Holder of Lightning (54 page)

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 breast. 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.

Street vendors appeared as if by summoned by magic. Booths were hastily erected around the main square of Dun Kiil, selling everything from hand crafts to potions. Street musicians, jugglers, and sleight-of-hand magicians stood on every corner. Bright banners were hung around the square and from the tessellated walls of the Keep high above. Carts groaning under the weight of apples, early corn, freshly slaughtered pigs, and new-brewed ale rumbled into town from the outlying farmlands. A sense of desperate gaiety infected the population; there was talk of little else. The Comhairle suspended their meetings (though Jenna suspected that the Banrion, Tiarna MacEagan and Banti arna Cíomhsóg still gathered to talk), and the lesser Riocha and céili giallnai came in from the nearby townships, filling the inns and the taverns and swelling the population of Dún Kiil.

Jenna and Ennis moved through the laughing, shouting throngs in the street. As they walked from between the pair of standing stones that marked the entrance to the square, Ennis stopped Jenna and pointed. To their right, a juggler with a hatchet, flaming torch, and dagger wove bright, dangerous patterns in the air. As they moved closer to watch, despite her determination to keep this a day strictly for merrymaking, the sight of the juggler made Jenna think of the choices she was juggling herself: to side with the Banrion and attack the Tuatha now; to go back to the Order and learn more from Máister Cléurach, knowing that the Tuatha would almost certainly invade the is land ; to seek the path of Thall Coill and the Scrúdú, wherever that might lead. Perilous choices all, with their own keen edges ready to cut, and she wondered how long she could keep them all in the air before she had to choose one.

“He’s good, isn’t he?” Ennis said. Jenna started, then smiled at him.

“Aye,” she answered. “He is.” She dropped a mórceint in the juggler’s hat; the boy grinned at her and tossed the torch high, letting it spin several times as he struck the ax head deep into a small log standing end up to his right, jabbed the dagger point first into the wood alongside the quivering ax, then caught the torch before it hit the ground and blew it out. He bowed extravagantly. Jenna and Ennis applauded, as did the small crowd that had gathered around to watch.

“You make that look easy. What’s the hardest thing about juggling?” Ennis asked the juggler as he laid the smoking torch atop the log.

The boy chuckled and reached down into a large cloth bag behind him. He brought out three leather balls, juggling them high and slowly so that they could easily see the pattern. “There’s just one ball in the air and two in your hands,” he said as he juggled. “It’s that simple.” He stopped and handed the balls to Ennis. “Try it,” he said with a grin. “Start with two in your right hand and toss one of them high over to your left hand.”

Ennis shook his head and started to hand the balls back, but Jenna laughed. “No, no, no,” she told him. “You asked the question. Now you have to try.”

Ennis grimaced. Standing spread-legged, he tossed the balls up in the air—right, left, right—and they all plopped immediately to the ground. Jenna and several of the people watching applauded laughingly. The juggler grinned. “You just have to remember that the ground always wins, Tiarna, Bantiarna.” He reached down, flipped the torch up and caught it. “The Mother-Creator designed our world so that when you toss something up, it comes back down. That makes juggling possible, but it also means that no matter how good you are, eventually you’ll make a mistake.” He pulled ax, dagger, and unlit torch from the log and started the cascade again: ax, dagger, torch, ax, dagger, torch, ax—but this time they saw the dagger spin a little faster, so that it turned over one and half times, starting to come down into the juggler’s hand blade first. With a comic expression of horror, he snatched his hand back at the last instant. The dagger clattered on the cobblestones of the street. “You just have to know when something’s about to cut you and remember to let it go,” he said.

The boy adroitly slipped his toes under the blade near the hilt and kicked the dagger back into the air—and suddenly he was juggling again. Jenna and Ennis applauded once more, watching for a bit before tossing another coin in the boy’s hat and walking on. “I think you missed a career as a street performer,” Jenna told Ennis.

“I think you just enjoy seeing me make a fool of myself.”

Jenna laughed and pulled him close, hugging him. “I love being with you,” she said. “I enjoy not having to think about anything for a few hours.” She felt Ennis’ muscles tense under her hand. “What?” she asked.

They stopped. Ennis pretended to look at the cloth hung at a weaver’s stall. “I can tell you want to say something,” Jenna said. “What?”

“I spoke to Máister Cléurach this morning, before we left.”

“And?”

“He feels very strongly that you should come back to Inishfeirm. He believes that the more of the cloudmage discipline you can learn before the invasion comes—and we all know it’s coming—the better chance we’ll all have.”

“And what does he think of the Banrion’s plan?”

A shoulder lifted his clóca. “He understands her position but doesn’t agree. No army’s ever come to Inish Thuaidh and conquered it. And no Inish army has ever left here to invade the Tuatha.”

“No army’s ever had this many Cloch Mór with them,” Jenna answered. “And no Rí Árd has ever put together an alliance of
all
the Tuatha, and if this one has . . .”

Another shrug. They moved away from the weaver’s stall to the next, a potter’s booth, bright with glazed mugs and bowls. Ennis picked up a bowl: golden brown swirled with blue. “So you agree with the Banrion: strike first before they strike us.”

Jenna sighed. “I don’t know who I agree with,” she said.

“Attack first, or wait. You don’t have any other options. At least none that I can see.”

There’s Thall Coill
. . . she thought, but didn’t voice it, forcing the thought away. The day was bright and warm, and the festival atmosphere filled Dun Kiil, and she wanted nothing more than to forget for a few stripes the decision ahead of her and just enjoy herself. Her hand brushed Ennis’, and she tangled her fingers in his. “Shut up,” she said.

He looked at her, startled, and saw her smile gentle the words. “We don’t have to talk about this now,” she said. “Tomorrow is soon enough.”

“But—” he began, then stopped himself. He took her hand and put it behind his back, pulling her close and kissing her. Jenna leaned into him, reveling in his presence, in the affection that radiated from him. He had, all unexpected, become her sanity in this. When she was with him, she felt complete, as if he been designed to sustain a part of her, as Lámh Shábhála had fulfilled another part.

It was never like this with Coelin. Never. This is what my mam must have felt for my da . . .
With that thought came its corollary:
And what she feels now for Mac Ard, also.
She recalled her last sight of Mac Ard, screaming with the pain of his loss as they left Banshaigh and Lough Glas. Jenna’s fingers convulsed around Ennis’. He returned the press of fingers, his other hand trailing down Jenna’s spine as he held her, and she let the memory go.

“Let’s not talk about anything but ourselves today,” she whispered to him. “Let’s just enjoy this.”

He grinned at her. “That sounds wonderful to me,” he answered. He took a long, appreciative sniff of the air. “Smell that?” he said. “Someone’s making milarán.”

“Milarán?”

Ennis grinned. “You don’t know what a milarán is? Well, it’s time you found out.”

Jenna would find that a milarán was a griddle cake made with honeyed batter and drizzled with molasses and spices. It was both sticky and delicious, and part of the fun of eating one was to lick the clinging syrup from each other’s fingers and mouth. They watched a street magician make scarves appear from empty boxes and coins vanish and reappear seemingly at will. They laughed and shouted encouragement to a pair of dwarves fighting a mock battle with wooden swords and groaned with feigned disappointment as their chosen champion fell. They listened to the start of a storyteller’s tale and helped fill his bowl with coins so he’d finish the story. They ate a midday meal at an inn near the waterfront, and in the afternoon went walking along the harbor way.

“Look!” Jenna said. “Aren’t those Saimhóir?” She pointed to a trio of dark shapes in the water, moving steadily toward the shore. The glint of blue highlights shimmered in their black fur. Jenna brushed Lámh Shábhála with her right hand and laughed. “Thraisha!” she called happily, then tugged at Ennis’ hand. “Come on!”

They ran down the wharf to where the harbor ended in a jumble of dark rocks. The seals were just hauling out of the water as they arrived, and Thraisha gave a warble and
huff
of greeting. Jenna held Lámh Shábhála in her hand, opening the cloch so that the cloch-vision overlaid her own and Thraisha’s words came to her. Thraisha glowed brightly in the flow of the mage-lights’ energy.

“May the currents bring you fish, sister-kin,” Thraisha called. “A foretelling came to me that you would be walking here today. I came to tell you first that the stone-walker you gave to Garrentha was saved. The stone-walkers in their islands-of-dead-wood-that-move . . . what is the word you use for them?” Jenna felt the touch of Thraisha’s mind on her own, and she allowed the intrusion, let the seal rummage through her thoughts. “Ah. ‘Ship’—that’s it. Garrentha kept the stone-walker afloat until the ships came. The stone-walkers in those ships pulled the stone-walker from the water, then the ships moved away from Nesting Land to Winter Home.”

Jenna nodded. “Good,” Jenna told her. “Tell them that I thank Garrentha for doing that.” She glanced at Ennis. “And perhaps the captain was reunited with his son. I would like to believe that.”

Ennis shrugged, and she saw that he held no such hope.

Thraisha turned to the other seals, moaning and panting in their own tongue for a few moments. Then she turned her head back toward Jenna, the blue-white pulse of Bra dán an Chumhacht rising within the seal. “I came also to tell you another foretelling. I dreamed last night, and in that dream I saw several ships coming from Winter Home to Nesting Land.” Thraisha lowered her head, her black eyes looking mournful and sad. “These ships were full of stone-walkers in hard shells that gleamed in the sunlight, and they had sticks of bright stone in their hands. They came to Nesting Land at this very place and hauled out onto the rocks and the stone-walkers who lived here swarmed from the dry hills to meet them. I saw smoke and fire. I smelled the scent of stone-walker blood. I heard cries of pain and screams of rage. And I saw you, sister-kin.”

Thraisha paused before she continued, as if she didn’t want to say more. “I could feel something incomplete inside you, as if you’d failed to do something you were expected to do. I could feel it like a hollowness in the fire of your soul. You stood there alone and called lightning down from the skies with Lámh Shábhála, but other sky-stones were there also, held by the hard-shelled ones, and they gathered against you. I was here, too, but I was too far away and others clochs were set again me and I couldn’t reach you. You looked for help but even though those with you held sky-stones of their own, they were beset themselves and none came to your aid. I saw you fall.”

She stopped, and Ennis shook his head. “Your dream is wrong, water-cousin,” he told her. “My cloch will stand with Jenna as will any others held by the Order.”

Thraisha gave a coughing pant. “I did not see
you
in my dream, land-cousin,” she said. “I’ll admit that surprised me. I know you would be there, if you could.”

“Then the dream is wrong,” Ennis insisted. “It was a dream and nothing else.”

The seal wriggled in what Jenna decided was the equivalent of a shrug. “That may be,” she said. “I only tell you what came to me. But it had the feeling of a foretelling.”

“Do you see what
will
be, or only what might be?” Jenna asked.

“I see what I see,” Thraisha answered. “I don’t know more than that.” Another cough: “I’m sorry, Holder. When I came, I could see joy in your face and I have destroyed that with my words. I wish I could give it back to you.”