The dragon wriggled in her deadly, tightening embrace as Doyle grimaced, his mouth shut as muscles jumped at his jawline. She watched his struggle, almost lovingly, ignoring everything else but his face. She tightened her hold, then released it slightly. “Scream,” she crooned to him. “I want to hear you scream first.”
“. . . aye, that is what I’d do . . .”
“. . . is insanity. She’s lost herself.
“Jenna! You must let the madness go . . .”
That was Riata’s voice, the whisper of the ancient Bunús Muintir Holder.
“Be silent!” she shouted back at the ghost.
He would not.
“Your madness blinds you . . .”
He was right, she realized belatedly. She’d given the other Clochs Mór time to regroup, and they came at her again. She could feel Owaine and Mundy at her back, protecting her, but they could only deal with one or two foes at a time, and there were too many. Too many.
The assault tore Jenna away from the dragon, which hissed in both frustration and relief. She batted at them, clutching at the zenith with ethereal fingers and tearing at the mage-lights there, throwing the energy at her enemies wildly, not caring who she struck or how.
She was tiring rapidly. She could feel the cost of wielding such power for so long. The air crackled around her and she felt stretched and worn thin, as if her soul would tear apart in a harsh wind. The red haze around her was deepening and she could no longer tell foe from friend. She lashed out blindly at the clochs. Her awareness drifted high over the city now, as if she were one with the mage-lights, and she howled down at it with fury and disdain and hatred, knowing that soon, soon, she must fall.
And when she did . . . she vowed that she would take as many as possible with her to the Mother-Creator.
56
A Holder’s Death
N
O ONE took much notice of two unclothed swimmers running up from the water. There was far too much confusion and fear in the city for that. The city’s attention was on the conflagration near and around the Rí’s Keep, where it seemed that all the clochs na thintrí were engaged in battle, or out to the harbor where the fleet of the Tuatha was under attack, with half a dozen ships already sinking.
As Meriel and Dhegli reached the streets below the keep, they came across evidence of the destruction Jenna had caused: Buildings were burning, flames leaping high in mocking imitation of the cold mage-lights above them. Stones littered the street, some of them so huge that they knew only a cloch could have moved them. And there were bodies . . .
Now that she was back in human form, Meriel was cold from the wet and the night air. She paused to take the clóca from a dead woman and wrap it around herself. “I’m sorry,” she told the corpse. She found herself wondering about the woman: who had plaited her long, brown hair into such intricate braids? She looked, even in death, fair of feature, and her skin was smooth and oiled—was she Riocha or perhaps ceili giallnai? Did she have children? A husband? What had she been like in life? Meriel shook her head, tears starting in her eyes and guilt washing over her.
This is your fault. All of this is your fault, because you made it possible for your mam to take back the stone. You should have known the anduilleaf had taken her to the edge of madness, should have remembered what happened the last time. You were inside her; you felt the madness yourself. . . .
“I’m sorry this had to happen to you,” she told the corpse, which only stared back at her. Treoraí’s Heart was throbbing, pounding, tugging at Meriel’s mind. So many hurt, so many wounded and injured, so many dead . . .
Your fault . . .
Meriel was sobbing suddenly, standing over an unknown dead woman in the midst of smoke and destruction and noise. The grief washed over her, an overpowering tide, and through the shimmering salt water of her eyes, she saw Dhegli move to her, enfolding her in his arms. “There’s no time, Meriel,” he whispered softly in her head, nuzzling her ear. “Later. Later, you can let your feelings show. If we’re to help your mam, we have to go on.”
“I know.” She wiped at her eyes with a fold of the clóca. It still smelled faintly of the woman’s perfume, sweet against the harsher odor of smoke. Dhegli released Meriel: he seemed not to notice the cold or his nakedness or the devastation around them; his attention was only on her. She placed her hand over her breast, over Treoraí’s Heart. With the touch, cloch-sight washed over her and she felt her mam’s presence, a gigantic whirlpool pulling at everything around her. Circling her were the great lights of the Clochs Mór, most of them attacking the black center of Lámh Shábhála, but a few standing with her: Mundy and . . . “Owaine.” She breathed his name.
“Aye,” Dhegli said. “He’s here and he needs you. Come!”
Taking her hand, Dhegli led her through the streets toward the focus of the fighting. As they approached, Meriel found herself immersed more and more in the cloch-vision, seeing the world through the power of the mage-lights rather than with her own eyes. It was a violently bright world, the colors oversaturated and primary. Treoraí’s Heart throbbed under her hand as it never had before. In the past, she had needed to touch another person to feel their pain and make the connection, but not now. Not here in this world where the mage-lights seemed to have come to earth.
Meriel’s awareness was a living thing; she could send her thoughts sweeping outward and she could become part of them: Máister Kirwan, wielding his Cloch Mór with the ease and mastery of long study, though she could feel his worry and resignation. He fully expected to die here, and that certainty was a hard, resolute stone in the center of him; there was a deep love for Jenna in him also, hidden carefully away. Mundy was already injured—she could feel that, too, Treoraí’s Heart yearning to heal him—his left arm hanging uselessly at his side with an arrow entirely through it. Two Clochs Mór opposed him and she could see the faces of the mages who held them even though she didn’t recognize them. One had a torc around his neck: a Rí, then. She wondered if it was Torin Mallaghan.
But Meriel tore her attention away from the Máister, searching . . .
In her normal sight, they ran through the winding harbor street, moving closer to the Rí’s Keep and the Old Wall. Fires had broken out in several places and long lines of citizens snaked from the harbor to the burning houses, passing buckets of water. Gardai screamed orders; she saw a squadron of them rush toward Máister Kirwan. He took his attention away from the clochs for a moment and lifted a hand in their direction: some of them went down with the flare of mage-power. She saw Mahon, sword lifted high and battle rage distorting his features, meet the others with ringing steel. As Mahon advanced, she saw another figure behind Mundy and Mahon . . .
Owaine . . .
He was struggling and exhausted, and within him there was the same dread that filled Máister Kirwan, though Owaine did not accept his coming death, but railed against it. He was wrapped in the flames of his cloch, sending its fire outward in great, searing blasts. Meriel could feel the heat, could see the fierce light play over his strained features. And in him, she let herself touch the love he bore for her, shadowed by his worry for her. “Owaine!” she cried, and his head turned toward her.
“Meriel!” he called back to her. “Your mam . . .”
. . . She saw Jenna in her true sight, standing halfway up the slope to the Old Wall, which had been breached in front of her. Her mam’s right arm was raised high, and the mage-lights wrapped around it, linking her to the sky. A wind seemed to rush about her, her dark hair whipping around. She looked younger than Meriel ever remembered, beautiful and yet dangerous at the same time. She, too, was injured: blood streamed down one side of her face and soaked into the shoulder of her léine; when she stepped forward, she hobbled on one leg, almost falling as she put weight on it. Archers were firing at her from the walls though none of the arrows reached her, disappearing into smoke and ash. On the wall, Meriel could see one of the mages pointing at Jenna and looking backward over his shoulder. . . .
A shout from Owaine brought her back to the cloch-vision. A pack of snarling wolves appeared in the air before him, and though he burned them with Blaze, one came through the flame and its great jaws closed around his arm. Owaine bellowed in pain and anger as the wolf’s great bulk bore him down, the beast’s head whipping back and forth. It released the arm and went for Owaine’s exposed throat.
Meriel started toward him, but she felt a cold blue presence rush past her, leaving the smell of salt in its wake. The newcomer pulled at the mage-lights with the strength of a Lámh Shábhála, drinking them into itself. It flared, the light nearly blinding in Meriel’s clochvision, and the Clochs Mór fell back from it. The wolf was torn away from Owaine and tumbled howling into the void. The presence laughed, and its sound was familiar.
Dhegli had brought Bradán an Chumhacht to life . . .
. . . he was still in human form next to her, his hand holding hers, his skin marked by the curling mage-scars. A quartet of gardai rushed toward the two of them, but Dhegli simply glanced at them and the swords shattered in their hands; panicked, the gardai fled. “You know what to do, Meriel,” he said to her.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she told him, but he had released her hand and she could no longer hear his voice. He stepped forward, bare feet on broken rubble. He lifted his arms to the mage-lights . . .
In her cloch-sight, he was magnificent, a form of deepest azure from which aquamarine light flowed outward. Like the harsher brilliance of Lámh Shábhála, he over-shadowed the smaller forms of the Clochs Mór around him. With his appearance, the mages paused in the midst of their battle, wondering what this manifestation might be. They didn’t hesitate long—a monstrous fist raised above him; a net of glowing yellow enveloped him. Meriel shouted in alarm; Dhegli laughed again. A tidal wave rushed outward from him, rushing down the lines of force that led from the fist to the wielder of the Cloch Mór—a distant cry came faintly as the fist vanished. Dhegli took in a long, slow breath and his cloch-form swelled, the golden lines turning pale white and then snapping apart. He floated, and now in the midst of the blue light she saw the shape of a Saimhóir.
“Holder,” he spoke, the word like the ringing of some vast brass gong. “I’ve come again for you.” He and Jenna stood together and the sky above them rained light, stormed with brilliance. . . .
The true sight was almost ludicrous: Jenna crouched bleeding on the ruined hillside, and alongside her, a scarred bull seal looking out of place and awkward on the land . . .
“This isn’t what we should be doing, Holder,” he said, his voice sad. “This isn’t the time for Lámh Shábhála and Bradán an Chumhacht to war together. Come, I’ve brought Meriel and we can leave. We don’t need this.” Light played around their magnificence, illuminating the wreckage and the destruction. “Come away with us,” Dhegli said again.
“Aye, Mam,” Meriel shouted up at her, her voice sounding impossibly thin and small. “Please listen to Dhegli.” The Clochs Mór circled about, but they were all waiting, none of them daring to attack the two presences. Jenna’s head turned and found Meriel. Her face softened and her lips quivered. Something changed in her eyes.
“Meriel . . .”
Meriel held out her hand. “Please come with us, Mam.” For the first time, Meriel began to have hope. They could escape this trap. They could go to the water and swim away while Owaine, Máister Kirwan, and Mahon took one of the ships. They could escape alive. They could go home. “Take my hand, Mam,” Meriel said. . . .
Jenna turned to Meriel and she reached for Meriel’s hand with the fisted hand still holding the cloch. For a moment her eyes went sad and frightened. Her mouth moved with unheard words: “Help me . . .” but then the moment passed and she pulled her hand back.
She scowled . . .
“You’ll betray me like the others,” Jenna said, hugging her scarred arm to her body. “That’s why you’re here. You want Lámh Shábhála, too, but you’ll never have it. Never!” Her voice was like the slap of a hand. Meriel could see the words whip red from her mouth, and the impact of them struck Meriel down to her knees. Jenna’s presence loomed over her, eclipsing Dhegli.
“No, Mam,” Meriel cried. She could taste blood in her mouth.
“Jenna,” Dhegli’s voice boomed, and blue pressed hard against red as Meriel squinted into the brilliance of the cloch-sight. “Don’t.”
The bloody light flared, and Jenna shrieked. “You’re the same!” she shouted at Dhegli. “You’re all the same . . .” and she lifted her hand, pulling mage-energy from the sky and throwing it flaming at Dhegli. Meriel saw the Saimhóir tumble backward with a cry.
The Clochs Mór attacked as one, seeing the two allies strangely at odds. Meriel could barely make out the half-glimpsed forms amidst the lightning and glow. She saw Owaine strike at a gold-and-red dragon with a sheet of fire that burst in rippling fury along the great beast’s scales, and Edana’s mage-demon roared as Mundy lashed at it with his cloch. Howls and cries erupted, making Meriel want to clasp hands to ears.
She saw her mam surrounded and Dhegli trying to reach her, himself besieged.
Jenna staggered, half falling backward down the slope. A creature from a nightmare raked at her with ichor-dripping talons, opening a gash down the arm she flung up to protect herself. The archers on the wall, sensing weakness, sent a new flight of arrows toward her and though none touched her, several hurtled into the ground alongside her.
There was nothing Meriel could do. Nothing. Except . . .
She could feel the tug of Treoraí’s Heart, surging up through her. It seemed, in her cloch-sight, to burn as brightly as any of the Clochs Mór and she could hear a voice within, a voice created of stone and filled with the wisdom of long ages. “Go into her,” it said in a voice of quartz and granite. “Find her and bring her back.”