S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

"Ennis!" She screamed his name. A line of fire hurtled toward her- Mac Ard-and she barely managed to turn the fireball aside; she could feel its terrible heat as it exploded in one of the buildings behind her. She heard screams from behind but couldn't turn to look. The net tightened around her; in her cloch-vision, she could feel the snarling power of O Dochartaigh's and Mac Ard's clochs gathering for another strike.

Ennis-smiling fixedly like a mad creature-brought the sword down.

Jenna brought up a shield of Lamh Shabhala’s energy. Where the power met Ennis' sword, the blade hissed, smoked, and sheared away. Screaming wordlessly, Jenna sent the red-tinted fury past the useless weapon, hur-tling into Ennis' body, burning and tearing at it as if it were her own hands even as she cried. Ennis screamed in pain, calling her name like a curse, and she wept even as she pulled at the ribbon of energy that linked his image to the cloch that had created it. She could feel the Mage at the other end shrieking with agony as she raked the phantom with Lamh Shabhala’s power, and that fueled the anger even more. She ripped every last erg of energy from the other's cloch and sent its

remnants hurtling toward the netting laced around her. The impact loosed the constriction, and she rolled aside as azure lightning and red-orange fireballs both gouged craters in the earth at the spot where she’d been standing an instant before.

For a moment, she was free, but the cloch-vision roiled with bright points of power even as she threw shields around Lamh Shabhala to keep it hidden. Some of them were matched with the clochs of the Inishlanders: Moister Cleurach, MacEagan, Aithne, Galen. . Most of the Tuathian clochs were set against the Inish troops, but she could feel several search-ing for her. She wished she could make sense of the uproar and confusion around her. Men were shouting and yelling and moaning all around her; there was movement and the bright sound of clashing steel; the scent of blood and death, but she was standing alone in a small circle of calm She spun around, looking for MacEagan, but though she could sense his cloch close by, she couldn’t see him. "MacEagan!" she shouted. "Kyle!" There was no answer.

She thought for a moment she glimpsed Kianna through a gap in the clouds of smoke, sword lifted and bloody, hacking at two Tuathian sol-ders, then the smoke covered her again. Where Aithne or Moister Cleurach or Ri MacBradaigh might be, she had no idea. She tried to walk and nearly went down; pain shot through her right hip, and she looked down to see her cloca ripped and covered with gore, her left arm slathered with blood and the wound gaping and raw. The sight of it made her nauseous and weak and she nearly fell. Her fingers loosened on Lamh Shabhala, and the cloch-vision faded, the world going gray and dim. She forced herself to stand erect, to pull strength from the cloch.

"This is what war is like…" The voices came from within Lamh Shabhala.

". . we warned you… "

". . it’s pain and blood and loss and death…"

". . it’s only in the songs and myths that war is glorious and brave and only the enemy is hurt…"

Jenna felt despair and hopelessness wash over her. We’re going to lose. We need to call the retreat now, before it’s too late.

But there were sea-green points of magic-imbued light, moving out in the water. One of them was very familiar. "Thraisha!" The blue seals moved among the ships of the Tuatha. Through the confusion of the battle, Jenna heard the sudden shouts of alarm aboard the boats and the splintering of wood. In the cloch-vision, Thraisha's brilliance flared, and Jenna saw, out in the Inner Harbor, a ship suddenly heel over as if a giant hand had pushed it; at the same time, one of the cloch-lights winked out, extinguished.

The Tuathian Mages now seemed to realize that they were being at-tacked from the sea and Jenna felt many of them turn away to deal with this new threat. Limping and slow, Jenna made her way toward the water. She felt the ground underneath move from stone flags to hard-packed earth to wooden planks as she reached the quays. She passed bodies, both Inishlander and Tuathian; she passed wounded who looked up at her beseechingly, moaning or calling out to her-she ignored them, lost in the cloch-vision.

Mac Ard was still there, searching for her, and Aron O Dochartaigh also. She was near enough now that she could see the ships on which they stood, Mac Ard out near Little Head, and O Dochartaigh a few hundred yards out and to the south of her, his ship rowing in. "Strike before they find you…" She heard the whispered advice, and plunged her being into Lamh Shabhala, gathering up as much of the cloch's power as she could hold, keeping the shields around her as she prepared, then drop-ping them as she threw the wild energy toward O Dochartaigh. Too late, he saw the attack and sent pulses of blue toward it, but the white-hot force was hardly blunted. Jenna followed the lines back, imagining that she handled lightning with her bare hands and shoved it, pushing it back at O Dochartaigh. She saw his face in her cloch-vision, glimpsed his ha-tred as he realized that Jenna was there. "This is for Ennis!" she shouted at him, not knowing if he could see or hear her, not sure if it was truly his face or simply a shadow of it glimpsed in the cloch-vision. His lips shaped words, but she held the lightings and thrust them directly into that mouth. Lamh Shabhala tore at him, shredding flesh from bone, his hair aflame, his eyes bulging. .

And he was gone. The cloch-light went dark, and she felt him, finally, die.

She had no time to savor her revenge, no time to feel any emotions at all. Lamh Shabhala was revealed again, and Mac Ard and the other cloch wielders saw her. Red violence streaked toward her; she thrust it aside and the piers to either side of her erupted in splinters and flame, the heat of Mac Ard’s attack rushing over her. The net-thrower was at her again, tossing its webbing about her. She could feel the attention of other clochs turning to her now. A giant wolf howled, leaping from nowhere toward her, mouth open and slavering. She speared it with Lamh Shabhala, toss-ing it into the water as somewhere a Mage howled in concert. Another wolf followed, and another. . She dropped the pier from underneath one, then hurled the other into the fire of the docks Mac Ard had de-stroyed. The netting pulled tight around her as her attention wandered, tendrils closing around her throat, the ends writhing and pushing at her mouth. Her arms were trapped, and she felt herself being pulled toward the water, her feet lifting from the ground.

Jenna was deep into the reservoirs of Lamh Shabhala now. She forced herself to concentrate, to find the power to pull away the cloch-bonds around her. .

. . she felt them loosen, and at the same time, aqua light blossomed near her. "I’m here, sister-kin, as I promised," a familiar voice boomed in her head, and she saw Thraisha lash out at the person holding Jenna while-through her eyes-she saw Thraisha clambering out of the water onto the broken pilings of the quay. In the cloch-vision, Thraisha was a darting, sleek blue presence, liquid and graceful, severing the threads surrounding Jenna and sending them recoiling backward. "There… "

Freed, Jenna staggered backward. A sinister, double boom reverberated in her head and red flares came streaking toward her: Mac Ard. She reached into Lamh Shabhala, imagining a wall, but Thraisha’s presence interposed itself before she could use the energy. Blue inundated red each pushing against the other. Mental sparks flew, like a grinding wheel sharpening a blade, energy flowing from both of them toward the point of impact. Thraisha moaned, and Jenna heard pain and weariness in the call. The net-weaver had returned, and strands were coiling around Thraisha.