it, too?"

She nodded. "I was up on Knobtop, still, when the lights came. With our sheep."

"Then you saw it well, since it looked as if the lights were flaring all around old Knobtop. So what do you think it was?"

"I think it was a gift from the Mother to allow Tara to sell more ale," Jenna answered, and Coelin laughed again, with a full and rich amuse-ment as musical as his singing voice. "Whatever it was, I also think that there’s nothing I can do about it."

"That," he said, "is the only intelligent answer I’ve heard tonight." He tapped the pipe out against the heel of his boot, and sparks fell and ex-pired on the ground. Coelin blew through the stem and tapped it again, then stuffed the pipe in the pocket of his coat. "They’ll be calling for me to play soon, wanting to hear all the old songs tonight, not the new ones."

"I like the old songs," Jenna said. "It’s like hearing the voices of my ancestors. I close my eyes and imagine I’m one of them: Maghera, maybe, or even that sad spirit on Sliabh Collain, always calling for her lover killed by the cloudmage."

"You have a fine imagination, then," Coelin laughed.

"Your voice has a magic, that’s all," Jenna said, then felt herself blush-ing. She could imagine her mam listening, and telling her: You sound just like one of them. . Jenna was grateful for the dark.

She looked away, to where Knobtop loomed above the trees, a blackness in the sky where no stars shone.

"Ah, ’tis you who has the magic, Jenna," Coelin said. "When you're there listening, I find myself always looking at you."

Jenna felt her cheeks cool, and she stopped the laugh that wanted to escape. "Is that the kind of sweet lie you tell all of them, so they'll come sneaking out to you afterward, Coelin Singer? It won't work with me."

His eyes glittered in the light from the window, and the smile remained. "'Tis the truth, even if you won't believe it. And you can tell your mam that the rumors about me are greatly exaggerated. I've not slept with all the young women hereabouts."

"But with some?"

He might have shrugged, but the grin widened. "Rumors are like songs," he said. He took a step toward her. "There always has to be a bit of truth in them, or they won't have any power."

"You should make up a song about tonight. About the lights."

"I might do that," he answered. "About the lights, and a beautiful young woman they illuminated-"

The door to the tavern opened, throwing light over Jenna and Coelin and silhouetting the figure of Ellia, one of Tara's daughters and Coelin's current favorite. "Coelin! Put out that pipe of yours and…" A sudden frost chilled Ellia's voice. "Oh," she said. "I didn't expect to see you out here, Jenna. Coelin, Mam says to get your arse inside; they want music." The door shut again, more vehemently than necessary.

"Ellia sounds. ." Jenna hesitated, tilting her head at Coelin. "Upset," she finished.

"It's been a busy night, that's all," Coelin answered.

"I'm sure."

"I'd better get in."

"Ellia would like that, I'm certain."

The door opened again. This time Jenna's mam stood there. Coelin shrugged at Jenna. "I should go tune up," he said.

"Aye, you should."

Coelin smiled at her, winked, and walked past her to the door. "’Evenin’, Widow Aoire," he said as Jenna’s mam stepped aside.

"Coelin." She let the door shut behind him, and crossed her arms.

"We were talking, Mam," Jenna said. "That’s all."

Maeve sniffed. Frown lines creased her forehead. "From what I saw, your eyes were saying different things than your mouth."

"And neither my eyes nor my mouth made any promises, Mam."

Inside the tavern, a rosined bow scraped against strings. Maeve shook her head, revealing the silvery gray that touched her temples. "I don’t trust the young man. You know that. He’d be no good for you, Jenna- wouldn’t know a ewe from a ram, a bull from a milch cow, or potato from turnip. Songmaster Curragh got him from the Taisteal; the boy himself doesn’t know who his parents are or where he came from. All he knows is his singing, and he’ll get tired of Ballintubber soon enough and want to find a bigger place with more people to listen to him and brighter coins to toss in his hat. He’d leave you, or you’d be tagging along keeping the pretty young things away from him, all the while with children tugging at your skirts."

"So you’ve already got me married and your grandchildren born. What are their names, so I’ll know?" Jenna smiled at her mam, hands on her hips. Slowly, the frown lines smoothed out, and Maeve smiled back, her brown-gold eyes an echo of Jenna’s own.

"You want to go in and listen, darling?"

"I’ll go in if you’re going, Mam. Otherwise, I’ll go home with you. I’ve had enough excitement for a night. Coelin’s voice might be too much for me."

Maeve laughed. "Come on. We’ll listen for a while, then go home." She opened the door as Coelin’s baritone lifted in the first notes of a song. "Besides," Maeve whispered as Jenna slipped past her, "it’ll be fun to watch Ellia’s face when she sees Coelin looking at you."

Chapter 2: A Visitor

IN the morning, it was easy to believe that nothing magical had hap-pened at all. There were the morning chores: settling the sheep in the back pasture, cleaning out the barn, feeding the chicks and gathering the eggs, going over to Matron Kelly's to trade a half dozen eggs for a jug of milk from her cows, doing the same with Thomas the Miller for a sack of flour for bread. By the time Jenna finished, with the sun now peering over the summit of Knobtop, it seemed that life had lurched back into its familiar ruts, never to be dislodged again. In the daylight, it was difficult to imagine curtains of light flowing through the sky.

Jenna could smell Maeve frying bacon over the cook fire inside their cottage, and her stomach rumbled. Kesh was barking at her feet. She opened the door, ducking her head under the low, roughly-carved lintel, and into the warm air scented with the smell of burning peat. The cottage was divided into two rooms-the larger space crowded with a single table and chairs and the kitchen area, and a small bedroom in the rear where Jenna and her mam slept. Maeve had helped Jenna's father-Niall-build the wattle and daub house, but that was before Jenna had been born. She often wondered what he looked like, her da. Maeve had told her that Niall's hair was red, not coal black like Jenna's and Maeve's, and his eyes were as blue as the deep waters of Lough Lar, and that his smile could light up a dark night. She knew little about him, only that he wasn't from Ballintubber, but Inish Thuaidh, the fog-wrapped and cold island to the north and west. Jenna tried to imagine that face, and sometimes it looked like one person and sometimes another, and sometimes even an older Coelin. She wished she could see the memories that her mam saw, when she rocked in the chair and talked about him, her eyes closed and smiling.

Jenna had no memory of Niall at all. "He was killed, my love," Maeve had told her years ago when Jenna had asked, curious as to why she didn't have a da when others did, "slain by bandits on his way to Bacathair. He was going there to see if he could gain a berth on one of the fishing ships, and maybe move you and me there. He always loved the sea, your da."

When Jenna grew older, she heard the other rumors as well, from the older children. "Your da

was fey and strange, and he just left you and your mam," Chamis Redface told her once, after he pushed her into a thicket of bramble. "That’s what my da says: your da was a crazy In-ishlander, and everyone’s glad he’s gone. You go to Bacathair, and you’ll find him, sitting in the tavern and drinking, probably married to someone else and talking nonsense." Jenna had flown at Chamis in a rage, bloody-ing his nose before he threw her off and Matron Kelly came by to pull them apart. When Maeve asked Jenna why she’d been fighting with Chamis, she just sniffed. "He tells lies," she said, and would say nothing else.

But she wondered about what Chamis had said. There were times when she imagined herself going to Bacathair and looking for him, and in those fantasies, sometimes, she found him. But when she did, invariably, she woke up before she could talk with him.

The man you thought you saw, after you jell… He had red hair, and his eyes, they might have been blue. . Jenna tried to shake the thought away, but she couldn’t. She saw his face again and found herself smiling.

"I’m glad to see you’re so pleased with yourself," her mam said as she came into the tiny house. "Here’s your breakfast. Give me the milk and the flour, and sit yourself down." Maeve slid the wooden plate in front of Jenna, along with one of the four worn and bent forks they owned: eggs sizzling brown with bacon grease, a slab of brown bread with a pat of butter, a mug of tea and milk. "This afternoon I have to give Rafea two of the hens for the bolt of cloth she gave me last week."

"Give her the brown one and the white neck," Jenna said. "They’re both fat enough, and neither one lays well." Jenna slid her fork under a piece of bacon. "Mam, I think I’ll take the flock back up to Knobtop this afternoon."

Maeve’s back was to her as she cut a slice of bread for herself. "Up to Knobtop?" she asked. Her voice sounded strained. "After last night?"

"It’s a nice day, the grass was good up there yesterday, and this time I’ll be sure I’m back earlier. Besides, Mam, in all the old stories, the mage-lights only come at night never during the day."

Her mam hadn't moved. The knife was still in her hand, the bread half cut "I thought you might help me with the hens." When Jenna didn't answer, she heard Maeve sigh. "All right. I suppose I shouldn't be sur-prised. Aldwoman Pearce'll be talking about it, though."

"Why should Aldwoman Pearce care if I go to Knobtop? Because I was there last night?"

"Aye," Maeve said. She set the knife down and turned, brushing at the front of her skirt. "Because of that, and. ." She stopped. "Ah, it doesn't matter. Go on with you. Take Kesh, and keep Old Stubborn out of trouble this time. I'll expect you back before sundown. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Mam." Jenna hastily finished her breakfast, gave Kesh the plate on the floor while she put her coat and gloves back on, and took the half loaf of brown bread her mother gave her, stuffing it into a pocket of the coat. "Come on, Kesh. Let's get the sheep…" With a kiss for her mam, she was gone.

By the time they reached the green-brown flanks of Knobtop, the sun had warmed Jenna and her coat was open. The sky was deep blue over-head and dotted with clouds, sailing in a stately fleet across the zenith. The sheep moved along with Kesh circling and nipping at their heels, their black-faced heads lowering to nibble at the heather. As they rose higher, Jenna could look back north and west and see the thatched roofs of Ballintubber in its clearing beyond the trees lining the path of the Mill Creek, and looking eastward, glimpse the bright thread of the River Duan winding its way through the rolling landscape toward Lough Lar. By noon, they were in the field where Jenna had seen the lights.

She didn't know what she had expected to see, but she found herself disappointed. There was no sign that anything unusual had happened here at all. Kesh herded the sheep into the largest grassy slope, and the flock set themselves to grazing-they paid no more attention to the area than they did to the pastures down in the valley.

Jenna found a large, mossy boulder and sat down to rest from the climb. "Kesh! Keep them here, and don't let Old Stubborn get away this time." She pulled her mam's brown bread from her pocket; as she did so, the pebble she'd picked up the previous

night fell out onto the ground. She leaned down to pick it up.

The touch of it on her fingers was so cold that she dropped the stone in surprise, then picked it up carefully, as if she were holding a chunk of ice. In the sunlight, there was the echo of the emerald brilliance the rock had seemed to possess when she’d first found it. She’d never seen a rock this color before: a lush, saturated green, crenellated with veins of pure, searing white that made her pupils contract when the sun dazzled from them.

The stone looked as if it had been polished and buffed with jewel-er’s rouge.

And so cold. . Jenna closed her right hand around the stone, thinking it would warm as she held it, but the cold grew so intense that it felt as if she’d taken hold of a burning ember. As it had last night, another vision settled over her eyes like a mist, as if she were seeing two worlds at once. The red-haired man was there again, still stooped over as he paced the slope of Knobtop, and again he turned to look at her. "I lost it. ." he said, and then he faded. Other, stronger voices came to her: a dozen of them, two dozen, more; all of them shouting at her at once, the din clam-oring in her ears though she could make out none of the words in the chaos.

Jenna cried out (Kesh barking in alarm at her voice) and tried to release the stone, but her fingers wouldn’t open. They remained stubbornly clamped around the pebble, and the icy burning was climbing quickly from her hand to her wrist, onto her forearm, past the elbow. . "No!" This time the words were a scream, as Jenna scrabbled frantically at her fisted hand, trying to pry the fingers open with her other hand as the cold filled her chest, pounding like a foaming, crashing sea wave up toward her head, crashing down into her abdomen. The voices screamed. The cold fire filled her, and Jenna screamed again in panic. She could feel a surging power pressing against her, each fiber of her body taut and hum-ming with wild energy. She lifted her hand, concentrating her will, imag-ining her fingers opening around the stone. Her fingers trembled as if she had a palsy, then sprang open. Coruscating light, brighter than the sun, flared outward, arcing in a jagged lightning bolt that struck ground a dozen strides away.

The stone fell from her hand. A peal of thunder dinned in her ears and echoed from the hills around

Knobtop. Breathless, Jenna sank to her knees in the grass.

Whimpering, Kesh came up and licked her face while she tried to catch her breath, as the world settled into normalcy around her. Old Stubborn baaed nearby. Jenna blinked hard. Everything was normal, except. .

Where the lightning bolt had struck, there was a blackened hole in the turf, an arm deep and a stride across. The dirt there steamed in the air.

Jenna's intake of breath shuddered in amazement. "By the Mother, Kesh, did 1…?"

The stone lay a hand's breadth from her knee. Cradled in winter-browned heather, it seemed pretty and harmless. She reached out with a trembling forefinger and prodded it once. The surface seemed like any other stone and she felt nothing. She touched it again, longer this time: it was still chilled, but not horribly so. She picked it up, careful not to close her hand around it again. "What do you think, Kesh?"

The dog whimpered again, and barked once at her.

Gingerly, she placed the stone back in her pocket.

"Is everything all right?" Maeve asked as Jenna brought the flock back to Ballintubber. "Thomas said he saw a bright flash up on Knobtop, and we all heard thunder even though the sky was clear." The worry made her mam's face look old and drawn. "Jenna, I was worried. After last night. ."

All the way down from the high pasture, Jenna had debated with her-self over what she'd tell her mam. She'd thought at first that she'd tell her everything, how she'd found the stone after the lights, how it had seemed to glow, how the cold fury had consumed her until released. She wanted to describe the man she'd seen in the misty vision, and ask her: Could it be Da? But looking at Maeve now, seeing the anxiety and concern that filled her eyes, Jenna found that the carefully rehearsed words dissolved inside her. The fright she'd felt had faded and she seemed unhurt by the experience-why bother Mam with that now? Besides, she wasn't sure she could explain it: Mam might think she was making up tales, or wonder if Jenna had gone insane like Matron Kelly's son Sean, whose brain had been burned up by a high fever when he was a baby.

Sean talked as poorly as a three-year-old and babbled constantly to creatures only he could see. No, better to say nothing.

Jenna plunged her hand into her coat pocket, letting her fingertips roam over the pebble there. The stone felt perfectly normal now, like any

other stone, not even a hint of the coldness. Jenna smiled at her mam.

"I’m fine," she said. "A flash? Thunder? I really didn’t notice anything." Jenna wasn’t used to lying to her mam-at least no more than any adoles-cent might be-and she was surprised at how easily the words came, at how casual and natural they sounded. "I didn’t see anything, Mam. I thought I might, after last night, but everything was just. ." She shrugged, and brought her hand out of her pocket.". . normal."

Maeve’s head was cocked slightly to one side, and her eyes were nar-rowed. But she nodded. "Then get the sheep in, and come inside. I have some stirabout ready to eat." She continued to regard Jenna for a long breath, then turned and entered the cottage.

That was all Jenna heard on the subject. She took the stone out of her Pocket that night after her Mam was asleep, hiding it in a chink in the wall next to her side of the bed and covering it with mud. It was dangerous, she told herself, and shouldn’t be handled. But every morning, when she woke up, she looked at the spot, brushing her fingers over the dried mud. She found the touch comforting.

That night, she dreamed of the red-haired man, so real that it seemed she could touch him. "Who are you?" she asked him, but instead of an-swering her, he shook his head and wandered off toward Knobtop. She followed, calling to him, but she was caught in the slow motion of a dream and could never catch up. When she woke, she found that she couldn’t remember his features at all; they were simply a blur, unreal.

She looked at the mud-covered spot where the stone lay, and that, too, seemed unreal. She could almost believe there was nothing there. Nothing there at all.

Over the next few days, the excitement in Ballintubber about the lights over Knobtop

gradually died, even though the stories about that night grew with each telling, until someone listening might have thought that entire armies of magical creatures had been seen swirling in the air above the mount, wailing and crying. A good quarter of the village of Ballintub-ber had been up on Knobtop that night, too, if the tales that were told in Tara's were to be believed. But though the tales grew more elaborate, the night sky over Knobtop remained dark for the next three nights, and life returned to normal.

Until the fourth day.

The day was gloomy and overcast, with the lowering clouds dropping a persistent cold rain that permeated through clothing and settled into sinew and bone. The world was swathed in gray and fog, with Knobtop lost in the haze. Ballintubber's single cobbled lane was a morass of pud-dles and mud with occasional islands of wet stone. The smoke of turf fires rose from the chimneys of Ballintubber, gray smoke fading into gray skies, and the rain pattered from the edges of thatch into brown pools.

Rain couldn't alter the pace of life in Ballintubber, nor in fact anywhere in Talamh an Ghlas. It rained three or four days out of seven, after all, the year around. Rain in its infinite variety kept the land lush and green: startlingly bright and refreshing drizzles in the midst of sunshine; foggy rains where the clouds seemed to sink into the very earth and the air was simply wet; soaking, hard spring downpours that awakened the seeds in the ground; summer rains as warm and soft as bathwater; rare winter storms of snow and sleet to blanket the world in white and vanish in the next day's sun; howling and shrieking hurricanes from off the sea that lashed and whipped the land. Rain was simply a fact of life. If it rained, you got wet; if the sun was out or it was cloudy, you didn't-that was all. The chores still needed to be done, the work still went on. A little rain couldn't bring the activity in Ballintubber to a halt.

But the appearance of the rider did.

Through the open doors of the small barn behind Tara's Tavern, Jenna saw Eliath, Tara's son and youngest at twelve years of age, currying down the steaming body of a huge brown stallion. Jenna was pushing a barrow of new-cut turf toward home; she detoured to see the horse, which looked far too large and healthy to be one of the local work animals.

"Hey, Eli," she said, setting down the barrow just inside the door where it was out of the rain.

Eli glanced up from his work. The horse turned his great neck to glance at Jenna and nickered. She went over and rubbed his long muzzle. Eli grinned. "Hey, Jenna. That’s some animal, isn’t it?"

"It certainly is," she said. "Who does it belong to?"

"A man from the east, that’s all I know. He rode in a while ago, stopped at the tavern, and asked Mam to send me to get the Ald. I think he’s Riocha; at least he’s dressed like a tiarna-fine leather boots and gloves, a jacket of velvet and silk, and under that a leine shirt as white as new snow, and a cloca over it all that’s as thick as your finger and embroidered all around the edges with gold-the colors of the cloca are green and brown, so he’s of Tuath Gabair." Eli plucked at his own bedraggled woolen coat and unbleached muslin shirt. He plunged a hand into a pocket and pulled out a large coin. "Gave me this, too, for getting Aldwoman Pearce and taking care of the horse."

"Where is he now?"

"Inside. Lots of other people there now, too. You can go in if you want."

Jenna glanced at the tavern, where yellow light shone through the streaks of gray rain. "I might. Can I leave the barrow here?"

"Sure."

There were at least a dozen people in the dim, smoky interior of the tavern, unusual in mid-afternoon. The stranger sat at a table near the rear, talking with Aldwoman Pearce. Jenna caught sight of a narrow face with a long nose, brown eyes dark enough to be nearly black, and a well-trimmed beard, a slight body clad in rich clothing, a delicate hand wrapped around a mug of stout. His hair was long and oiled, and the line of a scar interrupted the beard halfway to the left ear. Jenna could hear his voice as he spoke with Aldwoman Pearce, and it was as smooth and polished as his clothing, bright with the accent of the upper class and permeated with a faint haughtiness. The others in the tavern were pretending not to watch the stranger’s table, which made it all the more obvious that they were.

Coelin was there, also, sitting at the bar with a mug of tea and a plate of scones in front of him,

talking with Ellia. Tara was in the rear of the tavern, hanging the pot over the cook fire. Jenna went over and stood next to Coelin, ignoring the barbed glance from Ellia, behind the bar.

"Who is he?" Jenna asked.

Coelin shrugged. "Riocha. A tiarna from Lar Bhaile, if he's to be be-lieved. The Tiarna Padraic Mac Ard, he says."

"What's he talking to Aldwoman Pearce about?"

Coelin shrugged, but Ellia leaned forward. "Mam says he asked about the lights-didn't Aldwoman Pearce foretell that the other night? Says he saw them in Lar Bhaile from across the lough. When Mam told him how they were flickering around Knobtop, he asked to speak to the Ald."

"Maybe he'll want to speak with you, Jenna," Coelin said. "You were up there that night."

Jenna shivered, remembering, and shook her head vigorously. She thought of those dark eyes on her, of those thin lips asking questions. She thought of the stone in its hole in the wall of her cottage.

"No. I didn't see anything that you didn't see here. Let him talk to the Ald. Or some of the others here who say they saw all sorts of things with the lights."

Coelin snorted through his nose at that. "They saw things with the ale and whiskey they drank that night and their own imaginations. I doubt Tiarna Mac Ard will be much interested in that."

"Why's he interested at all?" Jenna asked, glancing over at him again. "They were lights, that's all, and gone now." Mac Ard's eyes glittered in the lamplight, never at rest. For a moment, their gazes met. The contact was almost a physical shock, making Jenna take a step back. She looked away hurriedly. "I should go," she said to Coelin and Ellia.

"Ah, ''tis a shame," Ellia said, though her voice was devoid of any sor-row at all.

"Come back tonight, Jenna," Coelin said. "I made up a song about the lights, like you suggested."

Despite her desire to be away from Mac Ard and the tavern, Jenna could not keep the smile from her lips, though the pleased look on Ellia's face dissolved. "Did you now?"

Coelin tilted his head and smiled back at her. "I did. And I won’t sing it unless you’re there to hear the verses first. So will you come?"

"We’ll see," Jenna said. Mac Ard was still looking at her, and Aldwoman Pearce turned in her chair to glance back also. "I really need to go now."

As Jenna rushed out, she heard Ellia talking to Coelin- "Keep your eyes in your head and the rest of you in your pants, Coelin Singer. She’s still just a gawky lamb, and not a very pretty one at that…" — then the door closed behind her. The cold rain struck her face, and she pulled the cowl of her coat over her head as she ran through the puddles to the barn and retrieved her barrow of peat.

She hurried back to the cottage through the rain and the fog.

Chapter 3: A Song at the Inn

JENNA had just lit the candles on the shelves to either side of the fire-place. The sun was down or lowering-the rain persisted, and the sky slipped from the color of wet smoke to slate to coal as the interior of their house slowly darkened. Maeve was peeling potatoes; Jenna was carding wool. They both heard the sound of slowly moving hooves through the drumming of rain, and Kesh lifted his head from the floor and growled. Leather creaked, and there were footsteps on the flags outside the door. Someone knocked at the door and Kesh barked. Maeve looked at Jenna.

"Mam, I forgot to tell you. There’s a tiarna who was at Tara’s. ." Maeve set down her paring knife and went to the door, brushing at her apron. She opened the door. Mac Ard stood there, a darkness against the wet night.

"I’m looking for Maeve Aoire and her daughter," Mac Ard said. His voice was deep and gruff. "I was told this was their home."

"Aye, ’tis," Maeve answered, and Jenna heard a strange, awed tone in her mam’s voice. "I’m Maeve

Aoire, sir. Come in out of the wet, won't you?"

Maeve stood aside as the man ducked his head and entered. Kesh growled once, then slunk away toward the fire. "Jenna, put your coat on and take the tiarna's horse out to the barn. At least it'll be dry there. Go on with you, now."

By the time Jenna got back, Mac Ard was sitting at the table with a plate of boiled potatoes, mutton, and bread, and a mug of tea in front of him. Kesh sat at his feet, waiting for dropped crumbs. His boots and cloca were drying near the fire. Maeve sat across from him, but she wasn't eating. Her face was pale, as if she might be frightened, and her hands were fisted on the table, fingers curled into palms. She glanced up as Jenna came through the door, shaking water from her hood and sleeves. "It's not raining as hard as it was," she said, wanting to break the silence. "I think it'll stop soon."

Her mam simply nodded, as if she'd only half heard. Mac Ard had turned in his chair, the legs scraping across the floorboards. "Sit down, Jenna," he said. "I'd like to talk with you."

Jenna glanced at her mam, who gave her a slight nod. Jenna didn't sit, but went over to Maeve, standing behind her, and resting her hands on her Mam's shoulders even as Maeve reached up to pat Jenna's hand reas-suringly. One corner of Mac Ard's mouth lifted slightly under the beard, as if he found the sight amusing.

"I didn't expect to hear the surname Aoire, so many miles from the north," he commented. He stabbed a potato with a fork, brought it to his mouth, and chewed. "It's an uncommon name hereabouts, to be certain. Inishlander in origin."

"My husband was from the north," Maeve answered. "From Inish Thuaidh."

"Husband?"

"He's dead almost seventeen years, Tiarna Mac Ard. Killed by bandits on the road."

Mac Ard nodded. He blinked, and the dark eyes seemed softer than they had a moment before. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said, and Jenna thought she heard genuine sympathy in his voice. "For a woman as well-spoken and comely as yourself, he must have been an exceptional person for you to never have remarried. This is his daughter?"

Maeve touched Jenna’s hands. "Aye. She was still a babe in arms when Niall was murdered."

Another nod. "Niall Aoire. Interesting. Niall’s not an Inish name, though. In fact, my great-uncle was named Niall, though he was a Mac Ard." The tiarna sipped at the tea, leaning back in his chair. He seemed to be waiting, then took a long breath before continuing. "Four nights ago, I was standing on the tower of the Ri’s Keep in Lar Bhaile, when I saw colors flickering on the black waters of the lough. I looked up, and I could see the glow in the sky as well, to the north and west beyond the hills. They were nothing I’d ever seen before, but I’d heard them described, in all the old folktales. Mage-lights."

He drummed the table with his fingers. "A dozen or more generations ago, I’m told, my own ancestors were among the last of the cloudmages as the mage-lights in the sky weakened. Then the lights vanished entirely, and with them the power to perform spells. If you listen to the old tales, with the lights also went other magics as well: that of mythical creatures and of hidden, ancient places. Now half the people think of those tales as myth and legend, no more than stories. At times, I’ve thought that, too. But looking at the lights, I felt. ." He tapped his chest, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. "I felt them calling me, here. I went running down from the tower, and dragged the town’s Ald back up so that I could show him. ’By the Mother-Creator, those are mage-lights, Tiarna,’ he said. They can’t be anything else. After so long…’ I thought the poor old man might cry, he was so moved by the sight of them. So I asked the Ri’s leave to come here, because they called me, because I wanted to see where they’d chosen to return." His eyes found Jenna, and again she felt the shock of that contact, as if his gaze could actually bruise her. "I’m told that you were up there that night, on Knobtop."

She wanted to shout denial, but couldn’t, not with her mam there. "Aye," she started to say, but the admission was more squeak than word. She cleared her throat. "I was there."

"And what did you see?"

"Lights, Tiarna Mac Ard. Beautiful lights, rippling and swaying." She could not stop the awe the memory placed in her voice.

"And nothing more?"

"They flashed at the end, brighter than anything I'd ever seen. Then they were. ." Her shoulder lifted. "Gone," she finished. "I told Kesh to bring the sheep along, and we came back here."

Mac Ard ruffled Kesh's head and fed him a piece of the mutton. "Strange," he said. "And nothing else happened? Nothing else. . un-usual?" His eyes held her. Jenna found herself thinking of the stone hid-den in the wall in their bedroom, not six strides away from Mac Ard, and of the cold lightning that flared from it and the red-haired man. She could feel her cheeks getting hot, and her mouth opened as if she wanted to speak, but she forced herself to remain silent as Mac Ard continued to stare. She thought that he could see through her, could sense the lie of omission that lay in her gut, burning, all the worse because now she was lying to a Riocha, one of the nobility of the land. Mac Ard's nostrils flared on his thin nose and he almost seemed to nod. Then he blinked and looked away, and the terror in her heart receded.

"How odd," Mac Ard said, "that the mage-lights would choose to reap-pear here."

"I'm sure neither of us know why, Tiarna," Maeve told him.

He pursed his lips. He glanced back once at Jenna before turning his attention to her mam. "I'm sure you don't. Tell me this, Widow Aoire, did you know your husband's family well?"

Maeve shook her head. "I was born and raised here. The truth, Tiarna, is that I know very little about them, and never at all met any of them. The farthest I've ever been from Ballintubber is Bacathair, a few months after my husband's death. I went there to see if the gardai could help me find out more about how he died, and who the murderers were."

"And did the gardai help you?"

Jenna saw Maeve's head move softly from side to side. "No. They had nothing more to tell me than I already knew, nor did they care much about the death of 'some Inishlander.'"

Mac Ard nodded slowly, contemplatively. "I've taken enough of your time and hospitality," he said. "Let me repay you. I understand that there's a

young man with an excellent voice who sings at the inn where I'm staying tonight. Come back there with me; be my guests for the evening, both of you. We can talk more there, about whatever you'd like."

Jenna had to stop herself from grinning, both from relief that the tiar-na's interrogation seemed to be over, and at the suggestion to go to Tara's. Coelin had promised her a song, and she hadn't wanted to ask, with the awful weather. But if the tiarna insisted. .

"Oh, no, Tiarna," Maeve started to say automatically, then glanced back at Jenna. He smiled at her and nodded, as if they shared a secret.

"Your daughter wants you to accept," Mac Ard said. "And I would be honored."

"I don't-" Maeve began. Jenna tightened her arms around her moth-er's shoulders, and felt her sigh. "I suppose we'd also be honored," she said.

The rain had subsided to a bare, cold drizzle. Mac Ard brought his stallion out from the barn. "You want to ride him?" he asked Jenna. She nodded, mutely. He picked her up, hands around her waist, and placed her side-ways astride the saddle, handing her the reins. He patted the muscular neck, glossy and as rich a brown as new-turned earth. "Behave yourself, Conhal," he told the horse, who snorted and shook his head, bridle jin-gling. "That's a special young woman you hold."

For a moment, Jenna wondered at that, but then Mac Ard clucked once at Conhal, and the horse started walking, startling Jenna. They moved up the lane to Tara's, Mac Ard and Maeve walking alongside. The tiarna seemed to be paying most of his attention to Maeve, Jenna noticed. His head inclined toward her, and they talked in soft voices that Jenna couldn't quite overhear, and he smiled and, once, he touched Maeve's arm. Her mam smiled in return and laughed, but Jenna noticed that Maeve also moved slightly away from the tiarna after the touch.

Jenna frowned. Her mam had never paid much attention to the other men in Ballintubber, though enough of them had certainly indicated their interest. She'd always rebuffed them-some gently, some not, but all of them firmly. But this dark man, this Mac Ard… He seemed to like Maeve, and he was Riocha, after all. Maeve had always told her

how Niall, her da, was strong and protective and loving, and she could imagine that this Mac Ard might be the same way. .

The conversation inside Tara’s stopped dead when Tiarna Mac Ard pushed open the door of the tavern so that Maeve and Jenna could enter, then, as quickly, the chatter resumed again as everyone pretended not to notice that the tiarna had brought company with him. Tara came out from behind the bar, and shooed away old man Buckles from one of the tables. "What will you have, Tiarna Mac Ard?" she asked with an eyebrows-raised glance at Maeve. Mac Ard tilted his head toward Jenna’s mam.

"What do you recommend?" he asked.

" Tara’s brown ale is excellent," Maeve said. She was smiling at Mac Ard, and if she remained a careful step away from him, she also kept her gaze on him.

"The brown ale, then," Mac Ard said. Tara nodded her head and bus-tled off. Maeve sat across the table from Mac Ard; Jenna went over to where Coelin was tuning his giotar. Ellia was there also, her arm around Coelin. He glanced up, smiling, as Jenna approached; Ellia just stared.

"So the tiarna found you, eh?" he said. "He came up right after you left and asked where you lived." Coelin glanced over at the table, where Mac Ard’s dark head inclined toward Maeve. Coelin lifted an eyebrow at Jenna. "Seems he likes what he found." Ellia grinned at that, and Jenna frowned.

"I don’t find that funny, Coelin Singer," she said. She lifted her chin and turned to walk away.

Coelin strummed a minor chord. "Jenna," he said to her back. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you." She looked over her shoulder at him, and he continued. "So what did he ask you? ’She’s the one who was up there,’ he said to me. ’I know this. I can feel it.’ That’s what he told me, before he even knew who you were."

"What did the tiarna mean by that?" Jenna asked.

Coelin shrugged. "I’m sure I wouldn’t know. What did he say to you? What did he ask?"

"He only asked whether I saw the lights, that’s all. I told him that I had, and described them for him."

"We all saw them," Ellia said. "That’s nothing special. I could describe the lights for him just as easily, if that’s all he wants to know." She tight-ened her arm around Coelin. Jenna looked at her, at Coelin. She tried to find a hint in his bright, grass-green eyes that he wanted her to stay, that her presence was special to him. Maybe if he’d spoken then, maybe if he’d moved away from Ellia, if he’d given her any small sign. .

But he didn’t. He sat there, looking as handsome and charming as ever, with his long hair and his dancing eyes and his agile, long-fingered hands. Content. He smiled, but he smiled at Ellia, too. And he’d let either of us lift our skirts for him, too, with that same smile, that same contentment. The thought struck her with the force of truth, the way Aldwoman Pearce’s proclamations sometimes did when she scattered the prophecy bones from the bag she’d made from the skin of a bog body. There was the same sense of finality that Jenna heard in the rattling of the ivory twigs. You’re no more to him than any other comely young thing. His interest in you is mostly for the reflection he sees of himself in your eyes. He flirts with you because it is what he does. It means no more than that.

"I’ll be going back to my table," she said.

"Stay," he said. "I’ll be singing in a minute."

"And I’ll hear you just as fine from there," Jenna answered. "Besides, you have Ellia to listen to you."

A trace of irritation deepened the fine lines around his eyes for a breath, then they smoothed again. His fingers flicked over the strings of his giotar discordantly. Ellia pulled him back toward her, and he laughed, turning his head away from Jenna.

She went back to the table. Mac Ard was leaning toward Maeve, his arms on the table, his hands curled around a mug of the ale, and her mam was talking.". . Niall would go walking on Knobtop or the hills just to the east, or follow the Duan down to Lough Lar, or go wandering in the forests between here and Keelballi. But he always came back, was never away for more than a week, maybe two at the most. There was a wander-lust in him. Some people never seem satisfied where they are, and he was one. I never worried about it, or thought he was traipsing off with some lass. Once or twice a year,

I’d find him filling a sack with bread and a few potatoes, and I’d know he would be going. Jenna,"

Maeve glanced up as Jenna approached, and she smiled softly, "-she has some of that restless-ness in her blood. Always wanting to go farther, see more. I don't know what Niall was searching for, nor whether he ever found it. I doubt it, for he was wandering up to the end."

Mac Ard took a sip of the ale. "Did you ever ask him?"

Maeve nodded. "That I did. Once. He told me. ." She looked away, as if she could see Jenna's da through the haze of pipe and peat smoke in the tavern. Jenna wondered what face she was seeing. "He told me that he came here because a voice had told him that his life's dream might be here." Meave's eyes shimmered in the candlelight, and she blinked hard. "He said it must have been my voice he heard."

Coelin's giotar sounded, a clear, high chord that cut through the low murmur of conversation in the bar. He'd moved over near the fire, Ellia sitting close to him and a mug of stout within reach. "What would you hear first?" he called out to the patrons.

On any other night, half a dozen voices might have answered Coelin, but tonight there was silence. No one actually glanced back to Tiarna Mat Ard, but everyone waited to see if he would speak first.

Mac Ard had turned in his chair to watch Coelin, and Jenna could see something akin to disgust, or maybe it was simply irritation, flicker across his face. Then he called out to Coelin. "I'm told your teacher was a Song-master. He must have given you the 'Song of Mael Armagh.'"

"Aye, he did, Tiarna," Coelin answered. "But it's a long tale and sad, and I've not sung it since Songmaster Curragh was alive."

"All the more reason to sing it now, before you lose it."

There was some laughter at that. Coelin gave a shrug and a sigh. "Give me a moment, then, to bring it back to mind. ." Coelin closed his eyes. His fingers moved soundlessly over the strings for a few moments; his mouth moved with unheard words. Then he opened his eyes and exhaled loudly. "Here we go then," he said, and began to sing.

Coelin's strong baritone filled the room, sweet and melodious, a voice as smooth and rich as

new-churned butter. Coelin had a true gift, Jenna knew-the gods had lent him their own tongue. Songmaster Curragh had heard the gift, unpolished and raw, in the scared boy he'd purchased from the Taisteal; now, honed and sharpened, the young man's talent was apparent to all. Mac Ard, after hearing the first few notes, sat back in his chair with an audible cough of surprise and admiration, shaking his head and stroking his beard. "No wonder the boy has half the lasses here in his thrall," Jenna heard him whisper to Maeve. "His throat must be lined with gold. Too bad he's all too well aware of it."

Coelin sang, his voice taking them into a misty past where fierce Mael Armagh, king of Tuath Infochla four hundred years before, drove his ships of war from Falcarragh to Inish Thuaidh, where the mage-lights had first shone in the Eldest Time and where they glowed brightest. The verses of the ancient lay told how the cloudmages of the island called up the wild storms of the Ice Sea, threatening to smash the invading fleet on the is-land's high cliffs; Mael Armagh screaming defiance and finally landing safely; the sun gleaming from the armor and weapons of Mael Armagh's army as they swarmed ashore; the Battle of Dun Kill, where Mael Armagh won his first and only victory; Sage Roshia's prophecy that the king would die "not from Inish hands" if he pursued the fleeing Inishlanders to seal his victory. Yet Mael Armagh ordered the pursuit into the mountain fast-nesses of the island and there met his fate, his armies scattered and trapped, the Inishlanders surrounding him on all sides and the mage-lights flickering in the dark sky above. The last verses were filled with the folly, the courage, and the sorrow of the Battle of Sliabh Michinniuint: the Inish cloudmages raining fire down on the huddled troops; the futile, suicidal charge by Mael Armagh in an attempt to win through the pass to the Lowlands; the death of the doomed king at the hands of his own men, who presented Mael Armagh's body to Severii O'Coulghan, the Inishland-er's chief cloudmage, to buy their safe passage back to their ships. And the final verse, as Mael Armagh's ship Cinniuint, now his funeral pyre, sailed away from the island to the south never to be seen again, the flames of the pyre painting the bottom of the gray clouds with angry red.

The clock-candle on Tara's bar had burned down a stripe before Coelin finished the song, and Mac

Ard’s hands started the applause afterward as Coelin eased his parched throat with long swallows of stout. "Excellent," Mac Ard said. "I’ve not heard better. You should come to Lar Bhaile, and sing for us there. I’ll wager that in another year, you would be at the court in Dun Laoghaire, singing to the R1 Ard himself."

Coelin’s face flushed visibly as he grinned, and Jenna saw Ellia’s eyes first widen, then narrow, as if she were already seeing Coelin leaving Bal-lintubber. "I’ll do that, Tiarna. Maybe I’ll follow you back."

"Do that," Mac Ard answered, "and I’ll make sure you have a roof over your head, and you’ll pay for your keep with songs."

The patrons laughed and applauded (all but Ellia, Jenna noticed), and someone called out for another song, and Coelin started a reel: "The Cow Who Married the Pig," everyone clapping along and laughing at the non-sensical lyrics. Mac Ard inclined his head to Maeve, nodding once in Jenna’s direction. "Those were her ancestors the boy sang of," he said. And your husband’s. A fierce and proud people, the Inishlanders. They never bowed to any king but their own, and they still don’t." He sat back, then leaned forward again. "They also knew the mage-lights. Knew how to draw them down, knew how to store their power. Even then, in the last days of the Before, in the final flickering of the power and the cloud-^Aages. They say it’s in their blood. They say that if the mage-lights come again, when it’s time for the Filleadh, the mage-lights will first appear to someone of Inish Thuaidh."

Jenna saw Maeve glance toward her. She wondered if her mam had felt the same shiver that had just crept down her spine. "And are you thinking that my daughter and I had anything to do with this, Tiarna Mac Ard?" Maeve asked him.

Mac Ard shrugged. "I don’t even know for certain that what we saw were mage-lights. They may have just been some accident of the sky, the moon reflecting from ice in the clouds, perhaps. But. ." He paused, listening to Coelin’s singing before turning back to Maeve and Jenna. "I told you that when I saw them, I wanted to come here. And I… I have a touch of the Inish blood in me."

Chapter 4: The Fire Returns

JENNA left before the clock-candle reached the next stripe: as Coelin sang a reel, then a love song; as Mac Ard related to Maeve the long story of his great-great-mam from Inish Thuaidh (who, Jenna learned, fell in love with a tiarna from Dathuil in Tuath Airgialla, who would become Mac Ard's great-great-da. There was more, but Jenna became lost in the blizzard of names.) Maeve seemed strangely interested in the intricacies of the Mac Ard genealogy and asked several questions, but Jenna was bored. "I'm going back home, Mam," she said. "You stay if you like. I'll check on Kesh and the sheep."

Her mam looked concerned for a moment, then she glanced at Ellia, who was leaning as close to Coelin as she could without actually touching him. She smiled gently at Jenna. "Go on, then," she told Jenna. "I'll be along soon."

It was no longer raining at all, and the clouds had mostly cleared away, though the ground was still wet and muddy. Her boots were caked and heavy by the time she reached the cottage. Kesh came barking up to her as she approached. Jenna took off her boots, picked up a few cuttings of peat from the bucket inside the door, and coaxed the banked fire back into life until the chill left the room. Kesh padded after her as she went from the main room to their tiny bedroom and sat on the edge of the straw-filled mattress. She stared at the mud-daubed hole where the stone lay hidden.

"They say it's in their blood," Tiarna Mac Ard had said. "When I saw them, I wanted to go there…"

Jenna dropped to her knees in front of the hole. She picked at the dried mud with her fingernails until she could see the stone. Carefully, she pried it loose and held it in her open palm. So oddly plain, it was, yet…

It was cold again. As cold as the night she'd held it in her hand on Knobtop. Jenna gasped, thrust the stone into the pocket of her skirt, and left the bedroom.

She sat in front of the peat fire for a few minutes, her arms around herself. Kesh lay at her feet, looking up at her quizzically from time to time, as if he sensed that Jenna's thoughts were in turmoil.

She wondered whether she should go back to Tara’s and show the stone to Mac Ard, tell him everything that had happened on Knobtop. It would feel good to tell the truth-she knew that; she could feel the lie boiling inside, festering and begging for the lance of her words. Mam certainly seemed to trust the tiarna, and Jenna liked the way he spoke to her mam, and the way he treated the two of them. She could trust him, she felt. And yet…

He might be angry to find that she’d lied. So might her mam. Jenna swore-an oath she’d once heard Thomas the Miller utter when he’d dropped a sack of flour on his foot.

The ram, in the outbuilding, bleated a call of alarm. A few of the ewes also gave voice as Kesh’s ears went up and he ran barking to the door. Jenna followed, pulling the muddy boots back over her feet, guessing that a wolf or a pack of the wild pigs was prowling nearby, or that Old Stub-born had simply got himself stuck somewhere again. "What’s the matter with-" she began as she walked toward the pens.

She stopped, looking toward Knobtop.

Something sparked in the air above the peak: a flicker, a whisper of light. Then it was gone. But she’d seen true. She could still see the ghost of the light on the back of her eyes.

"Kesh, come on," she said.

She started toward Knobtop, her boots sloshing through the muck.

By the time she started walking up the mountain’s steep flanks, the sky flickered again with flowing streams and billows of colors, tossing multi-ple shadows behind her over the heather and rocks. Kesh barked at the mage-lights, lifting his snout up to the sky. They were brightening now, fuller and even more dazzling than they’d been the last time. By now, Jenna knew, someone in Ballintubber would have seen them. They’d be tumbling out of Tara’s, all of them, gawking. And Tiarna Mac Ard.

She imagined him, running to the stable behind Tara’s, leaping on his brown steed and riding hard toward Knobtop. . She frowned. Now that the lights had appeared again, she didn’t want to share them with him. They were hers. They had given her

the stone; they had shown her the red-haired man.

The stone. . She could feel its smooth weight now, cold and pulsing in the woolen pocket. She pulled the stone out: the pebble glowed, shim-mering with an echo of the sky above, the colors tinting her fingers as she held it. The mage-lights seemed to bend in the atmosphere directly above her, swirling like water, as if they sensed her presence below. Jenna lifted her hand, and the mage-lights coalesced, forming a funnel of sparkling hues above that danced and wriggled, lengthening and elongating. Jenna started to pull her hand away, but the funnel of mage-light had wrapped itself around her hand now, like a thread attached to the maelstrom in the sky above her. As she moved her hand, it stretched and swayed, a ball of glowing light attached to her wrist. She could feel the mage-lights, not hot but very, very cold, the chill creeping from wrist to elbow, to shoulder.

Jenna tried to pull away, desperately this time, but they held her like another hand, gripping her shoulders, the cold seeping into her chest and covering her head.

She swam in light. She closed her eyes, screaming in the bright silence, and she could still see the colors, melding and shifting.

Ethereal voices called to her.

A flash.

A deafening peal of thunder.

Blackness.

Kesh was licking her face.

Jenna rolled her head away, and the movement sent pain coursing through her neck and temples. Kesh whined as she shoved him away. "Get off," she told him. "I'm fine." She sat up, grimacing. "I hope so, anyway."

She was still on Knobtop, but the sky above was simply the sky, starlit between shreds of clouds slowly moving from the west. She looked down; she was holding the stone, and it throbbed like the blood in her head, pulsing cold but no longer shining. She was suddenly afraid of the pebble, and she started to throw it away, drawing her hand back.

Stopping.

The mage-lights came to you. They came to you, and the stone. .

She brought her hand back down to her lap.

Kesh whined again, coming up to rub against her, then his head lifted, the ears going straight, his tail lifting and a low growl coming from his throat.

"What is it?" Jenna asked, then she heard it herself: the sound of shod hooves striking rock within the copse of elm and oak trees down the slope of Knobtop. Jenna stood. Whoever it was, she didn’t want to be seen here. She put the stone in her pocket and lifted the hem of her skirts. "Come, Kesh," she whispered, and ran. There was a small stand of trees fifty strides away, and she made for the darkness there. She stopped once she was under their shade, looking back through the tree trunks to the field. She saw the horse and rider emerge from under the trees: Tiarna Mac Ard, astride Conhal. The tiarna made his way slowly up the hillside, looking at the ground, glancing up at the sky. Kesh started to run out to them, and Jenna held the dog back. "Hush," she whispered. Mac Ard wouldn’t be finding the mage-lights tonight, and she didn’t want him to find her, either, or to have to explain why she was here.

"Come," she said to Kesh, and slipped deeper into the shelter of the woods, making her way down the slope toward home.

Her mam looked up from the fire as Jenna opened the door. "Your boots are muddy," she said.

"I know," Jenna said. Sitting on the stool at the door, she took them off.

"I was worried when you weren’t here."

"I went walking with Kesh."

"On Knobtop." The way Maeve said it, Jenna understood it was not a question. She nodded.

"Aye, Mam. On Knobtop."

Maeve nodded, worry crinkling her forehead and the corners of her eyes. "That’s where he said you’d be." She didn’t need to mention who "he" was; they both knew. "You look cold and pale," Maeve continued. "There’s tea in the kettle over the fire. Why don’t you pour yourself a mug?"

Wondering at her mam’s strange calmness, Jenna

poured herself tea sweetened with honey. Maeve said nothing more, though Jenna could feel her mam's gaze on her back. By the time she'd finished, Kesh barked and they heard the sound of Mac Ard's horse approaching. The tiarna knocked, then opened the door, standing there in his cloca of green and brown. Maeve nodded to the man, as if answering an unspoken question, and he turned to Jenna. He seemed too big and too dark in the cottage, and she could not decipher the expression on his face. He stroked his beard with one hand.

"You saw them," he said. "You were there." When she didn't answer, he glanced again at Maeve. "I saw your boot prints, and the dog's. I know you were there." His voice was gentle-not an accusation, just a sympa-thetic statement of fact.

"Aye, Tiarna," Jenna answered quietly.

"You saw the lights?"

A nod. Jenna hung her head, not daring to look at his face.

Mac Ard let out a long sigh. "By the Mother-Creator, Jenna, I'm not going to eat you. I just want to know. I want to help if I can. Did you see the lights first, or did you go there and call them?"

Jenna shook her head, slowly at first then more vigorously. "I didn't call them," she said hurriedly.

"I was here, and I heard Old Stubborn making a commotion and went outside to check and… I thought I saw something. So I went. Then, after I was there, they came." She stopped. Mac Ard let the silence linger, and Jenna forced herself to stay quiet, though she could see him waiting for her to elaborate. "Did you see them, Tiarna?" she asked finally.

"From the tavern, aye, and as I was riding toward the hill. They went out by the time I reached the road and started up Knobtop. I saw the flash and heard the thunder when the lights vanished." He held his right arm straight out, and ran his left hand over it. "I could feel my hair standing on end: here, and on the back of my neck. I rode up to where the flash seemed to have come from. That's where I saw the marks of your boots." He let his hand drop. His cloca rustled. His voice was as soft and warm as the blanket on her bed. "Tell me the truth, Jenna. I swear I mean you and your mam no harm. I swear

He waited, looking at Jenna, and she could feel her hand trembling around the wooden mug. She set it down on the table, staring down at the steaming brew without really seeing it. She was trembling, her hands shaking as they rested on the rough oaken table top.

"I was there," she said to the mug. "The lights, they were so… bright and the colors were so deep, all around me. ." She lifted her head, looking from Mac Ard to her mam, shimmering in the salt water that suddenly filled her eyes. "I don’t understand why this is happening," she said, sniffing and trying to keep back the tears. "I don’t know why it keeps happening to me. I don’t want it, didn’t ask for it. I don’t know anything." The stone burned cold against her thigh through the woolen fabric. "I. ." She started to tell them the rest, how the mage-lights had glowed in the stone, how the power had arced from it, how the pebble had seemed to draw the mage-lights tonight, all of it. But she saw the eagerness in Mac Ard’s face, the way he leaned forward intently as she spoke of the lights, and she stopped herself. You don’t know him, not really. The stone was your gift, not his. The voice in her head almost seemed to be someone else’s.

"There isn't anything else to tell you, Tiarna," she said, sniffing. "I'm sorry."

Disappointment etched itself in the set of his mouth, and she realized that the man was genuinely puzzled. He shook his head. "Then we wait, and we watch," he said. He turned to Maeve. "I'll stay at Tara's for another day, at least, and we'll see. The mage-lights may come again tomorrow night. If they do, if they call Jenna, I'll go up there with her. If that's acceptable to you, Widow Aoire."

Maeve lifted her chin. "She's my daughter. I'll be with her, too, Tiarna Mac Ard."

He might have smiled. Maeve might have smiled back.

Mac Ard brushed at his cloca, adjusting the silver brooch at the right shoulder. "Good night to you both, then," he said. He gave a swift bow to Maeve, and left.

Chapter 5: Attack on the Village

THE night sky stayed dark the next night. Tiarna Mac Ard remained at Tara’s, coming to Jenna’s house that evening and escorting the two of them back to the tavern, where they listened to Coelin with an eye on the window that showed Knobtop above the trees.

But it remained simply night outside. Nothing more.

The next day broke with a heavy mist rolling in from the west, a gray wall that hid sun and sky and laid a sheen of moisture over the village. The mist beaded on the wool of the sheep as Jenna and Kesh herded them to the field behind the cottage. Kesh was acting strangely; he kept lifting his head and barking at something unseen, but finally they got the last straggler through. Jenna walked the field perimeter once, checking the stone fence her father had built, then calling Kesh-still barking at noth-ing-and closing the gate.

She smelled it then in the air, over the distinctive tang of smoldering peat from their own fire and those in the village: the odor of wood smoke and burning thatch. Jenna frowned, surveying the landscape. There was a smear of darker gray beyond the trees lining the field, and under it, a tinge of glowing red. "Mam!" she called. "I think there’s a fire in the village."

Maeve came from the cottage, wrapping a shawl over her head. "Look," Jenna said, pointing. Her mam squinted into the damp air, into the gray, dim distance.

"Come on," she said. "They may need help. ."

They didn’t get as far as the High Road. They heard the sound of a galloping horse racing toward them down the rutted dirt lane, and Tiarna Mac Ard came hurtling around the bend, his hair blowing and his cloca billowing behind him. He pulled Conhal to a mud-tossing halt in front of them, dismounting in a sudden leap.

"Tiarna Mac Ard-" Maeve began, but then the man cut off her words with a slash of his arm. "No time," he said. "We need to get you and your daughter out of here. Into the bogs, maybe, or over-" He stopped, whirling around at the sound of pounding hooves, as Kesh ran barking and snarling toward the quartet of on-rushing horses.

White fog blew from the nostrils of the steeds and the mouths of the riders.

"Kesh, no!" Jenna shouted at the dog. Kesh stopped, looked back at Jenna.

They could have gone around him. There was easily room.

They ran the dog down. Jenna screamed as she saw the hooves of the lead horse strike Kesh. He yelped and rolled and tried to escape, but the horse's muscular rear legs struck his side and Kesh went down under the three behind, lost in the blur of motion and clods of flying dirt. "Kesh!" Jenna screamed again, starting to run toward the bloody, still form in the dirt, but Maeve's arms went around her as Mac Ard stepped between them and the horsemen. "Kesh!"

The lead rider pulled his party to a stop before Mac Ard. The man threw his cloca back, and Jenna, sobbing for Kesh, saw a sword on his belt. "Where's your blue and gold, Fiacra De Derga?" Mac Ard called to the rider. "Or are those of Connachta too cowardly to show their colors when they go plundering in Gabair?"

The rider smiled. His hair was flaming red-a deeper red than that of Ard, what a surprise. I haven't seen you since our cousin's wedding feast a year ago last summer." Pale eyes swept over Maeve and Jenna. Jenna wanted to leap at the man, but Maeve's arms held her tightly, and Jenna clutched at her skirts in frustration and anger. In the folds caught in her left fist, she felt a small, cold hardness beneath the wool. "And what inter-esting company you keep. Is this the Aoire family the village Ald told me about before she died, the Inishlander's wife and daughter?"

"These people are formally under R1 Mallaghan of Tuath Gabair's pro-tection. That's all you need to know."

De Derga smiled. He lifted himself in his saddle with a creak of leather and looked about ostentatiously. "And where is R1 Mallaghan? I don't

seem to see him at the moment, or any royal decree in your hand." His gaze came back to Mac Ard. "I only see you, Padraic. If I’d known that, I’d have left my companions with the rest of my men." The three men behind De Derga laughed as he tsked. "One lone tiarna is all R1 Gabair sends when mage-lights fill the sky? I find that incredibly foolish. When word came to R1 Connachta that people on our eastern borders had seen mage-lights, he sent out over two dozen to follow them. And last night. . well, you saw them better than us, didn’t you, up on that hilltop?"

Jenna let her hand slip into the pocket of her skirt. The stone pulsed against her fingertips, as frigid as glacial ice.

"You would always rather talk a man to death than use your sword, Fiacra."

De Derga spread his hands. "It’s my gift. Now, step aside, as I’ll be taking the women back to Thiar."

Mac Ard unsheathed his sword, the iron ringing. Jenna heard her mam’s intake of breath. "Be careful, Tiarna," she said, one hand extended to Mac Ard, the other still around Jenna’s shoulders. Jenna slipped from her mam’s grasp, a step away; she took her hand from her pocket, her hand fisted. De Derga laughed.

’"Be careful,’" he repeated, mocking Maeve’s tone. He shook his head at Mac Ard. "Your taste was always common, Padraic."

"Get off your horse, Fiacra, so I can separate your babbling head from your shoulders."

De Derga sat easily as his mount stamped a foot and shook its head at the smell of the weapon. "No.

I think not."

"You have no honor, De Derga. And I’m shamed that you’d let your men see that."

(Throbbing against her skin. . Searing cold rising up her arm, filling her. .)

"My men have seen me fight often enough, cousin, and they know that I could take you as easily as this woman you’re shielding. They also know that I won’t be goaded into doing something foolish when the battle’s already won." De Derga waved a hand, and Jenna noticed that the trio behind had drawn

bows. "So, Padraic, the choice is yours: sheathe that weapon and return to Lar Bhaile, or we'll simply cut you down where you stand."

This time it was Mac Ard who laughed. "Let's not lie to each other, Fiacra. You can't let me go back and tell my R1 that you were here in his land."

A muscle twitched in De Derga's mouth. "No," he said. "I suppose I can t." He waved a hand to his men as Mac Ard let out a scream of rage and charged toward De Derga, his sword swinging in a great arc. Bow-strings sang death.

"No!" Jenna screamed, and the fury seemed to burst through her skin, ripping and tearing through her soul, spilling from her open mouth.

She lifted her hand.

In one blinding instant, arrows flared and went to ash in mid-flight. The horses screamed and reared, and four jagged bolts of pure white erupted from Jenna's hand, the lightnings snapping and crackling as they impaled the riders, striking them from their saddles and arcing as they slammed the bodies to the ground. The discharge from the stone was blinding, overloading Jenna's eyes even as she saw the riders fall; the sound deafened her, a sinister crackling like the snapping of dry bones. Someone screamed in agony and terror, and Jenna screamed in sympathy, her voice lost in the chaos, her mind awhirl with the cold power until, swirling, it bore her down into oblivion and silence.

Chapter 6: Bog And Forest

SHE awoke with a start and a cry, and Maeve’s hand brushed her fore-head soothingly. "Hush, darling," she said, but her eyes were full of worry.

"Where are we?" Jenna asked. She sat up-they were sitting in the midst of bracken, and Tiarna Mac Ard was crouched a few feet away, his back to them. Jenna could smell the earthy, wet musk of bog, and water trickled brightly somewhere nearby. Two saddle packs were on the ground near them, and a bow with arrows fletched like those of the men who had attacked them. The memory came back to her then, awful and fierce: Kesh lying dead on the ground, the men from Connachta threaten-ing them, the cold, terrible lightning from the stone. "The riders. ." she breathed with a sob. "The man you called De Derga, your cousin. ."

"Dead." Mac Ard said the word gruffly, his voice low. "All dead. And by now their companions know it as well, and are hunting us." He glanced back at Jenna, and his expression was guarded. "They’ll also know that it wasn’t a sword that cut them down."

"I…"Jenna gulped. Her stomach lurched and she bent over, vomiting acid bile on the ground. She could feel her mam stroking her back as the spasms shook her, as her stomach heaved. When the sickness had passed, Jenna wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her coat. "I’m sorry," she said. They’re-" She couldn’t say the word. Mac Ard nodded, watching her as she leaned into the comforting arms of Maeve, as if she were a little child again.

"Jenna, the first time someone fell to my sword, I did the same thing you just did," he said. "I’ve seen men hacked to death during a battle, or crushed under their horses. Eventually, it bothers you less." He leaned over, as if he were going to stroke her hair as Maeve did, but pulled his hand back. He pursed his lips under the dark beard. "I’d be more worried about you if it didn’t bother you. But I have to tell you that what you did. . I’ve never seen the like."

The stone, cold in her hand… Jenna felt in her

skirt pocket, then glanced frantically around her on the damp ground.

"Would you be looking for this?" The stone glistened between Mac Ard's forefinger and thumb. He turned it carefully in front of them. "Not much to look at it, is it? Something you might miss entirely, if it was just lying there."

"That's mine," Jenna said loudly. "I found it."

"Jenna-" Maeve began, but Mac Ard snorted as if amused.

"A clock na thintri, it's called," he said. "A lightning stone. And you had it all along. When I asked you about the mage-lights, you must have forgotten to tell me about the cloch you found." He could have sounded angry. He didn't; he seemed more disappointed.

Jenna looked at the ground rather than at him.

"Your da would have known the term," Mac Ard continued. "I'll wager he brought the stone here himself, or knew that this one lay there on Knobtop, waiting for the mage-lights to return. And, aye, Jenna, now it's yours." He stretched out his hand, and dropped it in Jenna's palm. It was warm, an ordinary stone. "Keep it," he said. "It gave itself to you, not to me."

Jenna put it back in her skirt, feeling Mac Ard's eyes on her. "How. .?" she started to say, but Mac Ard lifted a finger to his lips. "Later, you'll know all you want to know, and more."

Jenna stared at the tiarna, trying to see past his dark gaze. He seemed calm enough, and not angry with her. After a few breaths, she looked away. "Mam, where are we?" she asked once more.

"In the bog on the other side of the bridge,"

Maeve said. "Tiarna Mac Ard carried you here when you collapsed, after-" Her mam stopped.

"Mam, what's happened? Why did those men come here?"

It was Mac Ard who answered. "They came for the same reason I came-because they saw the mage-lights. I didn't think R1 Connachta would be so foolhardy as to send his people here. I was the one who told R1 Mallaghan of Gabair that we didn't need to concern ourselves with the other Tuatha." He

scoffed angrily. "I was a damned fool, and damned lucky to be alive. Tara’s son Eliath came running into the tavern this morning, said that the Ald’s cottage was afire and that there were a dozen men on horseback there. I left the tavern then, and rode for your home. De Darga saw me as I brought Conhal out of the stable, and followed. The rest you know."

"Where’s Conhal?"

"With three of us, we couldn’t outrun the others with one horse, so I turned him loose. Hopefully he’ll find his own way home. As for the others, they’re scouring the countryside now, looking for us. We’ve seen them twice while we were here; once a pair of riders, then four more who crossed the bridge and went up on Knobtop. Look. ." He stopped, pulling brush aside so that Jenna could see the bog. They were on one of the grassy, overgrown hummocks that dotted the marsh. She could see the peat-stained open water of the Mill Creek a little bit away, and beyond the creek was the rise of the northern bank and the low hills that con-cealed their house. Beyond the hills, she could see a column of black smoke smeared across the sky. She knew what it was even as her mam spoke.

"They burned the cottage," Maeve said. Her voice was strangely calm. "Everything we had…"

"The R1 Gabair will give you all and more, once we get to Lar Bhaile. I promise you that."

Maeve’s eyes flashed, and Jenna heard the mingled anger and sorrow in her voice. "Will the R1 give me back the scarf that Niall gave me the night he first came to me? Will he give me the cups and plates that Niall made with his own hands, or the pot with blue glaze I fired for him? Will I see the first linen shirt I made for Jenna, when she was just a babe? The R1 can give me money and build a new cottage, but he can’t give me a tithe of what’s been destroyed."

"I know that," Mac Ard replied softly. "I wish it were different, Maeve- may I call you that?"

Jenna’s mam nodded. "Good. And please call me Padraic. I wish I could undo my words to R1 Mallaghan and that I had come here with my own squad of gardai, as he wished. Maybe then none of this would have happened. But I can’t unsay the words, and I can’t ease your loss. All I can do now is try to keep us alive."

"How?" Maeve asked. She looked at Jenna. "You don't want her to-"

"No," Mac Ard said quickly. "She doesn't need more blood on her hands, nor do I think she knows how to control the stone or whether she could repeat what she did. I certainly don't know the answer to that. The Connachtans will expect us to make for Lar Bhaile, so they'll be watching the High Road and the River Duan. They can't stay here long, however- they know word will eventually reach the Rl's ears about this raid and he'll send soldiers after them."

"So what do we do?"

"We find a place to hide for a few days."

Maeve shook her head, hugging Jenna. "Where? I don't know of such a place. They would find us here, eventually."

"I agree," Mac Ard answered. "So we'll go into Doire Coill."

Jenna cried out at that and Maeve shook her head. "Have you gone mad, Tiarna Mac Ard? You take us from one death to another."

"I take us from sure death to a hope for life," he answered. "They'll be searching the bogs soon enough, Maeve. We can't stay here. We need to go, and we need to go now while we can."

Maeve was still shaking her head, but Jenna felt her mam's arms relax around her and knew that she'd made a decision, staring at the smoke rising from the ruin of their lives. Everything they'd known was gone; their only ally was Mac Ard. Jenna leaned toward Maeve. "We have to trust him,

Mam," she whispered. "We have to."

She could see the lines at the corners of her mam's eyes relax as she made the decision. "All right," she said finally. "We'll follow you. Padraic."

Jenna knew that most of the tales were simply that-stories to frighten the children. The residents of Ballintubber had a thousand tales and leg-ends and stories about the half-wild land that surrounded them. The R1 Mallaghan might proclaim himself king over Tuath Gabair, but in truth, his rule only extended to the small towns, the villages, and the occasional squares of farmed land: tamed patches of a landscape that had seen vast, misty centuries when legends walked alive.

Legends still walked, if the stories were to be believed, in those hidden places where humankind came infrequently, or not at all. Doire Coill was one of those places, a lingering remnant of a greater oak forest that had once stretched from Lough Lar to the Westering Sea, and north and south for leagues, a wall of trees shading meandering bogs and hidden valleys, where giant elk and ferocious knifefangs had roamed. Most of the forest was gone now, eroded by axes, time, and changing climate. Yet portions of it yet existed, here and there through the peninsula of Talamh an Ghlas. Doire Coill was not the largest of these or the most well known, but it loomed large in the stories Jenna had heard. One Hand Bailey, in his cups at Tara's, had often spoken of the time he'd lost his hand.

"Oh, I'd heard the tales, aye," Jenna could remember his drunken voice saying, low and slurred with alcohol. "Rubbish, I thinks, because I was young an' stupid. So I takes me old horse and cart down the High Road past Knobtop, thinking that Doire Coill weren't likely to miss one of those nasty old black oaks, and wouldn't that make a great pile of lumber for the selling. That's what I thought, and every day of my life since I've regretted it. Me an' Daragh O'Rheallagh started a'sawing at the closest trunk to the road with a two man blade, and at first it went fine, though I thought I heard the trees rustling angrily at the sight of the metal, and a cold wind came out from underneath the trees like the forest was breathin', a foul breath of dead and molderin' leaves. Didn't see any ani-mals, which was strange: not a squirrel, not a bird, not a deer; like they'd all gone, knowing what we were doing and afraid of it. We kept at our sawin', wantin' to get out of there as quick as we could-the noise dead in the stillness, the tree sittin' there hating us, the sawdust piling at our feet. Then, all a' sudden, it fell, before it had any right to do so, like it chose to fall. Crushed poor Daragh under it before he could move, and the saw blade snapped with an awful noise an' whipped out, an' it sliced me hand right off me arm. I thought I'd die there meself, but I managed to tie a scrap a' cloth around me arm quick to stop the bleedin'. Wasn't no such luck for Daragh; he was already dead, his head smashed and his brains dashed out on the ground. I came back here quick as I could, and six men and the new Widow O'Rheallagh went back to get Daragh's body out from under the tree. When they

got there, it was gone. Not a trace of ’im was left. I swear it-ask Widow O’Rheallagh herself, or Tom Mullin over there, who went with ’em. Doire Coill’s an evil place, I say. I already gave it me hand, and that’s all a’ me it’s to get. I won’t go in there again, and them that do are nothin’ but fools."

Bailey’s words resonated in Jenna’s head as they left the hummock in the bog and started heading south, moving parallel to the rough line of the High Road and taking care to stay hidden from possible watchers on the rising flanks of Knobtop. It was getting near dark, with all of them tired and soggy nearly to the waist, when Jenna noticed that the ground underneath their feet was firmer, and that the trees around them were twisted, thick-trunked oaks hung with parasitic mistletoe, huddled to-gether in a dark mass.

They were within the indistinct edges of Doire Coill, west and south of Ballintubber. Somewhere to their left, the High Road to Lar Bhaile (and beyond to Dun Laoghaire) passed within a stone’s throw of the forest’s leaves before turning sharply east to meet and cross River Duan at the village of Ath Iseal, a good full day’s journey from Ballintubber on horse-back. Between Ath Iseal and Ballintubber, there were few human habita-tions-and in the empty space between no one gave allegiance to R1 Gabair or any king.

"How long do we need to stay here?" Maeve asked. Jenna looked at the deep green shadows under the trees. She let the pack she carried fall to the ground. Contrary to what One Hand Bailey had said, she saw life enough: black squirrels bounding through the tangled limbs above them, starlings and finches flitting from branch to branch. The trees here were ancient: they had seen the first movement of humankind through this land, and Jenna sensed that they remembered and were not pleased. Mac Ard’s boots crunched on a thick carpet of old leaves and acorn caps.

"Two days, maybe a few more," he said. "The Connachtans can’t stay longer without risking open war, and I don’t think they want that. Two days, and we can chance the High Road again."

"Two days," Jenna repeated. "Here in Doire Coill."

"It’s a forest, that’s all," Mac Ard told her. "Don’t worry yourself over silly tales. I’ve been out here before, at the edge of the Doire, and slept under its

branches. I had strange dreams that night, but that’s all."

"We’ll need a fire," Maeve said. "So we don’t freeze during the night."

"There’s a tinderbox in one of the packs. A fire will be safe enough after the sun goes down and they can’t see the smoke, I suppose," Mac Ard said. "We’re far enough off the High Road. If we go a bit farther in, the trees will shield the light…" Maeve looked at Jenna as Mac Ard started to rummage in the packs.

"He knows what he’s doing, Mam. And if he hadn’t come to help us, we might be dead."

Maeve nodded. She went to Mac Ard and began helping him. An hour later, they were huddled in a tiny clearing with a small fire of dead wood that they’d gathered. The warmth of the fire was welcome, but to Jenna, the flickering light only seemed to intensify the darkness around them, encasing them in a globe of bright air while blackness pressed in around them. They’d eaten a loaf of hard bread and a few slivers of cheese from the pack, with water that still tasted of the bog from a nearby stream. Maeve and Mac Ard sat close to each other, closer than Jenna had ever seen her mam sit to another man. She was pleased at that, huddled in her cloak across the fire. She watched them through the flame, talking softly together, with a brief smile once touching her mam’s lips. Jenna smiled herself at that. Maeve had rebuffed the advances of every man in Ballin-tubber, from what Jenna had heard and seen, but this Mac Ard was differ-ent. Jenna wondered, for a moment, how her own da might have reacted to what happened, and that brought back to her the events of the day, and she wanted to cry, wanted to weep for Kesh and the soldiers she’d killed and the lives that she’d left destroyed behind her, but there were no tears inside her.

She was dry, cold, and simply exhausted.

Wings fluttered somewhere above and behind her, startling Jenna. The rustling came again, loud and closer, and a huge black crow swooped low across the fire and lifted to land in a branch near Mac Ard. It cawed once, a grotesque, hoarse cough of a sound. Its bright eyes regarded them, the glossy head turning in quick, abrupt moves. "Nasty thing," Maeve said, glaring at the bird. "They’re thieves,

those birds, and scavengers. Look at it staring at us, like it's waiting for us to die."

Mac Ard picked up the bow and nocked an arrow. "It won't stare long," he said. He drew the bowstring back, the braided leather creaking under the strain.

"Hold!"

The voice came from the darkness, and a form stepped from the night shadows into the light of the fire: a man, old and hunched over, attired in ragged leather and fur and supporting himself with a gnarled oaken staff. The crow cawed again, flapped its wings, and flew to the man, perching itself on his left shoulder. "Who are you?" Mac Ard asked, the bow still drawn and the arrow now pointed at the chest of the stranger.

"No one worth killing," the man answered. His words were under-standable, but thick with an odd accent. He seemed to be staring some-where slightly to the side and above Mac Ard, and in the gleam of the firelight, Jenna saw the man's eyes: unbroken, milky white pupils.

"He's blind, Tiarna," she said.

The man laughed at that, and at the same time the crow lifted its head and cackled with him, the two sounds eerily similar. "This body's blind, aye," he said, "but I can see." The man lifted his right hand and stroked the crow's belly. "Denmark here is my eyes. What he sees, I see. And what I see now is two village folk and a tiarna, who know so little they would light fires under these trees."

"This is not your land," Mac Ard answered. "This forest is within Tuath Gabair, and belongs to the Rl. And you've still not given us your name."

The old man's amusement was loud, echoed by the crow. "My name? Call me Seancoim," he answered. "And Rl Gabair can claim whatever he likes: his cities and villages, his bogs and fields. But the old places like this forest belong to themselves, and even Rl Gabair knows that." He grinned at them, gap-toothed, and gestured. "Now, follow me. I'll take you where you'll be safe."

"We're safe enough here," Mac Ard said.

"Are you?" Seancoim asked. "Do you think your young woman's sky-magic can protect you here?"

He glanced up with his dead eyes. A strong wind stirred the tops of the trees, and Jenna could hear their limbs groaning and stirring. At the edges of the firelight, branches writhed and stretched like wooden, grasping arms, and the sound of the wind through the trees was like a sobbing voice, mournful. The hair raised on Jenna’s forearms and the light of the fire shuddered, making the shadows move all around them. "Mam?" Jenna called out.

"Stop!" Mac Ard commanded Seancoim, and he brought his bow back to full draw. The crow stirred, wings fluttering, and at the same moment the arrow snapped in half like a twig even as Mac Ard released the bow-string. The crow settled again on Seancoim’s shoulder; the wind in the trees died to a breeze, the leaves rustling. "Put out your fire and follow me," Seancoim repeated. "The tiarna can keep his sword in his hand, if it makes him feel better. But it won’t do him any good here, and the trees hate the smell of iron."

With that, the old man turned, shuffling slowly into the darkness, his staff tapping the ground before him.

Chapter 7: Seancoim's Cavern

JENNA wrinkled her nose at the smell: musty earth, and a strange, spicy odor that could only be Seancoim himself. A draft wafted from the entrance of the cavern, the mouth of which was a narrow slit in a rocky, bare rise another stripe's walk deeper into the forest. Yellow light beck-oned beyond, outlining the stone arch, and she smelled burning peat as the wind changed.

"It's warm inside," Seancoim said, gesturing to them as he ducked into the passage. Denmark cawed and leaped from his shoulder, disappearing into the cave. "And light. There's food as well, enough for all. Come." He vanished inside, and Jenna saw her mam glance at Mac Ard. "We've fol-lowed him this far," she said.

"I'll go first," Mac Ard answered. He drew his sword and, turning side-ways, followed the old man. Maeve waited a moment, then went into the opening with Jenna close behind.

Beyond the narrow passage, the cavern widened significantly, the roof rising to follow the slope of the hill, the sides opening up quickly left and right. The passage led slightly downward a dozen strides, and Jenna found herself in a large room. A central fireplace ringed with stones sent smoke curling upward toward the roof, lost in darkness above. The low flames from the peat sent wan light to the stone walls, and Jenna could dimly see another passageway leading deeper into the hill. Along the wall were sev-eral querns, small stone mills used for grinding corn and other grains. Hung everywhere around the cavern were racks with drying herbs and various plants laid over the wooden rods. Some of them Jenna recognized: parsley, thyme, lemon grass, mint; others were entirely unfamiliar. The smell of the herbs was almost overpowering, a barrage of odors.

Denmark had roosted on a rocky shelf nearby. Beyond the drying racks and querns, there was almost no furniture in the room. If it was a home, it was a bare one. Jenna could see a straw pallet laid out near the fire, a bucket of water, and a long wooden box that Seancoim eased him-self down on. He leaned his staff against the box, but it fell to the

stones and the sound echoed harshly.

"It’s not pretty," he said. He leaned down and placed the staff within reach. "But it’s dry, and warm enough, and not susceptible to enemies burning it down." He glanced at Maeve as he said that, and Jenna heard her mam’s intake of breath. Mac Ard scowled, walking around the perime-ter of the cavern, his sword sheathed now but his hand on the hilt.

"This is where you live?" Jenna asked, and Seancoim laughed.

"Here, and other places," he answered. "I have a dozen homes in the forest, and a dozen more I’ve forgotten about over the decades."

Jenna nodded. "You live alone?"

Seancoim shook his head. "No. There are others like me here, a few, and I see them from time to time. And there are more of my people, though not many, in the old forests that are left, or in the high mountains, or the deepest bogs. We were the first ones to find Talamh an Ghlas."

"You’re Bunus Muintir," Jenna said. The word was like breathing a legend. The oldest poems and songs spoke of the Bunus Muintir, of the battles that had raged between the Bunus and Jenna’s people, the Daoine. In the poems, the Bunus were always evil and horrific, fierce and cruel warriors who had allied with spirits, wights, and demonic creatures.

"Aye, I am the blood of Bunus Muintir, and I know your Daoine songs." Seancoim said. "I’ve heard them, and like all history, they’re half true. We were here when your ancestors came into this place, and we fought them and sometimes even bred with them, but Daoine blood and Daoine swords proved stronger, until finally those of the pure lineage sought the hidden places. There were no final battles, no decisive victory or defeat, despite what the songs tell you. True endings come slowly. Sometimes they come not at all, or just fade into the new tales." Groaning, Seancoim stood again.

"There’s bread there, on the ledge near Denmark, baked two days ago now, I’m afraid. There’s still some of the last blackberries of the season, and smoked meat. That’s all I have to offer and it’s not fancy, but it will fill your bellies. Go on and help yourselves."

The bread was hard, the berries mushy with age and the meat tough, but Jenna thought it strangely delicious after the day's exertions. She fin-ished her portion quickly, then broke off a hunk of bread and went outside. The clouds had parted, and a crescent moon turned the clouds to silver white. She was above the trees, looking down on their swaying crowns. She could see Knobtop, rising up against the stars to the north, farther away than she'd ever seen it before.

The wind lifted her hair and brushed the forest with an invisible hand. She thought she could hear voices, singing not far away: a low, susurrant chant that rose and fell, the long notes holding words that lingered just on the edge of understanding. Jenna leaned into the night, listening, caught in the chant, wanting to get closer and hear what they were singing. .

. . aye, to get closer. .

. . to hear them, to touch their gnarled trunks. .

. . to be with them. .

Beating wings boomed in her ears: Denmark touched her shoulder with his clawed feet and flew off again, startling her. Jenna blinked, realiz-ing that she stood under the gloom of the trees at the bottom of the slope, a hundred strides or more from the cavern, and she had no idea how she'd come to be there. She whirled around, suddenly frightened at the realization that she hadn't even realized that she was walking away. The last few minutes, now that she tried to recall them, were hazy and indis-tinct in her mind.

Small with distance, Seancoim beckoned at the cavern entrance, and Jenna ran back up the hill toward him, as if a hell hound were at her heels.

"So you do hear them," he called to her, as the crow swept around her again before settling back on the old man's shoulder. "Some don't, or think it's only the wind moving the trees. But they sing, the oldest trees, the ones that were planted by the Seed-Daughter after the Mother-Creator breathed life into the bones of the land. They remember, and they still call to the old gods. It's dangerous for those who hear: the enchantment in their old voices can hypnotize, and you'll find yourself lost in the deepest, most dangerous parts of the wood. Most who go to listen don't return."

Jenna looked over the forest, listening to the eerie, breathy sound. "Should we leave?" she asked.

The old man shrugged. "The unwary should be careful, or those whose will isn’t strong enough.

That last, at least, doesn’t describe you, now that I’ve told you the danger."

"You don’t know me."

"Oh, I know you well enough," he chuckled.

Jenna shook her head. The wind shifted and the tree-song came to them louder than before, the chant rising in pitch. "What is it they’re singing? It sounds so sad and lonely."

Seancoim leaned heavily on his staff, as if he were peering into the dark. "Who knows? I certainly don’t. They speak a language older than any of ours, and their concerns aren’t those of humans." He turned, and his blind eyes stared at her. "There are other magics than the sky-magic you can capture in a cloch na thintri," he told her. He extended his hand toward Jenna. "Let me hold it," he said to her.

Jenna took a step back, clutching at the stone hidden in her skirt. "I know you have the stone," Seancoim said. "I saw the lights over the hill there, through Dunmharu’s eyes." Seancoim pointed at Knobtop. "I could feel the power crackling in the sky, as it has not in many lifetimes, and I feel it now close to me. You can’t hide a cloch na thintri from me, or from any of the Bunus Muintir. I can feel the stone. All I ask is to hold it, not to keep it. I promise that."

Jenna hesitated, then brought the stone out and laid it on Seancoim’s lined palm. He closed his fingers around it with a sigh. He clasped it to his breast, holding it there for several long breaths, then holding out his hand again, his fingers unfolding. "Take it," he said. "Such a small stone…"

"I’m sure it’s not powerful, like the ones the cloudmages in the songs had," Jenna said, and Seancoim laughed.

"Is that how you imagined them, with stones the size of their fists hung on chains around their necks, the way the songs and tales tell it?" The crow cackled with him. "Is that the source of your knowledge?"

Jenna nodded. "You must know how to use the

cloch," she said. "You have magic, too: using the crow for your eyes, the way you broke the tiarna's arrow or how you knew I had the stone…"

"I gave you the answer just a moment ago, but evidently I need to repeat it: there are other magics than that of the sky." He stared upward, as if looking at a scene only his blind eyes could glimpse. "Once my people knew them all: the slow, unyielding power of earth; the shimmer-ing, soft gifts of water. Some of them we know still. Others aren't for us humans at all, but belong to others, like the oldest of the oaks here in Doire Coill, or other creatures who are sleeping for the moment." His chin tilted down once more, and he seemed to laugh at himself. "But you asked if I know how to use your cloch na thintri, didn't you? The answer to that is 'No.' Each stone teaches its owner in its own way; yours has already begun to teach you."

"You talk as if the stone were alive."

"Do you know that it's not?" Seancoim answered. He smiled, a darkness where teeth once had been, the few teeth left him leaning like yellow gravestones in his gums. The wind died, and the tree-song faded to a hush, a whisper, then was gone. "There, they've finished. We should go inside-it's late, and there are things walking out here that you don't want to meet. Your tiarna will want to leave with the morning, and you need sleep after this day."

Jenna could feel exhaustion rise within her with Seancoim's words. She yawned and nodded, following the man through the cavern's entrance. Seancoim continued on into the darkness past the fire, but Jenna stopped. Her mam and Mac Ard were asleep, next to each other even though on different pallets. Her mam's hand had trailed out from underneath her blanket, and it rested near Mac Ard's hand, as if she were reaching for him. She could sense Seancoim's attention on her as she stared, her breath caught in her throat. She wanted to smile, happy that her mam wasn't ignoring Mac Ard as she had the others, and yet afraid at the same time, wondering what it might mean for her.

"She is a woman and he a man, and both of them handsome and strong," Seancoim whispered, his voice echoing hoarsely from the stones. "I can tell that your mam is attracted to the tiarna, even if she resists the feeling. That's natural enough. It's been a long time for her, hasn't it, to feel that way about a

Jenna swallowed hard. "Aye," she said. "A long time. I just wonder. . Does he feel the same? After all, he’s Riocha, and we’re. . nothing."

Seancoim took a step forward. Bending close, he seemed to peer at the sleeping Mac Ard with his blind eyes before rising with a groan. "I think he does, as much as he can. He’s a hidden man, this tiarna, but there’s room in him for love, and if he’s Riocha, he’s perhaps less prejudiced than many with his lineage. But-" he stopped.

"But?"

Seancoim shrugged. "He’s also a man with his own ambitions."

"How can you know all that? You can’t see… I mean, is that magic, too?"

"Perhaps." Seancoim grinned at her. "Isn’t it what you want to hear?"

"I want my mam to be happy. That’s all."

"What about yourself?" he asked.

Jenna could feel heat rising from her neck to her throat, her cheeks burning. Her mam stirred on the pallet, turning, her hand sliding away from Mac Ard. Jenna let go of the breath she was holding. Twin tears tracked down her face.

"Too much has changed for you today," Seancoim said. Somehow, he was standing next to her again. "Too much changed in the space of one sun." His hand went around her shoulder. She started to pull back, then allowed herself to sink against him, the tears spilling out. His chest smelled of herbs and leather and sweat. She clung to Seancoim, weeping; still holding her, he went to the box next to his pallet. "Wait a moment," he said, and lifted the lid. A sweet, spice-filled aroma filled the air with the movement. Inside were several small leather bags, and Seancoim shuffled through them, muttering, before snatching one up with a cry and handing it to Jenna.

"Here," he said. "One day, you will need this."

"What is it?" Jenna asked, sniffing.

"Brew it as a tea, and drink it, and you will forget

what is most painful to you," Seancoim told her. "There are some things that no one should remember, be it in song or tale or memory. When that time comes for you, you'll know."

Jenna glanced again at her mam and Mac Ard. "I don't think I want to remember today," she said, and the tears started again. Seancoim let the lid of the box close, sat on it, then drew her to him again. They sat, and Jenna stayed with him, crying for Kesh and her home, for her innocence and for her mam, letting Seancoim rock her until sleep finally came.

In the morning, Jenna found herself curled up on a pile of straw and old cloth close to the fire, which had dwindled to glowing coals. Seancoim's small leather bag was still clutched in her hand. No one else was in the cavern, and pale light filtered in through the entrance. Jenna got up, put the bag in her skirt with the stone, wrapped her coat around her, and padded outside.

Below her, the forest was wrapped in white mist and fog, the sun a hazy brightness just at the horizon. Seancoim was nowhere to be seen, but Mac Ard and Maeve were standing a few feet down the slope, talking with their heads close together. She started to go back inside, not wanting to interrupt them, but the rock under her foot tilted and fell back with a stony clunk. Maeve turned. "Jenna! Good morning, darling."

'"Morning, Mam. Where's Seancoim?"

"We're not certain," Maeve answered. "He was gone when we woke. He refilled the water bucket, though, and left some fresh berries on the shelf."

We're not certain. . Jenna nodded and found herself smiling a bit, hearing the plural. Mac Ard was smiling at her as well, teeth flashing behind the black beard, the smile slightly crooked on his face. She wanted to know what he was thinking, wanted to know that her mam would be safe with him, wanted to know that they could, perhaps, be a family.

But she knew there could be no answer to those questions. Her bladder ached in her belly. Jenna shrugged, turned, and left them. Later, having relieved herself behind a convenient screen of boulders, she came back to find that Seancoim had returned with Denmark on his shoulder.

". . riders on the High Road," he was saying to Mac Ard and Maeve. "They were tiarna-had to be, with those great war steeds, the heavy swords at their sides, and that fine clothing-but they weren’t showing colors on their cloca."

"Which way were they riding?" Mac Ard asked.

"That way," Seancoim answered, pointing south, away from where Knobtop would have been, had they been able to see it through the fog.

Mac Ard nodded, the lines of his face deepening and a scowl touching his lips. Jenna saw his right hand tighten around the hilt of his sword. "The Connachtans are looking for us well away from Ballintubber, then, and the High Road’s not safe. I’d hoped. ." His voice trailed off.

"There are other ways," Seancoim said.

"Other ways?"

Seancoim shrugged. The crow flapped its wings to keep its balance. "The forest you call Doire Coill goes away east and south from here, until it meets the tip of Lough Lar. A loop of the High Road passes close by again, as well, and it’s not far from there to Ath Iseal and the ford of the Duan-a few miles. No more. I can lead you there in a day and a half."

"You would do that for us?" Maeve asked.

"I would do it for her" Seancoim answered. He pointed to Jenna, his blank white eyes looking in her direction.

"Why me?" Jenna asked.

Seancoim gave Jenna his broken smile. "Because the Bunus Muintir have our songs and tales also."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Mac Ard said.

"It means what it means," Seancoim answered. The smile vanished as he looked at Mac Ard.

"That’s all."

"I’m suspicious of those who hide their intentions in riddles," Mac Ard retorted. "I’m especially suspicious when that person’s a Bunus Muintir."

Seancoim snorted. "If I wanted you dead, Tiarna Mac Ard, you would already be dead."

Mac Ard scowled. "Are you threatening us?"

"It's no threat at all. Only the truth. All I had to do was leave you where you were in the forest-that would have been enough on a night when the trees were singing. If I wanted to be more certain, I could have led

Chapter 8: The Cairn of Riata

EVEN by day, the forest was dim. They moved through valleys of fog-shrouded trees, pacing alongside fast-moving brooks whose foam made the dark water seem almost black by contrast. They caught rare glimpses of sky, blue now that the high mist had burned off, and every so often walked through columns of gold-green light, their boots crushing a thousand tiny images of the sun on the forest floor.

Jenna had often walked through the woods near Ballintubber, but they felt different: lighter, airier, with the trees spaced farther apart and well-worn paths meandering among them. They were old, too, those woods, but Jenna had never felt that the forest itself watched her, judging her and deciding whether it would allow her to stay.

She felt a Presence here. Here, there were musty vapors rising from the ground, and red-crowned, sinister mushrooms peering from between piles of decaying leaves decades old, screens of mistletoe and bramble that tugged at her with thorny fingers, vine-wrapped hollows between close-set oaks in which night nestled eternal. There were trails that Seancoim followed: thin, narrow paths that might have been made by deer or other animals, twisting through the underbrush and vanishing suddenly. Doire Coill was a maze where they found themselves walking the bottom of a hollow with sides too steep to climb, all white fog ahead and behind, so that they moved between walls of brown and green until Seancoim turned into a hidden break that Jenna knew she would have missed, a narrow pass through to another fold of land bending in a slightly different direc-tion, all of them leading to some unseen destination. And if she had found herself suddenly alone and lost, it would do no good to cry for help. The forest swallowed sound, muffling it, making words indistinct and small.

Jenna was certain that she would call only whatever fey creatures Doire Coill held within its confines.

By the time the sun had reached its height and started to decline, Jenna knew that if Seancoim were to vanish into the fog around them, they would never find their way back. She said nothing, but the scowl that lurked on Mac Ard's face and the frown

twisting Maeve’s lips told her that the other two realized it as well.

As evening approached, the hillsides spread out slightly to either side of them before curving back in to each other, so that they walked in the center of a bowl several hundred strides across, the trees all around them with open sky directly above. In the center of the bowl, gray with the persistent fog, a dolmen loomed, a pair of massive, carved standing stones two people high with another block laid over the top, large enough that several people could walk between them abreast as if through a door. Arrayed around the central stones in a circle were six cairns covered with earth and grass, the narrow entrances of the passage graves arranged so that each looked out onto the central stones. Seancoim continued to walk between the graves toward the dolmen as Denmark flew away to land on the capstone, but the others stopped at the entrance to the valley of tombs. Jenna stared at the dolmen, at the notches carved in them that were Bunus Muintir writing, wondering what was inscribed there.

"Who is buried in this place?" Mac Ard asked. "These must be the graves of kings and heroes, yet I’ve never heard anyone speak of this valley."

"You’re not supposed to know it," Seancoim answered, "though a few Daoines have been here and seen the graves. We’ve kept it hidden, in our own ways, because the last chieftains of the Bunus Muintir rest here." He nodded in the direction of one of the mounds. "Maybe you would know this one. In there is Ruaidhri, who fought the Daoine at Lough Dubh and was wounded, and died weeks later."

Died from the wounds from Crenel Dahgnon’s sword," Mac Ard said. To Jenna, the name seemed to draw echoes from the hills around them, like clouds running before a storm, and she thought she heard the angry whispers from the mouths of the passage graves, or perhaps it was only the wind blowing across the entrances.

Seancoim shook his head, while Denmark flapped his black wings

angrily. "That’s not a name one should speak here, but aye, that’s the

Daoine R1 whose blows shattered Ruaidhri’s shield and killed him, and

Hugh Dubh would be the last time any of the Bunus Muintir chieftains would put an army on the field." Seancoim pointed to the largest grave, aligned directly with the dolmen at the far end of the valley. "There is Riata. Do you know of him?"

Jenna shook her head, as did Maeve, but Mac Ard took in a breath that caused Seancoim to laugh.

"Ah," he said, "so you have listened to some of our old tales. Riata-he was the last, and perhaps the most powerful, of the Bunus cloudmages. The mage-lights vanished for us a scant three generations before you Daoine came. If they hadn't, if we had our mages wielding the clochs na thintri when the Daoine came, then perhaps all that would be left of your people would be a few haunted barrows. Or perhaps if we hadn't become so dependent on that magic, we would not have been so easily displaced when you came." He lifted his hands and let them fall again like wounded birds. "Only the gods can see down those paths."

"Do we have to stay here?" Jenna asked. "It's getting late." The entire valley was in deep shadow now, and Jenna felt cold, though the sky above was still bright.

"It's late," Seancoim agreed, "and it's not safe to travel here at night. We'll stay there." Seancoim pointed to the ridge beyond the valley.

Mac Ard grimaced. "That's a long climb, and close to this place."

"They say restless ghosts walk here, and Ruaidhri is among them," Seancoim answered. He cocked his head at Mac Ard. "If I were Daoine, I might be afraid of that."

"I'm not afraid of a spirit," Mac Ard said, scowling. "Fine, old man. We'll stay here."

"Aye, we will," Seancoim told him, "unless you want to go back on your own." He turned away, calling Denmark back to him, then walking on through the dolmen. After a moment, Jenna and the others followed, though Jenna walked carefully around the dolmen rather than going under its capstone, and didn't look into the cold archways of the barrow graves at all.

Jenna had thought that it would be impossible to sleep that night, unpro-tected under the oaks and so near the Bunus tombs. Exhaustion proved

stronger than fear, and she was asleep not long after she lay down near their tiny fire, only to be awakened sometime later by a persistent throb-bing near her leg and in her head. She opened her eyes, disoriented. The fire had died to embers. Her mam and Mac Ard were asleep, sleeping close to each other and not far from her; Seancoim and Denmark were nowhere to be seen. Jenna blinked, closing her eyes against the throbbing and touching her leg-as she did so, her hand closed on the stone under the cloth. It was pulsing in time with the pain in her temples. As she lay there, she thought she heard her name called: a soft, breathy whisper wending its way between the trunks of the trees. "Jenna…" it came, then again: "Jenna…"

Jenna sat up in her blankets.

There was light shifting through the leaves: a rippling, dancing, familiar shining high in the sky and very near. She thought of calling to her mam, then stopped, knowing Mac Ard would awaken with Maeve. Part of her didn’t want Mac Ard to see the lights, didn’t want his interference. Jenna rose to her feet and followed the elusive glimmering.

A few minutes later, she stood at the rim of the valley of Bunus tombs, looking out down the steep, treeless slope to the circles of graves and the dolmen at its center. She could see them very clearly, for directly above the valley the mage-lights were shimmering. Their golden light washed over the mounds of earth and rock in waves, as if she were watching the surface of a restless, wind-touched lake. The valley was alive with the light.

"Jenna… " She heard the call again, more distinctly this time, still airy but now laden with deeper undertones: a man’s voice. It came from below.

"No," she whispered back to it, afraid, clutching her hands together tightly. The stone pulsed against her hip, cold fire.

’Jenna, come to me. ."

"No," she said again, but a branch from the nearest tree touched her on the back as if blown by a sudden wind, pushing her a step forward. She stopped, planting her feet.

’Jenna… "

The lights flared above, sparks bursting like a log thrown on a bonfire, and a tree limb crashed to the ground just behind her. Jenna jumped at the sound, and her foot slid from under her. She took another step, trying to recover her balance, only now the ground was tilted sharply down, and she half ran, half fell down the long, grassy slope to the valley floor, land-ing on her knees and hands an arm's length from the rear of one of the barrows.

"Come to me. ."

The mage-lights splashed bright light on the dolmen, sending black

shadows from the standing stones twisting wildly over the mounds. Jenna

could feel the stone throbbing madly in response, and she took it in her

and. The pebble glowed with interior illumination, bright enough that

she could see the radiance between her fingers as she held the stone in her fist. Having the stone in her hand seemed to lend her courage, and she walked slowly between the graves toward the dolmen, though she could feel every muscle in her body twitching with a readiness to flee.

As she stepped into the open circle around the dolmen, she saw the apparition.

It stood before the barrow of Riata: a man's shape, long-haired and stocky, clad in a flowing cloca of a strange design which left one shoulder bare. The form shifted, wavering, as if it were formed of clear crystal and it was only the reflection of the mage-lights on its polished surface that rendered it visible. But it moved, for one hand lifted as Jenna recoiled a step, her back pressed up against the carved surface of the standing stone. There were eyes watching her in the spectral face. It spoke, and its voice was the one that had called to her. The words sounded in her head, as if the voice was inside her.

"You hold the cloch na thintri," it said, and there was a wistful yearning in its voice. Its face lifted and looked up at the mage-lights, and she could see the glow playing over the transparent features. "They have returned," it said, its voice mournful and pleased all at once. "I wondered if I would see them again. So beautiful, so cold and powerful, so tempting. ." The face regarded Jenna again. "You are not of my people," it said. "You are too fair, too tall."

"My people are called the Daoine," Jenna answered. "And how is it you know our language?"

"The dead do not use words. We lack mouth and tongue and lungs to move the air. I speak with you mind to mind, taking from you the form of the words I use. But I feel the strangeness of your language. Daoine… " It said the word slowly, rolling the syllables. "I knew no Daoines when I was alive.

. There were other tribes, we knew, in other lands, but here there were only the Bunus Muintir. My people."

"You’re Riata?" Jenna asked. She was intrigued now. The ghost, if that’s what it was, had made no threatening moves toward her, and she leaned forward, trying to see it more clearly. The ghosts and spirits of the tales she’d heard in Ballintubber were always bloody, decaying corpses or white vapors, and they cursed and terrified the living.

This, though. . the play of light over its shifting, elusive form was almost beautiful, and its voice held no threat.

"I was called that once," the specter said, sounding pleased and sad at the same time. "So that name is still known? I’m not forgotten in the time of the Daoine?"

"No, not forgotten," Jenna answered, thinking that it might be best to mollify the spirit. After all,

Tiarna Mac Ard had known of him.

"Ahh. ." it sighed. A hand stretched out toward

Jenna, and she forced herself to stand still. She

could feel the chill of its touch, like ice on her

forehead and cheek, then the hand cupped hers and

Jenna let her fingers relax. In her palm, the stone

shot light back to the glowing sky. "So young you

are, to be holding a cloch na thintri, especially this

one. But I was young, as well, the first time I held it!!

"This one?" Jenna asked. "How. .?"

"Follow me," it said. Its hand beckoned, and from fingertips to elbow the arm seemed to reflect the intricate curls and flourishes of the lights above, as if the patterns had been carved into the limb. The phantom glided backward into Riata’s tomb, its cold

touch fading.

"I can't," Jenna responded, holding back from the yawning mouth of the barrow. She glanced up at the lights playing over the valley, at the stone in her hand.

"You must," Riata replied. "The mage-lights will wait for you." Then the presence was gone, and nothing stood in front of the passage. "Come. ." whispered the voice faintly, from nowhere and everywhere.

Jenna took a step toward the barrow, then another. She put her hand on the stone lintels of the opening: they were carved with swirls and eddies not unlike the display in the sky above and on Riata's arm, along with lozenges and circles and other carved symbols. She traced them with her fingers, then walked into the passage itself.

Darkness surrounded her immediately and Jenna almost fled back outside, but as her eyes slowly adjusted, she could see in the illumination of the mage-lights and the answering glow from the cloch na thintri that the walls were drystone, covered with plaster that was now broken and shattered, the stones piled to just above the height of her head and capped with flat rocks. The passage into the burial chamber was short but claustrophobic. The walls leaned in, so that while two people could have knelt side by side at the bottom, only one standing person could walk down the corridor at a time.

Once, the walls must have been decorated-there were flecks of colored pigment clinging to the plaster and her touch caused more of the ancient paintings to crumble and fall away. Here and there were larger patches where she could see traces of what, centuries ago, must have been a mural. Jenna was glad to finally reach the relative spaciousness of the burial chamber. She glanced back: through the passage, she could see the dolmen awash in the brilliant fireworks of the mage-lights.

The burial chamber itself had been constructed with five huge stones, forming the sides and roof. The air was musty and stale, and the room dim, touched only by the reflections of the lights, the cloch na thintri's illumination. At the center of the room was a large, chiseled block of granite, and set there was a pottery urn, glazed with the same swirls and curved lines carved on the lintel stones. Around the urn were beads and pieces of jewelry, torcs of gold and braided silver that glistened in the moving radiance. Clothing had once lain here as well; she could see mouldering scraps of brightly-dyed cloth. These had been funeral gifts, obvi-ously, and the urn undoubtedly held the ashes and bones of Riata. But his specter had vanished.

"Hello?" she called.

Air moved, her hair lifting, and she felt a touch on her shoulder. Jenna cried out, frightened, and the sound rang in the chamber, reverberating. She dropped the cloch na thintri, and as she started to reach for it, the pebble rose from the floor, picked up by a hand that was barely visible in the stone’s glow.

"Aye," Riata’s voice said in her head, full of satisfaction, the tones dark and low. "Tis true. This was once mine." Pale light stroked the lines of his spectral face, sparking in the deep hollows where the eyes should have been. His voice seemed more ominous, touched with hostility. "Or more truthfully, I once belonged to it. Until it was stolen from me and found its way to another."

"I didn’t steal it," Jenna protested, shrinking back against the wall as the shadowy form of Riata seemed to loom larger in front of her. "I found it on the hill near my home, the first time the mage-lights came. I didn’t know it was yours; I never even knew of you. Besides, it’s only a little stone. It can’t be very powerful."

Cold laughter rippled the dead air of the tomb, and the stench of death wafted over Jenna, making her wrinkle her nose and turn her face away. "I don’t accuse you of stealing it," Riata’s voice boomed.

"This cloch na thintri has owned many in its time and will own many more. Davali had it before me, and Oengus before him, and so on, back into the eldest times. And it may be little, but of all the clochs na thintri, it is the most powerful."

"It can’t be," Jenna protested. "Tiarna Mac Ard… he would have said. ." Or he didn’t know, she suddenly realized. She wondered if he would have handed it back to her, if he had.

"Then this tiarna knows nothing. This cloch even has a name it calls itself: Lamh Shabhala, the Safekeeping. The cloch was placed here when I died, on the offering stone you see in front of you. And it was taken over a thousand long years ago-I felt its loss even in death, though I didn’t have strength then to rise. For hands upon hands upon hands of

years I slumbered. Once, centuries ago, the lights came again to wake me and I could feel that Lamh Shabhala was alive with the mage-lights once more.

I called out to Lamh Shabhala and its holder, but no one answered or they were too far away to hear me. With the mage-light's strength, I was able to rise and walk here among the tombs when the mage-lights filled the sky, but few came to this place, and though they were Bunus Muintir, they appeared to be poor and savage, and seemed frightened of me. None of them knew the magic of the sky. I realized then that my people had declined and no longer ruled this land. But someone held Lamh Shabhala, or the lights could not have returned. For unending years I called, every night the lights shone. Then, as they have before, the mage-lights died again, and I slept once more." The shape that was Riata drew itself close to her. "Until now," he said. "When the mage-lights have awakened again."

"Then take the stone," Jenna said. "It's yours. Keep it. I don't want it."

Riata laughed again at that. "Lamh Shabhala isn't mine, nor yours. Lamh Shabhala is its own. I knew it wanted me to pass it on as it had been passed to me. I could feel its desire even though the mage-lights had stopped coming a dozen years before I became sick with my last illness, but I held onto it. There were no more cloudmages left, only people with dead stones around their necks and empty skies above. I believed my cloch to be as dead as theirs; in fact, I prayed that it was so. I should have known it wasn't. Lamh Shabhala is First and Last." The voice was nearly a hiss. "And a curse to its Holder, as 1 know too well, especially the one who is to be First."

The stone hung in the air in front of Jenna, held in invisible fingers. "Take Lamh Shabhala," Riata said. "I pass it to you, Jenna of the Daoine, as I should have passed it long ago. You are the new First Holder."

Jenna shook her head, now more afraid of the stone than of the ghost. Yet her hand reached out, unbidden, and took the cloch from the air. She fisted her hand around the cold smoothness as Riata's laughter echoed in her head.

"Aye, you see? You shake your head, but the desire is there, whether you admit it or not. It's

already claimed you."

Jenna was near to crying. She could feel the tears starting in her eyes, the fear hammering at her heart. The cloch burned like fiery ice in her hand. "You called it a curse to its holder. What do you mean?"

"The power of the land is eternal, as is the power of the water. Their magics and spells, for those who know how to tap and use them, are slower and less energetic than that of the air, but more stable. They are always there, caught in the bones of the land itself, or in the depths of the water. The power within the sky ebbs and flows: slowly, over generations and generations of mortal lives. It has done so since before my people walked from Thall Mor-roinn to this land and found Lamh Shabhala here.

No one knows how often the slow, centuries-long cycle has repeated itself. There were no people here when we Bunus Muintir came to Talamh an Ghlas, but there were the standing stones and graves of other tribes who had once lived here, and we Holders could hear the voices in the stone, one tribe after another, back and back into a past none of us can see. The mage-lights vanished for the Bunus Muintir four times, the last time while I was still alive. The sky-power returned once for you Daoine, then van-ished again. Now the mage-lights want to return again."

Jenna glanced down the passage of the tomb. Multicolored light still touched the dolmen, brightening the valley. "The mage-lights have already returned," Jenna said, but Riata's denial boomed before she could finish.

"No!" he seemed to shout. "This is but the slightest hint of them, the first stirrings of Lamh Shabhala, the gathering of enough power within the stone to open the gates so that all the clochs na thintri may awaken and the mage-lights appear everywhere. For now, the lights follow Lamh Shabhala-and that is the danger. Those who know the true lore of the mage-lights also know that fact. They know that where the lights appear, Lamh Shabhala is also there. And they will follow, because they want to hold Lamh Shabhala themselves."

Jenna continued to shake her head, half understanding, half not want-ing to understand. "But why hold the stone if it's a curse?"

A bitter laugh. "The one who holds Lamh Shabhala gains power for their pain. Some believe that’s more than a fair barter-those who have never held the cloch itself. It’s the First who suffers the most, not those who come after, and you are the First, the one who will open the way. So watch, Jenna of the Daoine. Watch for those who follow the mage-lights, for they aren’t likely to be your friends."

Jenna thought of the riders from Connachta, and she also thought of Mac Ard. But before she could say more, Riata’s shape stirred. "The mage-lights beckon," he said. "They call the stone. Do you feel it?"

She did. The cloch was throbbing in her hand. "Go to them," Riata said. His shape was fading, as was his voice, now no more than a whisper. "Go. ." he said again, and the apparition was gone. She could feel its absence, could sense that the air of the tomb was now dead and empty. She called to him-"Riata!" — and only her own voice answered, mocking. The mage-lights sent waves of pure red and aching blue-white shimmer-ing down the passage, and Jenna felt the stone’s need, like a hunger deep within herself. She walked down the passage and out into cold fresh air again. The mage-lights wove their bright net above her, a spider’s web of color that stretched and bent down toward her, swirling. She raised her hand, opening her fingers, and the light shot down, surrounding her, enveloping her in its flowing folds. The whirlwind grabbed her hand in its frigid gasp, and she screamed with the pain of it: as the brilliance rose, a sun caught in her fingers, consuming her.

Hues of brilliance pulled at her. Knives of color cut into her flesh. She tried to pull away and could not, and she screamed again in terror and agony.

A flash blinded her. Thunder filled her ears.

Jenna screamed a final time, as the cold fire seemed to penetrate to her very core, her entire body quivering with torment, every nerve alive and quivering.

Then she was released, and she fell into blessed darkness.

Chapter 9: Through the Forest

"JENNA?"

The smell was familiar-a warm breath laden with spice. Jenna opened her eyes to see Seancoim crouching alongside her. The dolmen towered gray above her, rising toward a sky touched with the salmon hues of early morning, and Denmark peered down at her from a perch on the capstone. Jenna blinked, then sat up abruptly, turning to look at the tomb behind her. *Riata," she said, her voice a mere hoarse croak. Her throat felt as if it had been scraped raw, and her right arm ached as if someone had tried to tear it loose from its socket. She could feel the cloch na thintri: cold, still clutched in her fist, and she slipped it back into the pocket of her skirt, grimacing with the effort. Something was wrong with her right hand-it felt wooden and clumsy, and the pain in her arm seemed to emanate from there.

"You saw him?" Seancoim asked, and Jenna nodded. Seancoim didn't seem surprised. "He walks here at times, restless. I've glimpsed him once or twice, or I think I might have."

"He. ."Jenna tried to clear her throat, but the effort only made it hurt worse. She wanted to take her hand out from where it was hidden in the woolen skirt, but she was afraid.". . called me. Spoke to me."

Seancoim's blind eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. He opened the leather bag at his side and rummaged inside, pulling out a smaller leather container capped with horn. "Here. Drink this." Jenna reached out. Stopped. The skin of her right hand was mottled, the flesh a swirling pattern of pale gray and white, and the intricate tendrils of whitened flesh ached and burned. Her fingers were stiff, every joint on fire, and the damaged skin throbbed with every beat of her heart. She must have cried out, for Denmark flew down from the capstone to Seancoim's shoulder. The Bunus Muintir took her hand, examining it, pushing back the sleeve of her blouse. The injured area extended just past her wrist.

"Your skin is dead where it's gray. I've seen it before, in people who were caught in a blizzard and exposed to bitter cold," Seancoim said. Jenna felt

tears start in her eyes, and Seancoim touched her cheek. "It will heal in time," he said. "If you don’t injure it further."

"Jenna!" The call came from the ridge above them. Maeve and Mac Ard stood there, her mam waving an arm and scrambling down the slope into the valley, Mac Ard following more carefully after her. Maeve came run-ning up to them, glancing harshly at Seancoim. "Jenna, are you all right? We woke up and saw the lights, and you were gone-"

She noticed Jen-na’s hand then, and her own hand went to her mouth. "Oh, Jenna. ."

Jenna turned the hand slowly in front of her face, a contortion of pain moving across her features as she flexed her fingers slowly. The swirling pattern on her hand echoed the carved lines of the dolmen. Her mam took her wrist gently. "What happened, darling?" she asked, but Jenna saw Mac Ard approaching, and she only shook her head. He had the cloch in his hand, and he gave it back to me. . Mac Ard came up behind Maeve, putting his hands on her shoulders as she examined Jenna’s injury. Jenna saw Mac Ard’s gaze move from her hand to the carvings on the dolmen, then back again. For a moment, their eyes locked gazes, and she tried to keep her emotions from showing on her face. Watch for those who follow the mage-lights, Riata had said. She wondered how much Mac Ard knew or guessed, and if he had, did he regret not keeping the stone when he had it.

"I’m fine, Mam," she said to Maeve. "The pain’s easing already." It was a lie, but Jenna forced a small smile to her face, pulling her hand gently away from her mam.

"I’ll make a poultice that will take away the sting and speed the heal-ing," Seancoim said. "There are anduilleaf flowers still in bloom in the thicket near the camp." His staff tapping the ground ahead of him, he shuffled away between the barrows.

"Jenna," Mac Ard said. "We saw the lights. Did the stone. .?"

"I hold the stone," she answered, far more sharply than she intended. Belatedly, she added: "Tiarna."

His eyes flashed, narrowing, and his hands dropped from Maeve’s shoulders. "Jenna!" her mam said. "After all the tiarna’s risked for us. ."

"I know, but we've risked our own lives as well," Jenna told her, watch the wood. The last time I passed by the valley of the tombs, with a bright moon above, I saw him walking restlessly outside near the dolmen, look-ing up at the night sky. When you came, I realized that it might be that the Last Holder needed to meet the new First, so I made certain our path went by the tombs."

"You know about this cloch, then," she said. "He called it Lamh Shabhala. Can you tell me-what will it do to me? What does it mean to be the First?"

Seancoim shrugged under his furs. "I know the magic of the earth, not the sky, and they're very different. Jenna, it's been four centuries since the mage-lights last came, and you Daoine had Lamh Shabhala then. For the Bunus Muintir. . well, the last time we possessed the cloch you hold was not long after you Daoine came here, an entire age ago. and all the tales have been so twisted and distorted in the tellings and retellings that much of the lore can't be trusted, or is so wrapped with untruths that it's difficult to separate the two. Each time, the cloudmages must learn anew. I can tell you very little that I know with a certainty is true."

"I'm scared, Seancoim," Jenna said, her voice husky and broken.

He stopped. He took her injured hand in his gnarled, wrinkled fingers. "Then you're wiser than anyone else who is searching for Lamh Shabhala," he said.

The land flattened out into a plain, and Jenna noticed that the trees were no longer so closely huddled together. The oaks were now less numerous than maples, elms, and tall firs, and the ground less boggy than the wide valley where Ballintubber sat. The woods grew lighter, with the sky visible between the treetops, and Jenna became aware of the bright singing of birds in the trees above them, a sound that she realized had been missing in Doire Coill. Ahead, they could see where the trees ended at the verge of a large grassy field, which ran slightly downhill to a wide, brown strip of bare earth bordered on either side by a stone fence.

"There is the High Road coming up from Thiar in the west and Bacathair to the south," Seancoim said. He pointed to the left. "That way, the road runs north to cross the Duan at Ath Iseal. Beyond the line of trees on the other side of the road is Lough

Lar, and the High Road runs along-side it. This is the eastern border of Doire Coill, and here I leave you."

"Thank you, Seancoim of the Bunus Muintir," Mac Ard said. "I promise you that I’ll tell Ri Gabair of your help. Is there some way I can have him reward you for bringing us here safely?"

"Tell Ri Gabair to leave Doire Coill alone," Seancoim answered. "That will be reward enough for the few Bunus Muintir who are left."

Mac Ard nodded. Jenna went to Seancoim and hugged him, then stroked Dunmharu’s back.

"Thank you," she said.

"Take care of yourself," Seancoim whispered into her ear. "Be sparing with the anduilleaf; do not use it unless you must, or you’ll find it difficult to stop. I also think you should be careful about showing the power of the cloch you hold. Do you understand?"

Jenna nodded. She hugged Seancoim again, inhaling his scent of herbs. "I’ll miss you."

"I am always here," he told her. "Just come into Doire Coill and call my name, and I’ll hear it." He let her go, and turned his blind eyes toward Maeve. "Take care of your daughter," he said. "She’ll need your help with the burden she bears."

Maeve nodded. "I know. I thank you also, Seancoim. When I first met you, I didn’t trust you, but you’ve kept your word to us and more."

"Remember that when you look on others," he answered. He gave a short bow to the three of them. "May the Mother-Creator watch your path. Denmark, come-we have our own business to the south." He turned his back to them and walked off into the forest. Jenna watched until his form was swallowed in shadow, and the three of them made their way to the High Road.

Chapter 10: The Taisteal

THE High Road, between the waist-high stone walls that bordered its path, was rough and muddy, with a scraggly growth of grass and weeds in the center between ruts carved by the wheels of carts and car-riages. Mac Ard bent down to look closely at the road. "All the hoof marks are old. No riders have passed this way in a few days," he said. "That makes me feel a bit easier." He stood up, scanning the landscape. "I've come up on this side of Lough Lar a few times. Ath Iseal is no more than ten miles to the north, but there aren't many inns or villages along this side of the lake, so near to Doire Coill. It's too late for us to reach the town today, but we can camp along the lake's shore if we don't come across an inn. Tomorrow morning it should be an easy walk to the ford of the Duan, and once across to Ath Iseal I can hire a carriage to take us to Lar Bhaile." He smiled at Maeve, at Jenna. "We're almost home," he said.

Not our home, Jenna wanted to answer. That's gone forever. She clamped her lips together to stop the words and nodded encouragingly.

They walked through the afternoon. The High Road followed the line of Lough Lar, sometimes verging close enough that they could see the blue waters of the lake just to their right. At other times, the road turned aside for a bit to climb the low, wooded hills that held the lake in their cupped hands. As they approached the narrow end of the lake, the dark woods of Doire Coill turned westward and gave way to large squares of farmed and grazed land, defined with tidy stone fences. Occasionally, they would pass a gate in the fence that bordered the High Road, with a lane leading far back to a hidden farmhouse set a mile or more from the road. Jenna, used to the small homesteads and farms of Ballintubber, was amazed by the size of some of the fields. They saw workers in those fields, and once had to stand aside as a hay wagon drawn by a pair of tired, old horses squealed and creaked its way past them. The driver looked at them curiously, and said little to Mac Ard's hail. They passed no one at all on the road going in their direction.

Toward evening, they came to an empty field on the lough side of the road. The flickering lights of cook fires glistened there among several tents and four wagons. They could hear the nickering of horses and the occasional laughter of people. There was a sign hanging on one of the wagons, written in high black letters that were still visible in the dusk.

"What does the sign say?"

"You can’t read?"

Jenna shook her head. "Neither of us know our letters," Maeve said, "but Niall could read. He said he’d teach me, but. ." Remembered sorrow touched her face, and Jenna hugged her mam.

"No matter," Mac Ard said. "Once we’re in Lar Bhaile, we can find teachers for you. Reading can be a useful art, though it’s probably best that the common folk don’t learn the skill. The sign says ’Clan Sheehan. Pots mended, goods sold.’" Mac Ard seemed to hesitate. "These are Tais-teal camped for the night. They’re coming down from the north, so per-haps they’ve heard something. If nothing else, we can probably buy shelter for the night here."

"Can you trust them?" Maeve asked nervously. "Some of the Taisteal who have come through Ballintubber were thieves and cheats, and often the goods you buy from them are damaged or poorly made. The last ones through fixed a leaking pot of Matron Kelly’s and it began to leak again not two days after they were gone."

Mac Ard shrugged. "If I were buying something from them, I’d inspect it well, but I doubt they’re any more prone to be criminals than any other people. They roam, and so they’re convenient to blame."

"Coelin came from the Taisteal," Jenna reminded her mam.

"I know," Maeve answered, but she did try to smile. "That’s why I worry."

Mac Ard laughed at that. "We can’t go farther today in any case," he said. "I’d rather spend the night among a group than alone, especially if the Connachtans are still out searching for us. Let’s keep our eyes open and be cautious, but I don’t think the Taisteal would risk assaulting a tiarna on the High Road so close to Ath Iseal."

They followed Mac Ard through a break in the High Road wall and kept the rest back: the worry she had that it might have been the same cloch she carried that he’d been searching for, that if he knew she had it his attitude might change.

"Thank you, Jenna," Maeve said. "That means a lot to me. None of this changes anything between us, darling. No matter what, you and I won’t change."

Jenna remained silent. She could see in her mam's face that she knew that wasn't necessarily true, that neither one of them totally believed the words yet neither wanted to admit it. If you go to him, it may change every-thing, Mam. It means that it's more likely you'll take his side against mine. It means that you'd be feeling things we can't share anymore. And it means that once we reach the city, I might lose you, and that scares me most of all. Butt Jenna only nodded. "He makes you happy?"

Maeve smiled. "Aye, child. He does. That's something you'll under-stand soon enough for yourself, I'm sure."

"I hope so," Jenna said. "I hope so."

"You will. I know it," Maeve answered. "I can smell the stew. Clannhri Sheehan said that we should come and join them when we're ready. I'll be right back with Padraic. You're sure you're all right?"

"Go on, Mam. I'm fine. I think I'll go out and see the camp."

Maeve nodded and left. Jenna lay on the pile of sheepskins that served as a bed, fingering the smooth surface of the stone.

The Taisteal clan were all gathered around the largest fire, crackling in the center of the ring of tents and wagons. When Jenna came out of the tent, she could feel that everyone was watching her, even if they didn't look directly at her. She felt suddenly out of place and a little frightened. In Ballintubber, she would have had a name for every face. For the first time in her life, she was surrounded by total strangers. These were people to whom Ballintubber was just another village like a hundred others they'd seen, who had traveled from the cliffs bordering the Ice Sea to the south-ern tip of Talamh an Ghlas. Jenna suddenly felt provincial and lost.

She saw Clannhri Sheehan standing to one side, smoking a pipe and talking with one of the men. He saw her, said something to the man, and came over to her. "Ah, m'lady!" He glanced up and down at her as if inspecting a side of ham. "Now, doesn't that feel more comfortable? Here, let me get you some of the stew. Hilde…" Jenna started to protest, to say that she'd wait until her mam and Mac Ard came out, but Sheehan took her arm and ushered her forward.

She could feel the eyes of the clan on her as she came to the fire. She smiled, tentatively, and received a few smiles in return. They seemed to be several families: men and women as well as children, plainly dressed. She heard someone whisper in a voice that carried over the murmur of conversation: "She’s the one with the tiarna… " No one spoke to her-that was also unlike Ballintubber, where strangers would have been immedi-ately engaged in conversation and bombarded with a dozen questions about where they came from, where they were going, what their names might be and who they might be related to hereabouts. Instead, these people seemed content to stare and keep their speculations private. Most of the faces were friendly enough, and she supposed that she could have spoken to them and been answered kindly, but a few stared hard at her, with guarded faces and expressions. Hilde hurried to her with a bowl filled with fragrant stew, a small loaf of bread, and a wooden spoon. Shee-han took it from her and handed it to Jenna. "There, Ban tiarna. Sit, sit and be comfortable." He sat next to her, speaking too loudly for her com-fort. "It’s not much, but the best we can offer. Don’t often have Riocha staying with us, ’tis the truth, not with the Taisteal."

"Thank you, Clannhri," she said. "You’re very kind." She started eating the stew, hoping he would leave her alone, but he didn’t seem inclined to move or to be quiet.

"Aye," he said. "I knew him to be a tiarna as soon as I clapped eyes on him, I did, even through the mud and scratches. We Taisteal have the gift of that, you know, and Clan Sheehan best of all-we can see worth where someone else sees nothing. You’ve had a time of it, I could see, and I said to myself ’Sheehan, you need to treat these people well, who have had a bit of difficulty on the road.’ What with all the trouble just to the north, and the lights in the sky, who knows what one might encounter? Some are already saying that this is the Filleadh, the time of magic come again, and creatures that have lain hidden for the last age will walk again. There are people out already hunting for the clochs na thintri in the old places, as if a spell-stone like they talk about in the tales of the Before could be found strewn about for the taking."

Jenna tried to smile at that and almost succeeded. The stone hidden in her clothes seemed to burn with the mention, so that Jenna was surprised

Sheehan couldn't see it. She placed her hand over the stone, as if to hide it. "I don't know about clochs," she said. "What about this trouble?"

Sheehan's face collapsed into a frown with a sad shaking of his head. He brushed what little hair he had left back with a thick-knuckled hand. Ah, 'twas awful," he said. "Raiders came and burned one village, is what

I hear, and killed several. Then they went riding all over the country, looking for someone from there. Word is they came as far east as the Duan before they turned back. Even came south on the High Road a bit, not more than a few miles from here."

Jenna shivered with remembered fear. The response must have been noticeable, for Sheehan lifted his hands as if to calm her. "Ah, there's no danger now, Bantiarna. But there's no doubt but that strange things are afoot. In fact, we've heard all manner of odd tales from people coming up the road recently: a party who says they saw a naked boy sunning himself on a rock at the north end of the Lough Dubh, and as soon as the boy saw them, he changed into a black seal and dove into the water. Just a hand of days ago, I was talking with a man who said he was attacked by a pack of huge dire wolves, which haven't been seen in this land since my grandfather's time, and another who was pursued by a troop of wee folk, no bigger than his knee and all armed with sharp little swords. Hilde herself saw a dog as large as a pony, with red, glowing eyes and mouth foaming, and the dog spoke, it did, spoke as plain as-"

"Did the dog talk as well as you, Clannhri, I wonder?" Mac Ard's voice interrupted the monologue, and Sheehan nearly fell, turning his head around to glance up at the tiarna. He stood and gave a quick bow to Mac Ard and Meave, who was on the tiarna's arm.

"Tiarna Mac Ard," Sheehan said. "I was just telling the young Bantiarna about how strange the times have become, even for the poor Taisteal.

Why, one might think-"

Mac Ard lifted his hand, and the man's voice cut off as if severed with a knife. "No doubt you have thought that we would like some of that fine stew, and something to drink if you have it," Mac Ard

said, and Sheehan gave a nod of his head. He scurried off as Mac Ard helped Maeve to the ground and then sat alongside her himself. The gathering around the fire had gone entirely silent. Mac Ard glanced around, and faces looked quickly away. Conversations started up again, the noise level rising.

"Tiarna," Jenna said, keeping her voice low. "He said that Ballintubber was burned, and they’ve seen the mage-lights."

"Aye," Mac Ard said. "No doubt the rumors are everywhere now, maybe even in Dun Laoghaire itself by now. But I doubt that the Connachtans are still in the area, or that they burned Ballintubber to the ground. Rumors grow larger the farther they travel, and the Connachtans are likely to have scurried home by now." He glanced around the encampment. "But it wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve left a spy or two behind, either some of their own or someone who is willing to send word to them for a few morceints. There are faces here I don’t like, and Sheehan talks more than is good for him. I don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. I won’t feel safe until we’re back in Lar Bhaile."

Sheehan came back with stew for Mac Ard and Jenna, more bread, and cups of water. This time he said very little, glancing at Mac Ard with the expression of a scolded dog and hurrying off again. Mac Ard and Maeve talked, but Jenna only half-listened, leaning back on her arms and watch-ing the fire. She wished someone would sing some of the Taisteal songs, and that thought made her think of Coelin, and she wondered how he was, if he’d been hurt by the Connachtans, or if Tara’s even still stood and wasn’t a burned-out hulk next to the road. She didn’t want to go forward; she wanted to go back. She wanted to see Ballintubber again and Knobtop and all the familiar places. If it were within her power, she would erase the events of the past several days and happily go back to her old, predict-able life.

She felt tears starting in her eyes, and she brushed at them almost angrily. "I’m tired," she told her mam. "I’m going up to the tent."

Maeve glanced at her with concern, but she kissed Jenna. "We’ll do the same as soon as we eat," she said. "I’ll check on you. Good night, darling."

"Good night, Mam, Tiarna." Jenna nodded to Mac

Ard. She brushed at her skirts and walked away from the fire toward her tent.

She didn't notice that one of the men to her left excused himself from his companions and rose, following a few moments later.

Chapter 11: Two Encounters

"BANTIARNA, a moment.

!!

The voice came from behind Jenna, low and gravelly. Startled, Jenna turned. The man was brown-haired with a longish beard, and she found his age difficult to discern-he could have been as young as Coelin or nearer to thirty. His face was drawn and thin, his skin brown from the sun; his strangely light green eyes nested deep under his brows, glinting in the light of the fire. His clothing was plain, but more like that of a freelander than the Taisteal, and Jenna saw a bone-handled knife in its scabbard at his belt. His appearance was that of someone used to a life of labor, his body toughened and scarred by what it had experienced. He stopped a few feet away from her, as if he realized that she would shout for Mac Ard if he came closer. She moved a few steps toward the ring of light from the campfire.

"What do you want?" Jenna asked coldly.

"Nothing that will trouble you," he said. "A minute's conversation, that's all." When Jenna remained silent, he continued. "My name is Ennis O'Deoradhain. I'm not with the Taisteal; I have land nearby and happened to come here to see if the Taisteal had anything interesting to sell-my father was born here and also died here, several years ago. But in his youth, he wandered, and went to the west as a fisherman and came to the north. He married a woman there, and brought her back to Lough Lar."

"What has that to do with me?"

"My mam-may the Mother-Creator keep her soul safe-was an Inishlander. They say I'm more like her than my father. In some ways, I think that's true. They say one Inishlander knows another. Maybe

that’s true as well or maybe the mage-lights have just sparked something in me that was dormant all this time." He stopped, staring at her.

"I’m from…" Ballintubber, she started to say, then realized that might not be something to admit either.". . Lar Bhaile," she said. "Not Inish

Thuaidh."

O’Deoradhain nodded, though his eyes seemed unconvinced. "Mam always said that I had a weirding in me. She also told me that one of our ancestors was a cloudmage, and wielded a cloch na thintri under Severii O’Coulghan in the Battle of Sliabh Michinniuint. Of course, one never knows about family history that far back and to tell the truth it’s a rare Inishlander family that doesn’t claim a cloudmage or three among their ancestors, true or not. If all the stories are to be believed, the land must have been ankle-deep in clochs na thintri."

With the mention of the mage-stones, Jenna’s hand went to her waist, where her own stone was hidden. She immediately let her hand drop back to her side, but the man’s eyes had followed her involuntary gesture. He almost seemed to smile.

"Your arm-you’ve hurt it." He nodded at the bandages wrapped around her arm; it seemed to throb in response.

"It’s nothing," she said. "A cut, that’s all."

"Ah." He nodded again. He glanced over his shoulder, as if making certain no one was close enough to overhear them. "One wonders," O’Deoradhain mused, "where Lamh Shabhala will be found if the Filleadh has really come, since the eldest cloch was taken from the Order of Inishfeirm and could be anywhere in Talamh an Ghlas by now. But then, you probably realize that already, since Clannhri Sheehan tells me that you’re a Mac Ard. After all, your ancestors were once cloudmages themselves. I ’m not surprised to see a Mac Ard on the road where the mage-lights have been seen. Not at all."

Jenna wanted to be away from the man, wanted to be alone, wanted to take the cloch out and hold it, wanted to throw it away and never see it again. She’d understood little of what he’d said-all that prattling about "Inishfeirm" and some Order, but he spoke of "Lamh Shabhala," the same name Riata had used. . "You've had your minute, Ennis O'Deoradhain, and I'm tired."

True, I've had the minute, and more, and I've spoken honestly about things that I probably shouldn't, out here in the open." The man's left and moved close to the hilt of his knife, and Jenna wondered how quickly someone would get to her if she screamed. Not soon enough, she feared, if O'Deoradhain was skilled with his weapon. Her bandaged hand went again to the stone; she could feel its chill under the cloth, and her heart was pounding in her chest. If she brought the cloch out, if she could use it as she had with the men from Connachta…

But O'Deoradhain only smiled, gave a short bow, and turned to walk back toward the fire. For a moment, Jenna wondered whether she should follow and tell Mac Ard and her mam what had just happened. But she couldn't make herself go that way, not after what the man had said to her.

Instead, she went to her tent, half-running. Her arm throbbed and burned, and she boiled water over the tiny cook fire inside and made herself another cup of the anduilleaf tea.

The next morning, it was easy to forget the encounter. Maeve was there in the tent, sleeping alongside Jenna-she had wondered, after their con-versation, if Maeve might stay in the tiarna's tent that night. Jenna's arm still ached, and she heated another cup of the brew to take away the hurt before her mam rewrapped the arm with fresh bandages. Outside, a warm, late autumn sun was shining, O'Deoradhain was nowhere to be seen, and they found that Mac Ard had haggled with Clannhri Sheehan for the purchase of three of the Taisteal's horses. They looked old and slow, but a better prospect than walking the rest of the way to Ath Iseal. By the time the sun was well up in the sky, the Taisteal had packed away the tents into the wagons and were jangling and plodding south along the road while Jenna, Maeve, and Mac Ard rode north toward the ford of the Duan.

They moved through a landscape of green: farmland mostly, with occa-sional patches of wood. The High Road meandered, following the line of Lough Lar closely. Not long after they'd left, as they rounded a bend in the road, they heard hooves and the nickering of a horse coming up from an

intersecting lane; a moment later, a rider came into view between a line of beech trees, a man wearing a plain cloca over pants and shirt. The hood of the cloca was up; the face in shadow. The man waved at them, then kicked his horse into a trot to meet them.

"Greetings, Tiarna Mac Ard, Bantiamas. A beautiful morning. We seem to be going in the same direction, if Ath Iseal is your destination. May I join you? With brigands on the road, four is safer than one." He pushed back the hood, and Jenna saw that it was Ennis O’Deoradhain. His eyes glittered as he glanced toward her, but he kept his attention on Mac Ard, who frowned.

"It isn’t brigands I particularly fear," he answered. "You have the advan-tage of me, since you seem to know me but your face isn’t familiar."

"My name is Ennis O’Deoradhain." He gestured to the fields on either side of him. "This is my family’s land. Not much, but enough to keep us fed. We’re three generations freelanded, loyal to the Ri Gabair, and the name O’Deoradhain is well known around the west of the lough. And I know you because I was at the Taisteal’s camp last night seeing if they had anything useful, and Clannhri Sheehan has a mouth large enough to swallow all of Lough Lar itself." He smiled and laughed at his own jest, and the harsh lines of his face relaxed in his amusement. "And if it allays your fears, I’m hardly a threat to you, Tiarna. I doubt my knife is a match for your sword." O’Deoradhain swept his cloca aside, showing them that the only weapon he wore was the knife Jenna had seen the night before.

"In my experience, a knife kills as easily as any weapon," Mac Ard told the man, but his voice was easier. "But a freelanded man loyal to the Ri shouldn’t be left alone to brigands, and the High Road’s open to all, if you’d like to ride with us."

Jenna could have spoken. She saw O’Deoradhain’s gaze flick toward her again, and she set her mouth in a firm, thin line of disapproval. Yet she held back. O’Deoradhain flicked the reins, and his horse moved out onto the road. For a time, he rode alongside Mac Ard, and Maeve, and they conversed in low voices. Then O’Deoradhain dropped back to where Jenna trailed behind. "And how are you today?" he asked. "Is the arm better?"

"It's fine," Jenna answered shortly. She didn't look at him, keeping her gaze forward to the road winding along the lakeshore. Lough Lar was narrowing, now no more than a few hundred strides across as they neared the falls of the Duan.

"So it seems you didn't mention our encounter last night to the tiarna."

"I didn't think it that important. I'd forgotten it myself until I saw you this morning." She answered him with the haughtiness she thought a Riocha would display. Now she did look over at him, and found him watching her with a strange smile on his lips. "Interesting that you'd hap-pen to be going to Ath Iseal today, and at the same time."

"What would you think if I told you that wasn't entirely coincidence?"

"I'd wonder if I should make up for my error last night and tell Tiarna Mac Ard."

'"Tiarna Mac Ard?' An awfully formal way to refer to your father," O'Deoradhain commented. Her face must have shown something at that, for he lifted his eyebrows. "Ah… I see I've been mistaken.

Evidently Clannhri Sheehan didn't know as much as he pretended he did. You never can trust the Taisteal. I thought… "

"I don't care what you thought."

"This does shed a different light on things, though, I must say," O'Deoradhain persisted. "What is your name, then?"

She remembered that Mac Ard had commented on their name being: Inish, and that O'Deoradhain had suggested that he thought her an Inishlander as well. She considered giving him a false name, but it didn't seem to matter now. Her mam would probably tell him, if he asked, or Mac Ard. "Aoire," she said. "Jenna Aoire."

The startled look on his face surprised her with its severity. For a moment, his eyes widened, and he seemed almost to rise up in his saddle. Then he caught himself, his features masked in deliberate neutrality. "Aoire. That's an Inish name, 'tis. So my guess wasn't so wrong after all."

"Aye," she admitted. "My father's parents were from the island, or so he claimed, though Mam says that they left the island when they were young."

O'Deoradhain's head nodded reflectively. "No doubt," he said. "No doubt." He shifted in the saddle, adjusted his cloca. "We should be in Ath Iseal by midafternoon," he said. "We'll be passing the falls in a bit; they're not as pretty this time of year without all the green, but they'll be impres-sive enough if you've never seen them before." It was obvious that he intended to change the subject, and Jenna was content to allow that to happen.

They heard the falls long before they saw them. Here, the High Road lifted in short, winding rises up a low series of hills, until they stood well above the level of Lough Lar. Away to the south stretched the dark waters of the lough; to the north, the road was hidden behind yet another set of low hills.

Westward stretched checkered patches of farmland, meadow, and woods, and beyond that, like a green wall, was the forest of Doire Coill, lurking on the horizon.

A trail ran away from the High Road to a ledge overlooking the falls, and Mac Ard turned his horse in. "We've made good time this morning, and there's not a better day to see the falls," he said. "We'll eat here." As Mac Ard rummaged in the saddlebags for the food, Jenna and her mam walked to the end of the ledge, where the land fell off steeply toward the lough, so that they were looking down at the tops of the trees below. Ahead and to their left, the River Duan splashed and roared as it spilled down a deep cleft in the green hills, cascading white and foaming to the lake below while a white mist rose around the waters. The sunlight sparked rainbows in the mist that wavered, gleamed, and disappeared again. "Ah, Mam, 'tis beautiful," Jenna breathed. The wind sent a tendril of mist across her face, and she laughed in shock and surprise. "And wet."

"And dangerous, if you get too near the edge." O'Deoradhain spoke, coming up next to them. He pointed down toward the lake. "Not two months ago, they brought up a man from Ath Iseal who slipped over the edge and went tumbling down to his death. He was looking at the falls and not his feet, unfortunately."

Both Jenna and Maeve took a step back. "The mist has a way of en-chanting, they say," O'Deoradhain continued. "The Duan weeps in

"Why in sorrow?" Jenna asked, interested despite herself.

" ’Twas here, they say, well back in the Before, that an army out of Inish Thuaidh met with the forces of the RI of what was then the kingdom of Bhaile; RI Aodhfin, I think his name was. The river ran red with blood that day, the stain washing pink on the shores of the lough itself, and the skies above were bright with the lightnings of the clochs na thintri. Lamh Shabhala itself was here, held by an Inishlander cloudmage whose name is lost to the people around here."

The name of the cloch made Jenna narrow her eyes in suspicion, and she thought she felt the hidden stone pulse in response. Aye. . The voice, a whisper, sounded in Jenna’s head. Eilis, I was. . "Eilis," Jenna said, speaking the name. "That was the Holder’s name. Eilis."

O’Deoradhain raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps. It’s as good a name as any, I suppose. You know this story, then?"

"No," Jenna answered, then shook her head. The voice was gone, and Jenna wondered whether she’d actually heard it, or if she imagined it in the sound of the falls. Maeve was looking at her curiously, as well. "Maybe I heard it at Tara’s one night. One of Coelin’s songs-he was always sing-ing about battles and romances from other times."

O’Deoradhain shrugged. "Whatever the name, Aodhfin wrested Lamh Shabhala away from the Inishlander cloudmage during the midst of battle; then, for two hundred and fifty years, Lamh Shabhala was held here in Talamh an Ghlas. They say that the mist of the falls is the tears of the cloudmage who lost Lamh Shabhala, and that’s why it’s dangerous. He, or she," he added with a glance at Jenna, who was watching the water spilling down the ravine, "still seeks revenge for the loss."

"That’s a pretty tale," Maeve said. "And an old one."

This is an old place," O’Deoradhain answered. He gestured straight out from the ledge. "They say that back when the first people came here to the lough, the falls were out here. But the river’s hungry, and it eats away a few feet of the cliffs every year and so

the lough keeps growing at this end. One day, thousands and thousands of years from now, the falls will be all the way back to Ath Iseal. We look at the land, and from our perspective, it all seems eternal: the mountains, the rivers, the lakes-they are there at our birth, and there looking the same at our death. But the stones themselves see that everything is always changing, and barely see us or our battles and legends at all. We're just ghosts and wisps of fog to them."

"Ah, you have a poet in you," Maeve said. "Tis well said."

O'Deoradhain touched his forehead, smiling at Maeve. "Thank you, Bantiarna. It's my mam's gift. She had a wonderful way with tales, espe-cially those from the north. She was from Inish Thuaidh, as I told your daughter."

Jenna refused to look back at him. "An Inishlander?" Maeve said. "So was my late husband-or his parents were from there, anyway. But he wasn't one for stories, I'm afraid. He didn't speak much about his family or the island. I don't think he'd ever been there himself."

"Perhaps not, but I've heard the name Aoire before, in some of the tales my mam used to tell me." He seemed as though he were about to say more and Jenna looked away from the falls toward him, but Mac Ard came striding up, and O'Deoradhain went silent at the tiarna's approach.

"I have our lunch unpacked," Mac Ard said. "We could bring it out here, and eat while watching the scenery."

"That sounds lovely," Maeve said. "Excuse me. We'll go help Padraic. Jenna?"

"Coming, Mam." She turned away from the falls, catching O'Deoradhain's gaze as she did so. "What is it you want?" she asked him, as her mam walked away.

O'Deoradhain shrugged. "Probably the same thing you want. Maybe the same thing you've already found." He nodded to her and smiled.

She grimaced sourly in return, and followed her mother.

Chapter 12: The Lady of the Falls

THEY finished their lunch, and lay in the soft grass under a surprisingly warm sun. Jenna’s arm was starting to throb again with pain, and she stood up. "I’ll be right back," she said. "I’d like to take a walk."

"I’ll go with you," O’Deoradhain offered, and Jenna shook her head.

"No," she said firmly. "I’d prefer to go alone. Mam, do you mind?"

"Go on," Maeve told her. "Don’t be long."

"I won’t be." Jenna walked away north, around the curve of the cliffs toward the falls. As she approached, the clamor of the cascading water grew steadily louder, until it drowned any other sound in white noise. Greenery hung over the edge of the ravine so that it was difficult to tell where the ground ended, and the mist dusted Jenna’s hair and clothes with sparkling droplets. She moved as close to the edge as she dared. Foaming water rushed past below her, spilling down to the lough. With the touch of the mist, she thought she heard faint voices, as if hidden in the roar of the falls was a distant, whispering conversation.

At the same time, her right arm began to feel cold and heavy under the bandages, and the cloch na thintri snuggled next to her skin flared into bitter ice. Jenna stopped, rubbing at her arm and flexing her suddenly stiff fingers, moaning slightly at the renewed pain. She started to turn back, thinking that she would fix herself more of the nasty-tasting anduilleaf, but stopped, blinking against the mist. There, just ahead of her, was a break in the greenery, a narrow trail leading down toward the Duan right where it plunged over the cliff edge. She wondered how she could have missed seeing it before.

Follow. . she thought she heard the water-voices say. Follow…

She took a tentative step forward, steadying herself against the bushes to either side. The path

was steep and ill-defined, the grass underfoot slick and only slightly shorter than anywhere else, as if the trail were nearly forgotten. Once she slipped and fell several feet before she could stop herself. She almost turned back then, but just below, the path seemed to level out, curving enticingly behind a screen of scrub hawthorns. Follow. . The voices were louder now, almost audible.

She followed.

Around the hawthorns, she found herself on a ledge below the lip of the falls. Water thundered in front of her, foaming and snarling as it thrashed its way over black, mossy rocks. The ledge continued around, cutting underneath the overhanging rocks at the top of the waterfall and disappearing into darkness behind the water.

Follow. . Her arm ached, the stone burned her skin with cold. Her hair and clothes, soaked by the mists, clung to her face and body. She should go back, she knew. This was insanity-one slip, and her body would be broken on the rocks a hundred feet below.

Follow. .

But there were handholds along the cliff wall, looking as if they'd been deliberately cut, and though the ledge was crumbling at the edges, the flags appeared to have once been laid by someone's hands. She took a step, then another, clinging to the dripping wall as the water pounded a few feet in front of her.

Then she was behind the falls, and the ledge opened up. Jenna gasped in wonder. She was looking through the shimmering veil of water, and the falls caught the sunlight and shattered it, sending light dancing all around her. The air was cool and refreshing; the sound of the falls was muffled here, a constant low grumbling that seemed to emanate from the earth itself. The rock underfoot trembled with the sound. As her eyes grew accustomed to the twilight behind the falling water, Jenna saw that the ledge on which she stood opened up behind her, sloping down and into the cliff wall: a small, hidden cave. Something gleamed well back in the recess, and Jenna moved toward it, squinting into the dimness.

And she stopped, holding her breath. In a stony niche carved from the living rock of the cliff, a

skeleton lay, its empty-socketed eyes staring at Jenna. The body had once been richly dressed-a woman, adorned with the remnants of brocaded green silk, with glistening threads of silver and gold embroidered along the edging. The arms were laid carefully along her sides, and under her head was a pillow, the stuffing spilling out from rotting blue cloth, a few strands of golden hair curling below the skull.

Rings hung loose on the bones of her fingers; jeweled earrings had fallen to the stone alongside the skull.

You look on the remains of Ellis MacGairbhith of Inish Thuaidh, and I was once the Holder of Lamh Shabhala, as you are now. .

The voice was as liquid as the falls, and it sounded inside her head. Jenna stepped back, her hands to her mouth, until she felt the roar of the water at her back. "No," she said aloud. "Be quiet. I don’t hear you."

A laugh answered her. The skeleton stared. Take one of my rings, the voice said. Place it on your own finger. .

"No. I can’t."

You must. . The voice was a bare whisper, fading into wind and the falls’ louder voice. For a moment, Jenna thought it had gone entirely, then it returned, a husk--please. . one of the rings. .

Her hand trembling, Jenna stepped toward the body again and reached out to the hands crossed over the breast. She touched the nearest ring, gasping, then pulled back as the golden band wobbled on the bones. Taking a breath, she reached out again, and this time pulled the ring from the unresisting hand. She held it in her fingers, turning it: the ring was heavy gold, inset with small emerald stones, filigreed and decorated with knotted rope patterns-an uncommon piece of jewelry, crafted by a mas-ter. The ring of someone who was once wealthy or well-rewarded.

She put the ring on her own finger.

At first nothing changed. Then Jenna realized that the hollow seemed brighter, that she could see as if it were full day. A bright fog filled the recess and the sound of the falls receded and died to nothing.

A woman, clad in the green silk that the skeleton had worn, stepped through the mist toward Jenna.

Her hair was long and golden-red like bright, burnished copper, and her skin was fair. Her eyes were summer blue, and she smiled as she came forward, her hands held out to Jenna. The sleeves left her arms bare, and Jenna saw that her right hand was scarred and marked to the elbow with swirling patterns, patterns that matched those on Jenna's own hand and arm.

On one of her fingers sat the same ring Jenna wore.

"Eilis," Jenna breathed, and the woman laughed. Aye," she said. "That was once my name. So you're the new Holder, and so young to be a First. That's a pity." Her hand touched Jenna's, and with the touch, Jenna felt a touch in her head as well, as if somehow Eilis were prowling in her thoughts. "Ah.

Jenna, is it? And you've met Riata."

Jenna nodded. "How. .?" she began.

"You are the Holder," Eilis said again. "This is just one of the gifts and dangers that Lamh Shabhala bestows: the Holders before you-we who held Lamh Shabhala while it was awake and perhaps even some of those who held it while it slept-live within the stone also." Jenna remembered the red-haired man she'd glimpsed when she first picked up the stone. Had he been a Holder, once? "At least," Eilis continued, "some shade of us does. Come to where a Holder's body rests, or touch something that was once theirs, and they can speak with you if you will it. They will also know what is in your mind, if you allow it to be open. Tell me, when you met Riata, did he give you a token?"

Jenna shook her head. "No. He only spoke to me."

Eilis nodded at that, as if it were the answer she expected. "I met him, too. Riata prefers to be left alone in death. He knows that should you need him again, you can find him in the stone or go to where he rests. I went there once, myself. That's how I came to know him-a wise man, wiser than most of us Daoine believed possible of a Bunus Muintir. We're an arrogant people. ." She seemed to sigh, then, and looked past Jenna as if into some hazy distance. "He told me I would die, if I followed my heart. I didn't believe him." Another sigh, and her attention came back to Jenna. "You will meet the

shades of other Holders, inevitably, especially if you go to Lar Bhaile as you intend. And I’ll warn you; some you will not like and they will not like you. Some will smile and seem fair, but their advice will be as rotten as their hearts. The dead, you see, are not always sane." She smiled as she said that, a strange expression on her face. "Be careful."

"Why didn’t Riata tell me this?" Jenna asked. "There’s so much I need to know."

"If he told you all, you would have despaired,"

Eilis answered. "You’re new to Lamh Shabhala, and you are a First besides." She shuddered. "I wouldn’t have wanted to be a First."

"Riata… he said that the stone was a curse, especially for the First."

"He was right."

Jenna shuddered. "That scares me, the way you say the words."

Her gaze was calm. "Then you’re wise."

"Is the cloch evil, then?"

Eilis laughed, a sound like trickling water. "Lamh Shabhala-or any of the clochs na thintri, for that matter-don’t know good or evil, child. They simply are. They give power, and power can be put to whatever use a Holder wishes. Lamh Shabhala is First and Last, and so the power it can lend is also greatest. As to evil. ."A smile. "You bring to the stone what you have inside you, that’s all. In any case, evil depends on which side you stand-what one person calls evil, another calls justice. Let me see it " she said. "Let me see Lamh Shabhala again."

Jenna felt reluctant. She shook her head, the barest motion, and Eilis frowned, taking a step forward. "I mean you no harm, Jenna," she said. "Let me see the cloch I once wielded myself."

Jenna felt for the stone, closing her fingers around it through the cloth that hid it. "If Lamh Shabhala has the greatest power of all the clochs, how was it taken from you?"

Eilis’ laugh was bitter now. "I said its power was greatest, but even the strongest can be overpowered by numbers or make a fatal mistake. Lamh Shabhala is chief among the Clochs Mor, the major clochs, but there are others that are nearly as

powerful. Three of the Clochs Mor were arrayed against me, and I was isolated. Betrayed by. ." She scowled, her face harsh.". . my own stupidity. By listening to my heart, as Riata said it would be. And so I died. He laid me here, the new Holder, the one who had betrayed me: Aodhfin O Liathain. My lover. He placed me here after he killed me and took Lamh Shabhala for himself. He kissed my cold lips with tears in his eyes. If you should happen to meet him through the cloch, tell him that I still curse his name and the night I first gave myself to him." Another step, and Eilis' hand reached out toward Jenna. "My cloch. Let me see it once more."

Shaking her head, Jenna backed up again. She wasn't certain why she felt this reluctance-perhaps the harsh eagerness in Eilis' features, or the way she had referred to the stone as hers. But Jenna felt a compulsion to keep the stone hidden-too many people had asked to see it already. Eilis took another step closer, and again Jenna retreated. There was a strange yet familiar roaring behind her. She glanced quickly over her shoulder, but there was nothing there, only the white-lit, ethereal fog. She could feel Eilis touching her memories again, and she tried to close her mind to the intrusion. The ghost laughed at her effort. "You're indeed young and unpracticed," she said. "So much to learn. ." Her voice was honey and perfume. "I know your mind. You showed Riata the stone, didn't you? And Seancoim and that tiarna with you. Why not me?"

Jenna, reluctantly, reached beneath her clothing and pulled out the stone. "Here," she said to Eilis. "Here it is."

Eilis stared at the cloch, a hand at her breast as if she were having difficulty breathing. "Aye," she whispered. "That is Lamh Shabhala. And you don't know yet how to use it."

Jenna shook her head. "No. Can you tell me?"

"I can't," she answered, but then her eyes narrowed. "Or perhaps I can. Let me hold it. Give it to me. ." She stretched her arm out.

"No." Jenna closed her fingers around the cloch, fisting it in her right hand.

"Give it to me. ." Eilis said again. Her hand came closer, and Jenna took a final step backward.

Cold water hammered at Jenna's head and

shoulders, driving her back-ward. The falls tore her away from the ledge and bore her under even as she screamed. She felt herself flung downward with the water, and she knew she was dead.

In that instant, the cloch burned in her hand, and she felt it open to her, as if she became part of the stone itself, her mind whirling with the patterns on her hand, with the identical patterns of the cloch, with the energy locked within it borrowed from the mage-lights. This was different than when she had unleashed lightning on Knobtop or when she had killed the soldiers. Then, there had been no conscious thought involved. This time, she felt herself will the cloch to release its energy, and it an-swered. The water of the Duan still pounded at her, unrelenting and mer-ciless, but she was no longer falling. .