by S L Farrell
As if in answer, the mage-lights pulsed in one gigantic flash. They slammed down to earth, engulfing Peria. She screamed as if she were caught in the midst of an inferno, her body contorted in agony. As Jenna shouted with her, Peria was smashed into the ground. The crack of bones and spine was horrible to hear, a dry, awful snapping like a handful of dry twigs. Her flesh tore; vertebrae ripping from her back, a femur erupting bloody and white.
The mage-lights vanished.
Jenna stood, stunned, in the sudden silence and dark. “Peria!” The cry shattered the stasis. “Oh, Gods, no!” Tadhg had risen to his feet; now he ran to the broken body at the cliff’s jagged extremity. He sank down beside her, pulling her to him. Horrified, Jenna saw Peria’s head lolling, attached only by flesh and muscle, blood pouring from her mouth, nose, and eyes. Tadhg cradled her body, rocking back and forth, sobbing and wailing as Peria’s lifeblood stained his clothes, calling her name over and over again.
This was worse than the battle, this was worse than anything Jenna had ever seen. Jenna could feel tears flooding her eyes in sympathy.
“That is how my mam died,” the voice came again as Jenna watched Tadhg lay Peria’s shattered body on the ground, as she saw him take the cloch’s chain from around her neck and put it over his own. “That is how my da came to hold the cloch . . .”
“But what was that?” Jenna asked the voice. “What was she doing?”
“Something only fools or the very strong should attempt,” came the answer, but it was another voice, a familiar one.
“Riata?”
There was no answer or rather there were many, a babble in which she could distinguish no one person. The cliffside meadow and forest vanished, and Jenna was standing in a white, cold fog, and the voices came to her from the air around her.
“. . . do this . . .”
“. . . no, you must not! It will be your death as it was mine . . .”
“. . . you have the chance where those who come after you may not . . .”
“. . . Lámh Shábhála will always be primarily an instrument of war . . .”
“. . . it needn’t be that way . . .”
“. . . she can’t change it. She hasn’t the will for the Scrúdú . . .”
“. . . she’s weak . . .”
“. . . let her die . . .”
Then Riata’s voice came again. “She will make her own choice, in her own time, as I did.”
“Riata! Please, I need to know more . . .”
The fog dissolved in an unseen wind. She was in a room, her room, the room where she had lived in Lár Bhaile, and in the bed Maeve groaned, her hair damp with perspiration, knees up and legs open and the sheet wet and bloodied under her. A midwife bent over Maeve, her hands between Maeve’s thighs as another woman stood ready with a blanket and knife. “Push now, love; the babe’s nearly out. I have the head—curls as red as the sunset. All we need are the shoulders. Bear down, and push!”
As Jenna walked to the bedside to stand near her mam’s head, Maeve groaned again, her face tightening, her hand fisted in the blankets and body trembling. Then she gasped in sudden relief, and the midwife laughed. “There!” A thin cry sounded. The midwife’s assistant hurried forward with knife and thread. Jenna glimpsed the squalling infant as the midwife toweled him clean and swaddled him. “Tell the tiarna he has a son,” the midwife said to her assistant. “He’s waiting in the other room.” Then she turned back to Maeve, tucking the baby carefully in the crook of her arm. Maeve touched the newborn’s pudgy, purple-red cheeks. “He’s a beauty. Do you have a name for him?”
“Aye,” Maeve answered. “His name is Doyle . . .”
“He’s beautiful, Mam,” Jenna whispered, standing alongside the bed. Maeve’s head lifted almost as if she heard Jenna, and Jenna leaned over, reaching out to stroke her mam’s sweat-damp hair . . .
“Jenna?” A new voice intruded, and she ignored it, but then her mam and her old room were gone and she was reaching out to nothingness. “Jenna?” the voice called again.
“Jenna?”
She came awake with a start, realizing that her fingers were clutching Lámh Shábhála, and that Ennis’ arm was around her. The moon threw silver shadows over their bed. The sky was dark, the mage-lights having long ago died away. “You were turning and calling out,” Ennis said sleepily. “I thought you were having a nightmare.”
Jenna released the cloch, cuddling into Ennis’ embrace. “I’m . . . fine,” she said. “If you’d just hold me for awhile.”
His lips touched the back of her neck. His breath was warm down her spine. “I’ll do that,” he said.
They were in Máister Cléurach’s chambers in the keep. He’d stared at the two of them when they’d first arrived, their hands clasped together defiantly and openly. “I knew this could be a problem,” he said. “I expected better of you,” he snapped at Ennis, then glared at Jenna. “I’d tell you that you’re too young, but youths never understand that until it’s too late and the mistake can’t be undone.”
That had started the conversation. It had gone downhill since then, with Jenna relating her dreams of the night before as servants brought in their breakfast.
“Thall Coill?” Jenna saw Máister Cléurach’s frail form shudder at the name. “What insanity have you been listening to, girl? You mustn’t go there.”
His words were like a slap in the face. He’s treating you like you’re his misbehaving daughter . . . “So the dream was real? There is such a place? There is a test called Scrúdú?”
“There is, and that’s all you need to know.”
“It’s not your decision,” she told him angrily.
“It certainly is,” he retorted. “I’m Máister of the Order, and if I’m to teach you, then you’ll damned well listen to me.”
“You’re a frightened old man,” she retorted. “Why should I listen to you?”
Ennis put his hand on Jenna’s shoulder. “Jenna—” he began, but she shrugged him away.
“Don’t, Ennis,” she told him. “I know how you feel about him and the Order, but I don’t. I don’t.” She pushed away the plate of sausages and bread in front of her. “I don’t know enough about anything,” she finished more softly.
“That you don’t know enough is something that we can all agree on,” Máister Cléurach answered. The argument didn’t seem to have affected his appetite. He gestured at Jenna with a fork full of sausage. “Lamh Shábhála holds a shadow of all its old Holders, as it will hold a wisp of you after you die—an image of your personality, though not your true soul. Well, not all of the Holders were good people or entirely sane at the end of the Holding, and a lot of those Holder-shadows would laugh to see you fail because it would mean that you’re no better than they were, and any advice they give is poisoned with that attitude. As for Thall Coill . . . none of the Daoine Holders—none of them, girl, not a single one—ever lived through Scrúdú, if it is truly a test and not just some old Bunús Muintir fable. If you could read—” Máister Cléurach paused for emphasis, “then you might have seen what Tadhg wrote after Peria’s death. He thought that this ‘Scrúdú’ was nothing but a rumor circulated by the Bunús Muintir to gain some small revenge on the Daoines. There’s no test and no reward; opening Lámh Shábhálá at Thall Coill, the center of the mage-lights, kills the Holder. That’s what he believed.” He shoved the sausage into his mouth, talking as he chewed. “You can’t trust the Bunús. Those who do so are fools.”
Ennis’ eyes widened, and he started to protest, “Um, Máister . . .” But Jenna had already pushed her chair back from the table, the legs screeching angrily. She stalked toward the door.
It opened before she reached it.
“Good morning, Holder. I trust you broke your fast satisfactorily.” Banrion Aithne stood in the corridor. Next to her was a red-haired giant: her brother. The sight of Árón Ó Dochartaigh’s surly glower made Jenna’s throat close. She took a step back as the Banrion nodded to her attendants to remain outside,
then swept past Jenna into the room. The tiarna entered behind her, and Jenna stood well aside. As casually as she could, she mentally opened the cloch at her throat. The wash of emerald energy spread out like a rushing tide and immediately broke on another cloch’s presence, sparkling and foaming.
Árón held a Cloch Mór. He’d also made no attempt to shield the stone from her cloch-vision. It gleamed in Lámh Shábhála’s vision under his léine.
“Máister Cléurach, Ennis, would you leave us for a mo ment, please?” the Banrion asked. Máister Cléurach bowed to the Banrion and left quickly; Ennis hesitated until Jenna shook her head slightly to him, then walked over to Jenna and embraced her.
“I’ll be just outside,” he told her and kissed her, the Banrion watching with an amused expression as Ennis and Árón exchanged stares. After the door closed behind them, she sat in Máister Cléurach’s chair at the table.
“I don’t believe you actually had a chance to meet Árón, Holder Jenna,” she said. “I know he was very interested in seeing you.”
Jenna let her hand drop from Lámh Shábhála, and the doubled vision of the cloch vanished, leaving the world momentarily washed-out and colorless. She could see hints of Cianna’s features in her da’s face: he was hearty and full where Banrion Cianna had been sickly and thin, but the sharp, straight nose, the high cheekbones, the set of his mouth echoed that of his daughter, and now that she knew to look for it, she could see it in Aithne as well.
Árón glared, towering over Jenna. His hands were clenched in fists, cords of muscle standing out under the sleeves of his tunic. He didn’t extend his hand; she would have been afraid to take it. She saw his gaze travel from her face to her right arm. “Did it make the First Holder feel powerful,” he asked, “to have Lámh Shábhála crush the life from someone as frail and ill as my daughter?”
The words brought a searing flush to Jenna’s face, and for a moment, tears blurred her vision. She blinked angrily. “No,” she answered. “It did not. But let me ask, Tiarna, does it make you feel proud to know that Cianna pretended to be my friend while she twice sent others to kill me?”
Now it was Árón whose face burned red. The hatred radiated from him, palpable, and Jenna realized that she’d made a mistake: this was a man who loved his daughter, as blindly and unconditionally as any parent. He would not—he could not—see any evil in her. He would have protected Cianna in life without thought; he would do the same in death. Jenna would forever and always be the cruel murderer who had stolen that love from him.
And he faced her now.
The Banrion’s tsk was a torrent of cold water into the heat. Jenna and Árón both turned to her to find her shaking her head. “This won’t do,” she said. “The Rí Ard would be laughing himself silly, seeing the Inishlanders at each other’s throats as usual. This is exactly what he wants. It’s time to set aside your grief, Brother. Are you planning to demand eraic of the First Holder? Well, she has no blood payment to give you and we need her as an ally.”
“I don’t need her at all, Sister,” the man retorted, swinging around to her angrily. “It’s you and the fools on the Comhairle who think that. We don’t need her. The Rí Ard also knows his history and will recall that every army the Tuatha have sent here has been broken by the Inish. If—and, unlike you, I think it’s no certainty, Aithne—the Rí Ard manages to get the tuatha to work as one and come against us, we will break them again—without Lámh Sháb hála.” His gaze flicked toward Jenna. “And I don’t trust the Order, which has already failed Inish Thuaidh by losing their clochs to the Tuatha. In fact, Sister, I find it interesting to note that it was within a few weeks after the clochs na thintrí were stolen from the Order that the First Holder chose to open them.”
“I knew nothing about that, Tiarna,” Jenna told him. “And I didn’t choose the timing of the Filleadh.”
A sniff. The huge man pulled himself up to his full, towering height. “So you say, Holder. Yet if I were the Rí Ard . . . how convenient for me that the First Holder would show herself to be a threat to the Riocha; that she would dare to kill a Banrion and destroy a keep; that she would then flee to Inish Thuaidh. Curious, too, that along the way the person sent to pursue her would be the very tiarna who shares a bed with her mam—and she just happens to defeat him publicly in her flight. Wouldn’t it be tragic if during the battle Lámh Shábhála suddenly turned against us, as it was intended to do all along.”
“This is insane,” Jenna protested. “You’re concocting a conspiracy where none exists.”
Árón ignored Jenna, his voice riding over hers. “Why, if I wanted to create an outside threat to pull the Tuatha together just when they were starting to war among themselves, I could ask for nothing better. What does it cost, after all? Only the death of a sickly woman who would probably die soon anyway of the consumption in her lungs, and whose husband already has the children which were all he ever wanted from her.”
“Áron!” The rebuke was sharp. Aithne pushed herself up, the chair scraping back as she confronted him. “This is not why we came here. We were in agreement, we were going to put together a plan . . .”
Árón towered over his sister: a mountain standing before a wisp of cloud. “I listened to you once before, Sister, when you told me that it would be good for Inish Thuaidh and for Cianna to have her marry Rí Mallaghan. But I do agree with you that there’s a threat to Inish Thuaidh looming.” He pointed at Jenna. “The threat stands there. I know that now. I came with you because I wanted to see her. I wanted to listen to her voice. I wanted to look into the eyes of the person who killed my child before I made my final judgment. Well, I’ve looked, and I’m not impressed. I see no remorse or sorrow in her gaze, and I tell you, Aithne, that if you go into battle expecting her aid, you will find yourself crushed between the cloudmages of the Tuatha in the front and Lámh Shábhála at your unprotected back—because that’s exactly what they plan for you to do.”
“Tiarna,” Jenna said, her hands wide, “I’m sorry for what I did. Truly. I wish I could undo it, but—”
Árón spat, deliberately and loudly. The globule pooled on the wooden floor a scant fingertip from her feet. “I have no more to say to you, First Holder,” he told Jenna. “I’ll give you the warning you were too cowardly to give poor Cianna. From this day forward, I am your enemy. Remember that.”
The door shivered and trembled on its hinges as it slammed shut behind the man. The sound rang in Jenna’s ears for long seconds.
44
Juggling Possibilities
THAT evening, Rí MacBrádaigh declared that the Feast of First Fruits would take place in three days.
“What,” Jenna asked Ennis, “is the Feast of the First Fruits?”
He kissed her throat before replying, and Jenna lifted her chin with a trembling gasp at the touch. His mouth traveled from throat to chin to mouth, and then he pulled slightly away from her, smiling down as he rested on one elbow on the bed, his other hand at the loose collar of her night robe, undoing the satin ribbon tied there. “The Feast of First Fruits . . . Have you seen the blackberry vines on the columns of the Temple of the Mother-Creator?” When Jenna shrugged, he continued, his fingers slipping under the cloth of her gown. “Traditionally, the Feast takes place close to the Great Festival of Méitha, when the Draíodóiri who keep the temple first see that the vines show ripened berries. In truth, though, the Draíodóiri are sometimes told by the Comhairle that now would be a good time to proclaim the feast, regardless of the state of the vines—a few green berries can easily be dyed to provide justification.”
The memory of Áron’s declaration in Máister Cléurach’s chambers was a distraction to the pleasure of Ennis’ roving hand. “And because of what happened today with the Banrion, her brother, and me, this is one of those times.”
Ennis nodded. “I would think so, given the timing. I’d wager that this was the Banrion’s doing to try to dissolve some of the tension.” His thumb grazed her nipple; his hands cupped her breas
t. She closed her eyes, taking a breath, and he laughed softly. His mouth came down again, brushing her lips. “Do you want to talk about this now?”
“No,” she answered. “Not now.”
“Then what do you want?” His lips touched hers once more, moist and warm, more insistent this time. She opened her eyes as he drew away, loving the way he watched her.
“I just want to be with you.”
“That’s all I want, too,” he told her. His hand had moved lower. “I would like that forever.”
“Is that a proposal of marriage, Ennis O’Deoradhain?”
“It’s quite possible,” he answered, almost teasingly. “But I also know it’s not what the Banrion or Máister Cléurach or probably even your mam would advise. They would tell you that the Holder of Lámh Shábhála should use marriage as a tool and use it when it’s most advantageous.”
His voice had gone serious. His hand was still. “Do you think I care what the Banrion or Máister Cléurach would advise?” Jenna asked him. “Do you think I need their approval? And my mam . . . She would tell me that I should do what my heart says. And my heart says that I love you, Ennis.”
She sat up abruptly, on her knees on the bed as she pulled the night robe over her head. Underneath, she was naked except for the chain holding Lámh Shábhála. “All I want is what is best for the two of us,” she told him. “Is that what you want?”
He gazed at her. “Aye,” he husked.
“Then you are overclothed,” she said.
The Feast of First Fruits.
