S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

The first wisps of the mage-lights glimmered into existence, a feathery curtain dancing in the sky, and the Creneach responded, clapping their hands together once in unison. The resulting boom was deafening, and both Jenna and Seancoim put hands to ears as the Creneach clapped again, the explosion of sound repeating from the nearby peaks, each time fainter and more distant. The Creneach lifted their hands toward the sky and the brightening mage-lights, as Jenna felt the insistent pull of Lamh Shabhala and mirrored the gesture with her own right hand. The mage-lights curled and fused above the valley, lowering until their slow light-ning flowed around them in multicolored streamers. One stream wrapped itself around Lamh Shabhala, filling it eagerly; around her, Jenna saw the Creneach standing surrounded by the glow, their mouths open and the mage-lights swirling in as if they were swallowing them. The Creneach crooned, a twittering, musical sound almost like chimes stirring in a wind.

Lamh Shabhala filled quickly, and Jenna released it with a gasp of min-gled pleasure and pain. The Creneach paid no attention to them at all, their attention all on the bath of light in which they were immersed. Seancoim came up to her, his arm supporting Jenna as she slowly let the cloch-vision recede.

"We'll stay here tonight," he said. "Go on and rest, and I'll watch. ."

Chapter 52: The Protector

SHE was more exhausted than she’d thought. She fell asleep quickly and when she woke, it was dim morning, the sun lurking behind a thin smear of charcoal-gray cloud. The valley, in the daylight little more than a narrow canyon, was empty. Seancoim was poking at a tin pot boiling on a small campfire while Denmark pecked halfheartedly at the ground. Jenna’s right arm ached and throbbed. She grimaced as she sat up, rubbing at the scarred flesh.

"Where are the Creneach?" Jenna asked.

Seancoim pulled the pot from the fire with a stick. He sprinkled herbs from a pouch into the boiling water and Jenna caught the scent of mint. He set the tea aside to steep. "Still here," he answered. He pointed with the stick in the direction of a rock pile against the cavern wall. "That is Terrain, I think."

Jenna went over to the pile: undistinguished broken granite, glinting here and there with flecks of quartz-she would have walked past it un-knowingly a hundred times. The rocks were loose and in no semblance of any shape: ordinary, plain and common, as if they had tumbled from the cliff walls years ago and been sitting there since.

The only hint that this might be something out of the ordinary was a lack of weeds or grass growing up in the cracks between the boulders. She started to reach toward it with her right arm, but a flash of pain ran through her with the movement, and she cradled the arm to herself, stifling a moan. When the spasm had passed, she touched one of the larger boulders with her le hand: it was rough and broken, not at all like the skin of the Creneach had been. "You’re certain?"

"Aye," Seancoim answered. "When the sun rose, they all sat. As the light came, they seemed to just melt into what you see now. Before they went to sleep, though, Terrain told me that we would find the path to Thall Coill through the other end of the valley. It also said to tell you that the Creneach will always honor the All-Heart, and even the Littlest will always remember." Seancoim poured the tea out into two chipped-rim bowls and handed one to Jenna. "Here. You’ll need this: it’s kala bark."

"Not anduilleaf?"

He didn't answer |hat, simply gave her a grimace of his weathered face. "We have a long walk today."

Jenna nodded, sipping her tea and staring at the rock pile as if it might reassemble itself again into Terrain. "We did see them, didn't we, Sean-coim?"

The old man smiled briefly, the beard lifting on his flat, leathery face. "Aye," he told her. "We did."

"And is it true, what they told me-that each of the clochs na thintri is the heart of a dead Creneach?"

Seancoim shrugged. "It's what they said." He took a long draught of his tea, and tossed the dregs aside. He wiped the bowl and placed it back in his pack. "We should go. These mountains are best passed through in daylight."

They packed quickly, then set off again. The path led upward toward a saddle between two peaks. Eagles soared above them, huge and regal, and Denmark stayed on Seancoim's shoulder, not daring to challenge them. Their pace was slow as they made their way through broken, trackless ground, sometimes needing to detour around cliffs and slopes too steep to climb. They reached the ridge by midday, and finally looked down over a long, curving arm of forested land spread out into the distance before them. Fogs and vapors curled from the treetops, indicating hidden streams and rivers and bogs below the leafy crowns. The sea pounded white against the rocky coastline, until it all merged into indistinct haze. It was cold in the heights, as if summer had never reached here, and Jenna shivered in her cloca.

Thall Coill," Seancoim said, though he appeared to be looking well °out into the distance. "And there-on the coast-can you see the open rise where the cliffs lift from the sea? I can see it with Dunmharu’s eyes, but. ."

Jenna squinted into the distance, where there was a speck of brown and gray against the green. "I think so. Is that where. . where 1 must go?"

'Aye." He exhaled, his breath white. "That place is called Bethiochnead, and it's our destination. But we won't get there standing here. Come o at least it will be warmer farther down."

They took the rest of the day to toil downward

over the intervening ridges, through fields of bracken and hawthorn into glades dotted with firs, and finally into the shadow of Thall Coill's oak-dominated fastness There was no sharp demarcation, no boundary they that they crossed but they could sense the ancient years lying in the shadows, the long centuries that these trees had witnessed, unmoving and untouched. By evening clouds of wind sprites were flowing between the trunks of the oaks like sparkling, floating rivulets, and a herd of storm deer swept over the last stretch of open field, their hooves drumming the earth.

Jenna felt as she had in Doire Coill. This was a land alive in a way that she could not understand. There were places here older even than the ancient forest near the lough. As if guessing at her thoughts, Seancoim halted next to her. "We'll have no fire here tonight," he said. "I don't think the forest would like it, and I don't know what it can do. And beware the songs you might hear. Thall Coill is said to have a stronger, more compel-ling voice than the Doire. These trees were here when we Bunus came to Inish Thuaidh; they will still be here after you Daoine are as scarce as we are now. Thall Coill doesn't care about us-only about itself."

Jenna shuddered, feeling the truth of the statement. "We can't get to that place you saw tonight," she said. "I think we should stay here and not go any deeper into the forest tonight."

"I think there may be a better place to stay." Seancoim plunged the end of his staff into the loamy earth. He took a long breath, and called out into the gathering dark as Jenna watched him curiously. There was move-ment in the shadows, and from under the trees, two Bunus Muintir emerged.

They were both male, one nearly as old as Seancoim; the other much younger. Like Seancoim, they were dressed in skins, their feet wrapped in leather. They had the wide, flattened faces of the Bunus, their skin the color of dried earth. The young one, with a matted and tangled beard, was armed with a bow and a bronze bladed sword; the older, his chin stubbled with patchy gray, had only a knife and an oaken staff. The expressions on their faces were suspicious and decidedly unfriendly. Ae old one held out his staff and spoke a few words in their guttural lan-guage. Jenna understood none of the words but the intent was clear: they were not welcome here.