Holder of Lightning (15 page)

O’Deoradháin 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 singing about battles and romances from other times.”

O’Deoradháin shrugged. “Whatever the name, Aodhfin wrested Lámh Shábhála away from the Inishlander cloudmage during the midst of battle; then, for two hun dred and fifty years, Lámh Shábhála was held here in Talamh an Ghlas. They say that the mist of the falls is the tears of the cloudmage who lost Lámh 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 Áth 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’Deoradháin touched his forehead, smiling at Maeve. “Thank you, Bantiarna. It’s my mam’s gift. She had a wonderful way with tales, especially 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’Deoradháin 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, catch ing O’Deoradháin’s gaze as she did so. “What is it you want?” she asked him, as her mam walked away.

O’Deoradháin 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.

12

The Lady of the Falls

T
HEY 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’Deoradháin 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 thintrí 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 andúilleaf, but stopped, blinking against the mist. There, just ahead of her, was a break in the greenery, a narrow trail leading down toward the Duán 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 Eilís MacGairbhith of Inish Thuaidh, and I was once the Holder of Lámh Shábhála, 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, fili greed and decorated with knotted rope patterns—an uncommon piece of jewelry, crafted by a master. 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.

“Eilís,” 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 Eilís were prowling in her thoughts. “Ah . . . Jenna, is it? And you’ve met Riata.”

Jenna nodded. “How . . . ?” she began.

“You are the Holder,” Eilís said again. “This is just one of the gifts and dangers that Lámh Shábhála bestows: the Holders before you—we who held Lámh Shábhála 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,” Eilís 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.”

Eilís 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 Bunús 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 Lár 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,” Eilís answered. “You’re new to Lámh Shábhála, 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?”

Eilís laughed, a sound like trickling water. “Lámh Shábhála—or any of the clochs na thintrí, 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. Lámh Shábhála 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 Lámh Shábhála again.”

Jenna felt reluctant. She shook her head, the barest mo tion, and Eilís 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 Lámh Shábhála has the greatest power of all the clochs, how was it taken from you?”

Eilís’ laugh was bitter now. “I said its power was greatest, but even the strongest can be overpowered by numbers or make a fatal mistake. Lámh Shábhála is chief among the Clochs Mór, the major clochs, but there are others that are nearly as powerful. Three of the Clochs Mór 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 Ó Liathain. My lover. He placed me here after he killed me and took Lámh Shábhála 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 Eilís’ 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 ea gerness in Eilís’ 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. Eilís 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 Eilís 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?”