Holder of Lightning (51 page)

After the first day, Jenna was already weary of the politics and beginning to despair of the chances of the In ishlanders’ ability to hold off a concerted attack. Máister Cléurach must have sensed her thoughts, for he inclined his head toward her through the Rí’s droning speech. “We Inishlanders come together quick enough against a common foe, First Holder,” he said. “And when there’s no outside foe, we make do with ourselves.”

“. . . and so we bid welcome to the First Holder, who has brought Lámh Shábhála back to Inish Thuaidh, where it belongs.” The Rí finished with a nodding bow to Jenna, and there was polite applause from the gathered Riocha. Árón Ó Dochartaigh made no pretense at all: he simply glowered.

The Rí stepped down from the steps of the throne as servants began to circulate through the room with trays of drinks and appetizers. The sound of conversation obliterated the softer
tink
of falling droplets. The Rí approached Jenna, Ennis, and Máister Cléurach, and Jenna curtsied. “No, no,” Ionhar clucked, lifting her back up. He smiled, and Jenna had a sense that this was a gentle man, someone who would be more comfortable with a book or a goblet of wine in his hand than a sword. His hands were soft and uncallused; the hands of a scholar, nor a warrior. Under the rich cloth of his clóca and léine, the muscles of his arm sagged.

“I should be bowing to you, Holder, since it’s through you that the Banrion was returned to me. Such awful treachery, and from someone I trusted.” He shook his oiled and well-coifed head. “This is an ill omen, I’m afraid. I would like to speak with you at length, Holder. Your tale, what I’ve heard of it, is a strange one, and I thought—”

“You thought that you would keep the Holder from her well-deserved rest, my dear?” Banrion Aithne came up behind Ionhar in a rustle of silk. “This has been a long and difficult day for her. The tale should wait for another time, I think. Besides, I wanted to steal Lady Aoire away for a bit and thank her myself. I have a gift for her.”

Aithne, smiling, detached Jenna from the R’s attention, leaving Ennis and Máister Cléurach still talking with the man. Ennis’ gaze followed her as she moved away, her arm through the Banrion’s as the older woman escorted her through the throng in the Hall. It wasn’t only Ennis who watched; Jenna could feel the gathered nobility’s appraising eyes on them. The Banrion maneuvered them to a small door hidden in an alcove. A garda stood there; silent, he opened the door for them, closing it again behind them. Jenna found herself in a smaller, comfortable chamber, the air warm with a blazing fire in the hearth and bright tapestries covering the walls with golds, reds, and browns.

In the room, also, were Kyle MacEagan and Kianna Cíomhsóg. The two flanked the fireplace. MacEagan nodded his head to Jenna; Bantiarna Kianna simply lifted her glass goblet. “Would you like some wine, Bantiarna Aoire?” the woman asked.

“That title doesn’t fit a common sheepherder from Ballintubber,” Jenna said. “I’m not Riocha, Lady. Please call me Jenna, or Holder, if you prefer.”

The woman simply smiled. “That’s simple enough to remedy. I don’t think we’d allow the First Holder to remain common. Do you, Banrion?”

Aithne smiled at Jenna. “Hardly.” She gestured to one of the chairs before the fire. “Please sit, Holder.”

She brushed her fingers against Lámh Shábhála, hoping none of them would notice the quick grimace of pain as she let the cloch’s energy drift quickly out. She immediately felt two holes in the field where Banrion Aithne and Kyle MacEagan stood: attempts at shields. The hole around Banrion Aithne was strong; the one about MacEagan much smaller.
Tiarna MacEagan has a clochmion and the Banrion has a Cloch Mor that she didn’t have on the ship. Where did she get it?
Jenna wished now that she’d used Lámh Shábhála in the main hall to see how many more of the clochs na thintrí were gathered here.
Does Árón Ó Dochartaigh also possess a cloch, like his sister?

Jenna smiled, letting her hand drop away, and took the offered chair; the Banrion took her seat opposite her, though the other two remained standing where they were. “I said I had a gift for you. I do. Here . . .” She reached under her chair and brought up a small packet wrapped in paper and secured with a ribbon. Jenna untied the ribbon and unwrapped the paper. A familiar smell wafted out as she did so, and she stared down at the pile of dried, brown leaves there. “On the ship, I saw the cost of using Lámh Shábhála, so I asked my healer what the ancient Holders used to ease their pain. He said some of them used this, an herb that the Bunús Muintir knew. You grind the leaves and make a tea . . .”

“I know,” Jenna said, perhaps a bit too harshly. “Andúil leaf. Thank you. I’ve . . . used it in the past.”
It would be pleasant to use it, just once again, to feel all the pain and cold leave your body for a time . . .
She set the packet on a table next to her chair.
You’ll leave it there. You won’t pick it up. You won’t use it again
. . . At the thought, pain shot up her arm again, and she grimaced. They watched her, reminding her of crows standing on a tree limb watch ing a dying rabbit.
They’d take Lámh Shábhála from you in an instant, if they thought they could
. . . “I assume there’s another reason I’m here, Banrion.”

Aithne smiled; the other two chuckled as if sharing a secret joke. “Evidently Máister Cléurach has already told you that while my husband may have the title, the Comhairle actually reigns. And we three . . . we hold the Comhairle. Four more tiarna and bantiarna on the Comhairle have pledged their votes to us when needed. The Rí will sign what I place before him. So what we decide here—” her hands spread wide—“becomes law.” Aithne glanced at MacEagan, and Jenna saw a look pass between them, an affection that made Jenna wonder whether there was more between the two than simple concern for their land or friendship.

But Kianna stirred and drew Jenna’s attention away from them. “You realize that the Rí Ard won’t leave you alone here. The Ríthe of the Tuatha are afraid of Lámh Shábhála, if not of you. They’ll come here, and they’ll bring an army of thousands, supported by all the Clochs Mór they can muster.”

Jenna thought of Mac Ard and the Rí Mallaghan of Gabair. She thought of Nevan O Liathain and what he would advise his father, the Rí Ard. “I know,” she answered.

“We remember the last time a Tuathian army came here. It’s been engraved in the tales we tell our children, in the history the sages keep, in the very bones of the land. We remember the battles and the destruction,” Kianna continued. Her finely-chiseled face frowned, placing lines around her mouth and eyes. “We remember the deaths of our ancestors: men, women, and children alike. We remember the smell of corruption and smoke when Dún Kiil was sacked and burned. We remember the flare of the clochs na thintrí as they tore at the very land and changed it forever.” Her eyes held Jenna’s. “We remember, and we wonder how we can prevent that from happening now. To us. To our children. To our towns and lands.”

Jenna couldn’t speak, held in Kianna’s stern, unblinking gaze. She had no answer, didn’t know what the woman wanted her to say. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“You frighten the Holder, Kianna,” the Banrion said, her voice holding a soft amusement, and the spell was broken. “She’s such a young thing . . .” Kianna took a step back, though the frown didn’t leave her face.

“Young or no,” she said, “she has to understand the cost of her being here—the cost to
all
of us.”

“I’m sure she does,” the Banrion purred. “Don’t you, Jenna?”

“I do.” Jenna put her spine against the chair’s back, rub bing at her arm. She could smell the andúilleaf, seductive and enticing. “I know they’ll come. I don’t want that, but I can’t stop them. As long as Lámh Shábhála is here, they’ll come.”

“ ‘As long as Lámh Shábhála is here . . .’ ” MacEagan commented. The brogue of Inish Thuaidh sat firmly in his tenor voice. “Aye, that’s the crux, is it not?”

“Would you have me leave, Tiarna?” Jenna asked him. She sighed. “Then give me a boat and I will sail for Céile Mhór, perhaps, or—” She stopped as the man laughed.

“You misunderstand, Holder,” he said. “If you leave, then the likelihood is that Lámh Shábhála will fall into the hands of the tuatha. If that happens, then Inish Thuaidh will inevitably fall to the Rí Ard. We’d fight and resist, we’d run to the hills and hide, coming out to kill them when they least expect it. We would die to the last rather than submit but eventually we
would
be conquered, because we couldn’t stand against the massed power of the clochs and the army the Rí Ard can raise. But while Lámh Shábhála is here, we might yet prevail.” He moved across the room to the window, pushing the stained glass panels open. “Holder, I’d like you to see this.”

Jenna rose, going to where the tiarna stood. Looking out, she could see the ramparts of the keep, built into a mountainside overlooking the harbor. Everything was cloaked in mist from the rain, but Jenna imagined that on a clear day the view would be breathtaking: the blue deep water, the curving strips of white sand, the houses set in the lush green foliage that cloaked the mountainside, the sheer black rock of the cliff on which the keep perched.

“They call this Croc a Scroilm, the Hill of Screaming. When Máel Armagh of Infochla brought his ships of war to Inish Thuaidh, when his cloudmages brought him safely through the storms our mages called up to stop him, it was here his fleet landed, and here that the first battle was fought. Then, there was no keep, only the flat top of the mountain. The pregnant women, the young mothers and their children, the elderly and infirm of Dún Kiil fled here when the Infochla fleet sailed into the harbor and they watched the battle from above. We had no army waiting for them since it was thought he would come first to attack Inishfeirm, where Severii O’Coulghan, the Holder of Lámh Shábhála, waited. Here there were only a few hundred gardai and maybe a thousand pressmen, and only a single cloudmage with her Cloch Mór. It was a slaughter, and quickly over. Those Inishlanders Rí Armagh captured—men and women both, for many of the women fought alongside their men—he brought bound and hobbled to the base of the mountain below these cliffs where those gathered above could see. With a wave of his hand, he had his archers fire into the helpless captives, while those above wailed in sorrow and terror and helpless disbelief. Then, Armagh ordered his soldiers to climb the mountain; when they reached the mourning crowds, his soldiers raped the women and their daughters and killed the sons and old men, throwing their violated bodies over the side of the mountain to join the bleeding corpses of their slaughtered loved ones. Some, according to the tale, jumped over the cliff on their own rather than submit. They fell, all of them, screaming . . .”

Jenna’s hand had gone to her throat as MacEagan spoke, imagining the horror of that scene. “We remember,” MacEagan finished. “We will
always
remember. It was Severii who began the construction of this keep after the Battle of Sliabh Míchinniuint, where Rí Armagh met his fate. They say it’s the tears of those who died here that drip inside the keep when it rains. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know that the roof’s been repaired and rebuilt and redesigned a dozen or more times over the centuries, and still the tears fall. I think
they
remember, too.”

Jenna turned away from the window, MacEagan closing it behind her. She saw that the stained glass depicted the scene he’d just described: a woman, her mouth open in a silent cry, tumbled over black, jagged rocks. “What is it you’re asking of me?” she asked the trio.

Banrion Aithne answered. “Some of the tiarna advise us to wait, to prepare our armies for the inevitable. That’s the advice my husband listens to, because it means he can sit in comfort and do nothing. But while we sit, the tuatha make their own preparations. We’ve learned that the Rí Ard has ended the conflict between Tuath Connachta and Tuath Gabair, and that he is actively working to have the tuatha join together. If they
all
come, fully prepared and allied, we can’t stand.”

“What does your brother say?” Jenna asked.

Aithne almost laughed. “So you’ve felt the knives in his glare? Árón will be against anything that involves you, I’m afraid. I’ll deal with that when the time comes. But . . .” She paused. “We here in this room believe that time must be soon.”

The bright shattering of glass tore Jenna’s gaze away from Aithne—Kianna tossed her wineglass into the fireplace.

“The Banrion is right,” she said. “We must strike first. Before the Tuatha are ready.”

The mage-lights came, and Jenna wearily pulled herself from the bed to answer their call. As she lifted Lámh Shábhála to their glowing strands of energy, she could feel Ennis doing the same somewhere nearby, and also Máister Cléurach opening Stormbringer, which he had taken for himself after having given Gairbith’s cloch to Bráthair Mundy Kirwan. The mage-lights seethed and roiled above her, and Lámh Shábhála sucked greedily at them, filling itself. Afterward, her arm throbbed and ached, and it trembled as she released the cloch, the pain shooting deep into her joints.

She went to the small chest of drawers beside the bed. She pulled out the packet of fine, soft paper.

“I must consider this,” she’d told them. “I need to speak to Máister Cléurach and Ennis, for what you’re asking also concerns them. I need to think . . .”

The Banrion had nodded and given her that small, cold smile. “Then we’ll talk tomorrow evening,” she said. “But there is only one answer, Holder. I think you already know that.”

Jenna had said nothing. She’d walked quickly from the room, but on the way, without conscious thought, she’d taken the packet Banrion Aithne had given her . . .

She put water over the hearth fire to boil, holding the packet on her lap and watching the steam start to curl from the small iron pot. When she heard the first chatter of the boil, she took two of the leaves, crushed them in her left hand, and sprinkled them into the pot. The bitter smell of anduilleaf filled the room and she sniffed it gratefully, already feeling the pain easing in her arm and shoulder. She poured some of the thickening tea into a mug.