Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  “You have indeed grown tonight, Jenna,” he said.

  PART THREE

  THE MAD HOLDER

  31

  Taking Leave

  A DIRE wolf howled its worship to the moon goddess from the next hill. A white owl with a wingspan as wide as a person’s outstretched arms swooped down from a nearby branch and lifted again with a rabbit clutched in its talons. The wind brought the enchanting song of the trees at the heart of the forest. Mage-lights snarled the stars.

  “I have to go,” Jenna said.

  Seancoim nodded. Dúnmharú ruffled his wings on the old man’s shoulder as Seancoim’s pale eyes plucked moonlight from the air. “I know,” he said.

  “Do you know why?”

  He sniffed, almost a laugh. “Well, let me see if I can fathom it . . . Because Lámh Shábhála aches to be used. Because Jenna herself is tired of hiding and sitting. Because you know that to the north are the people who are your father’s fathers, and there also lies the knowledge that you lack as Holder. Because even though I tell you you’re wrong, you’re afraid that if you hide here too long, your enemies will come in too great a force for even Doire Coill to resist and you don’t want harm to come to me or the forest. Because the winter’s chill is gone and the land calls you. Because you see the magic at work here and want to see what it’s done elsewhere. Because a blind old man is poor company for a young woman. Are those your reasons?”

  Jenna laughed. “All but the last, aye. And more.”

  “And you’ll be traveling with Ennis O’Deoradhain.” It was more statement than question, and he was still smiling. “So that’s the way it is, ’tis it? You’ve come to like the man.”

  “No!” The denial came quickly and automatically. “Not at all. But he’s Inish, and knows some of the cloudmage ways and will help me get to the island. Do I trust him? I suppose I do to a point—he could have taken Lámh Sháb hála from me easily when we were in Lár Bhaile and he didn’t, but the man still has his own agenda and if I get in the way of that . . .” She shrugged. “And I don’t like the man, Seancoim. Not that way.” And after Coelin’s betrayal, I’m not sure I’ll ever love anyone again that way, she wanted to add, but pressed her lips shut.

  Jenna and O’Deoradháin had wintered in Doire Coill. Seancoim had scoffed at Jenna’s concerns that Rí Gabair and Tiarna Mac Ard—or the Rí Ard and Tanaise Ríg themselves—might try to invade the forest. “The forest will take care of itself, as I told Tiarna Mac Ard when you first came here,” he answered. “Now the magic is unleashed again, and the forest is more awake than ever. They bring their own death if they wander here.”

  And yet they had come. The mage-lights of the Filleadh had told those in Lár Bhaile where Jenna had gone after she fled the city. In the days immediately following her escape, troops were dispatched to search for her on the west side of Lough Lár and some even ventured into Doire Coill. As Seancoim had predicted, few of those who entered the oak forest returned. But strangely, after the initial fortnight, no one came searching at all.

  Jenna had wondered about that at first. Then she realized . . .

  Nearly every night now, the mage-lights flickered in the sky, no longer only above the locus of Lámh Shábhála but from horizon to horizon, and the newly-released clochs na thintrí fed on them. The Riocha were scrambling for possession of the stones—and learning to control them—which created such turmoil and contention that finding Lámh Shábhála and Jenna was temporarily a secondary concern. The night of the Filleadh, Jenna had opened three double hands of the major clochs (the Clochs Mór, O’Deoradháin had said they were called) and a hand of the minor stones—or clochmions—for each of the Clochs Mór: almost two hundred clochs na thintrí all told were now active.

  Nearly every night, too, Jenna yearned for the andúilleaf and the solace it would bring against the continuing pain of holding Lámh Shábhála. But Seancoim would not offer it to her again, and she remembered too well the fog it had cast over her mind.

  Little news reached Doire Coill from outside, but O’Deoradháin would sometimes go to search out a traveler alone on the High Road. He would bring back their tales to Jenna and Seancoim. Twice during their stay, other Bunús Muintir came to visit Seancoim—from Foraois Coill in Tuath Infochla, and the great island of Inishcoill off Tuath Airgialla—and they brought news of their own. Jenna knew from those contacts that word had been sent from Dun Laoghaire to all the tuatha that the Holder of Lámh Sháb hála had been driven insane, that she had murdered a score of Riocha in Lár Bhaile including the Banrion Cianna herself. A hefty blood price had been placed on her head, and it appeared that the Tanaise Ríg no longer had any interest in his marriage proposal.

  Jenna was now the Mad Holder, to be killed upon sight.

  Two months ago, near the time of the Festival of Fómhar, the three of them had watched from the western fringes of Doire Coill as an army approached from the west and another marched out from Lar Bhaille to meet it. They had seen in the distance the smoke and dust of battle, and Jenna felt the surge of power from several clochs na thintrí wielded as terrible weapons. From the travelers, they learned that other armies had been seen battling south and east, as well.

  The tuatha were fighting among themselves, and the clochs na thintrí were among their implements of war.

  Eventually, Jenna knew, someone would come searching for Lámh Shábhála, someone with an army or a few of the Clochs Mór or both at their backs, and they would stop at nothing to find her. Jenna had learned much about handling the cloch in the last months, but she didn’t want to see Doire Coill at the center of a battle, even a victorious one.

  And Seancoim was right. She was tired of hiding.

  “When do you go?” Seancoim asked, his voice bringing her out of reverie. She shivered, then smiled at him.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Then I will enjoy tonight.” Seancoim turned solemn, twirling a finger in his beard before he spoke. “You must realize that I’m not the only one who can guess which way Lámh Shábhála would travel.”

  “I know that. We’ll be careful.”

  “Careful may not be enough.”

  She smiled at him and kissed his forehead. “Then come with us. I’d like that. Have you ever seen the Westering Sea, Seancoim? O’Deoradháin says that you look out, and see nothing but water and sky, all the way to the end of the world.”

  He shook his head sadly. “No. But this is where my destiny and my home are. I’m an old man, and I have my apprentice to train.”

  “Apprentice? Since when do you have an apprentice?”

  “You’ve not met her. She stays on her own most of the time inside the forest. She’s learned most of what I have to teach her but not all. No, Jenna, thanks for your offer, but I’ll stay here and make certain that you have a place to which you can return one day.”

  They were standing at the northern edge of Doire Coill, near where Mac Ard, her mam, and she had first entered the forest—less than a year ago, though it seemed that everything had changed in that time. The High Road was less than a quarter mile away, turning here in a great sweeping curve to the north, where a day’s walk away waited Knobtop and Ballintubber. Jenna wondered about her home, wondered what they said about her and her mam when they gathered in Tara’s Tavern of an evening. Perhaps there were already tales of the Mad Holder, and One Hand Bailey or Chamis Redface regaled anyone who would listen with fanciful tales of Jenna as a child.

  “Even back then it was obvious that she was fey and dangerous. Why, once Matron Kelly scolded her, and Jenna made a motion like this, and Matron Kelly’s cows gave no milk for an entire week. Tom Mullin once caught her stealing apples from his orchard and chased her off his land, and the very next day as he rode to Aldwoman Pearce’s house, may the Mother-Creator rest her soul, his horse threw him for no reason at all and he broke his leg. He’s walked with a limp since that day. I tell you, we were all careful what we said and did around the Aoires . . .”

  “You don’t
get to choose how you’re remembered,” Seancoim said, as if he sensed what she were thinking. “That’s up to those who are left behind.” He touched her right arm. “Come with me,” he said.

  He turned and walked back into the forest, Dúnmharú flapping heavily ahead of them. He turned away from the faint path they’d followed, slipping into the darkness under the trees. “I can’t see,” Jenna said, hesitating.

  “Then take my arm . . .”

  Holding onto the elbow of a blind man, she moved into the night landscape of the forest. They walked for nearly a stripe, it seemed, Jenna stumbling and occasionally pushing away a stray branch, while Seancoim was sure-footed and easy with Dúnmharú’s guidance.

  They skirted a fen, and Jenna realized that the sound of the forest had changed at some point. She could no longer hear the animals: the grunt of the deer, the occasional howl of a wolf, the rustlings and chirps of the night birds. Here, there were other sounds: leafy rustlings, the groan of shifting wood, the sibilant breath of leaves that sounded almost like words. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and she could see that she and Seancoim were surrounded by gigantic old oaks with gnarled, twisted branches and great trunks that it would take three men to encircle. They loomed over the two, and Dúnmharú stayed on Seancoim’s shoulder rather than roosting in any of these branches.

  The trees spoke to each other. Jenna could hear them, could feel them. They were aware; they knew she was there. Branches moved and swayed though there was no wind, one limb sweeping down to wrap about Jenna’s right arm. She resisted the temptation to brush away the woody fingers, the leafy touch, and a few moments later it uncurled and swept away. “Can you talk to them, Seancoim?” she asked, her voice a hushed whisper. It seemed sacrilegious to speak loudly here.

  “No,” he answered, his voice as quiet as hers. “They’re the Seanóir, the Eldest, and their language is older than even the Bunús Muintir, nor do they experience life as we do. But this place is one of the many hearts of Doire Coill. These trees were planted by the Seed-Daughter herself when she gave life to the land, and they have been here since the beginning, thousands and thousands of years. Here, feel . . .” Seancoim took Jenna’s hand and placed it on the veined, craggy surface of the nearest trunk. She felt nothing for a moment, then there was a throb like the pulsing of blood; a few breaths later, another followed. “That’s the heartbeat of the land itself,” Seancoim said. “Slow and mighty and eternal, moving through their limbs.”

  Jenna kept her hand there, feeling the long, unhurried beats, her own breath slowing and calming with the touch. “Seancoim, I never . . .” She wanted to stay here forever, feeling this. There was a sorcery to the trees, an insistent lethargy, and she remembered. “When I was here before . . .”

  “Aye, it was their call you heard,” Seancoim told her. “And if the Old Ones here wished it, you would remain snared in their spell until your body died of thirst and hunger. Look around you, Jenna. Look around you with your eyes open.”

  “My eyes are open . . .” she started to say, then blinked. For the first time, she noticed that there were gleams of moonlit white in the grassy earth of the grove. She bent down to look and straightened with a stifled cry: a skull leered back at her, stalks of grass climbing through vacant eye sockets, the jaw detached and nearly lost alongside. There were dozens of skeletons in and around the tree trunks, she saw now: some human, some animal.

  “The sun feeds their leaves, the rain slakes their thirst, and those who come here and are trapped by their songs nourish the earth in which their roots dig,” Seancoim said. “This is where, when it’s time, I’ll come, too, on my own and by my own choice.” Jenna continued to stare. She could smell the death now: the ripe pungency of rotting flesh. Some of the bodies were new, and the clothes they wore were dyed green and brown.

  She should have been horrified. But she felt the throbbing of the trees and the earth and realized that this was as it should be, that the Seanóir fed on life in the same way Jenna fed on life. She ate the meat of animals that had once been alive, and soaked up their juices with bread from the wheat that had waved in fields under the sun a month before. This was simply another part of the greater cycle in which they were all caught. There was no horror here. No malevolence, no evil. The trees simply did as their nature demanded. If they killed, it was not out of hatred, but because their view of the world was far longer and broader than that of the races whose lives were impossibly fleeting.

  A branch came down; it lifted the cloch at Jenna’s neck and let it drop again. “They know Lámh Shábhála,” Seancoim said. “It is nearly as old as they are. They know it lives again.” He went up to the largest of the trees and lifted his hand. A branch above wriggled, and a large acorn dropped into his palm. “Here,” he told Jenna. He folded the nut in her left hand, closing her fingers around the acorn and putting his own leathery hands over hers. “For the Seanóir, the mage-lights signal a time of growing. Even the seasons themselves are too fast for them. The lights are the manifestation of a burgeoning centuries-long spring and summer for them, and this is their seed. Take this with you when you go, and plant this where you find your new home. Then you will always have part of Doire Coill with you. Make a new place for them.”

  Moonlight shimmered through moving branches, and the leaves spoke their words. Jenna nodded to the Seanóir, the ancient oaks of Doire Coill.

  “I will,” she said. “And I’ll always remember.”

  They left that morning before the sun rose, their faces toward the constellation of the Badger, whose snout always points north. They said little besides idle talk of the weather, and if O’Deoradháin noticed that Jenna paralleled the High Road and that Knobtop crept slowly closer to them as the sun rose behind a wall of gray clouds, he said nothing. By evening, they were close to Ballintubber, with Knobtop rising high on their right hand, its bare stony summit still in sunlight even though the marshes on either side of the road were wrapped in shadow. As they approached the Bog Bridge, O’Deoradháin placed his hand on Jenna’s arm. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “I need to see this.”

  He looked as if he were about to argue, but he swallowed the words and shrugged. “Then let’s hurry, before we’re walking in the dark.”

  A few hundred strides beyond the bridge, they came to the lane which led to Jenna’s home. The lane was overgrown, the grass high where once the sheep had kept it cropped close and the hay wagon had worn ruts in the earth. Jenna turned into the lane, hurrying now down the familiar path, around the bend she recalled so well. She wasn’t certain what she expected to see: perhaps the house as it had once been, with her mam at the door and Kesh barking as he ran out toward her, and smoke curling from the chimney.

  Instead, there was ruin. The house had mostly returned to earth. Only a roofless corner remained, overgrown with vines and brush. Where the barn had been there was only a mound. She walked forward with a stumbling gait: there was the door stone, worn down in the center from boots and rain, but it sat in the midst of weeds, the door itself only a few blackened boards half-buried in sod and grass. The chimney had collapsed, but the hearth was still there, blackened from the fire that had destroyed the house, and her mam’s cooking pot, rusted and broken, lay on its side nearby.

  Here was where she had slept and laughed and lived, but it was only a ghost now. The bones of a dead existence. The silence here was the silence of a grave.

  “I’m sorry,” O’Deoradháin said. Jenna started at the sound of his voice; lost in reverie, she hadn’t heard his approach. “I can imagine it looked beautiful, once.”

  She nodded. “Mam always had flowers on the windowsill, red and blue and yellow, and I knew every stone and crack in the walls . . .” A sob shook her shoulders, and she felt

  O’Deoradháin’s arms go around her. His touch dried the tears, searing them with anger. She shrugged his embrace away, her hands flailing. “Get off me!” she shouted at him, and he backed away, hands wide and open.

&nb
sp; “I’m sorry, Holder,” he said.

  Jenna’s right hand went automatically to Lámh Shábhála, touching the stone. A faint glimmer of light shone between her fingers, turning them blood-red. “You don’t ever touch me. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. His face was solemn, but there was something in his pale green eyes she could not read, a wounding caused by her words. He turned away and dropped his pack from his shoulders as Jenna slowly relaxed.

  She let go of the cloch and its light faded. Her arm ached, as if in memory of how Lámh Shábhála had awakened here, and she wished again—fleetingly—that Seancoim had put andúilleaf in her pack. “We might as well camp here tonight,” she said, trying to sound as if the confrontation had never happened and knowing she fooled neither of them. “It’s obvious no one’s come here since . . .” She stopped, and genuine wonder filled her voice. “Shh! What’s that?”

  “What?” O’Deoradháin glanced in the direction Jenna was pointing. Well off in the field where Old Stubborn and his herd used to graze, there was movement: pairs of pale green lights gleaming in the twilight, like glowing eyes. There seemed to be hundreds of them, just above the level of the tall grass, shifting and moving about, blinking occasionally. And they spoke like a crowd of people gathered together: a low, murmuring conversation that raised goose bumps on Jenna’s arms. There were words in their discussion, she was certain, then—distinctly—a horn blew a shrill glissando. The lights went out as one, and a wind rose from the field and swept past them and up the lane. In the twilight, Jenna could glimpse half-seen shapes and feel ghostly hands brushing against her. The horn sounded again: fainter and more distant, heading in the direction of Knobtop. The wind died as a few glowing eyes stared back at them from near the bend in the lane and disappeared again.