S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

"I was called that once," the specter said, sounding pleased and sad at the same time. "So that name is still known? I’m not forgotten in the time of the Daoine?"

"No, not forgotten," Jenna answered, thinking that it might be best to mollify the spirit. After all,

Tiarna Mac Ard had known of him.

"Ahh. ." it sighed. A hand stretched out toward

Jenna, and she forced herself to stand still. She

could feel the chill of its touch, like ice on her

forehead and cheek, then the hand cupped hers and

Jenna let her fingers relax. In her palm, the stone

shot light back to the glowing sky. "So young you

are, to be holding a cloch na thintri, especially this

one. But I was young, as well, the first time I held it!!

"This one?" Jenna asked. "How. .?"

"Follow me," it said. Its hand beckoned, and from fingertips to elbow the arm seemed to reflect the intricate curls and flourishes of the lights above, as if the patterns had been carved into the limb. The phantom glided backward into Riata’s tomb, its cold

touch fading.

"I can't," Jenna responded, holding back from the yawning mouth of the barrow. She glanced up at the lights playing over the valley, at the stone in her hand.

"You must," Riata replied. "The mage-lights will wait for you." Then the presence was gone, and nothing stood in front of the passage. "Come. ." whispered the voice faintly, from nowhere and everywhere.

Jenna took a step toward the barrow, then another. She put her hand on the stone lintels of the opening: they were carved with swirls and eddies not unlike the display in the sky above and on Riata's arm, along with lozenges and circles and other carved symbols. She traced them with her fingers, then walked into the passage itself.

Darkness surrounded her immediately and Jenna almost fled back outside, but as her eyes slowly adjusted, she could see in the illumination of the mage-lights and the answering glow from the cloch na thintri that the walls were drystone, covered with plaster that was now broken and shattered, the stones piled to just above the height of her head and capped with flat rocks. The passage into the burial chamber was short but claustrophobic. The walls leaned in, so that while two people could have knelt side by side at the bottom, only one standing person could walk down the corridor at a time.

Once, the walls must have been decorated-there were flecks of colored pigment clinging to the plaster and her touch caused more of the ancient paintings to crumble and fall away. Here and there were larger patches where she could see traces of what, centuries ago, must have been a mural. Jenna was glad to finally reach the relative spaciousness of the burial chamber. She glanced back: through the passage, she could see the dolmen awash in the brilliant fireworks of the mage-lights.

The burial chamber itself had been constructed with five huge stones, forming the sides and roof. The air was musty and stale, and the room dim, touched only by the reflections of the lights, the cloch na thintri's illumination. At the center of the room was a large, chiseled block of granite, and set there was a pottery urn, glazed with the same swirls and curved lines carved on the lintel stones. Around the urn were beads and pieces of jewelry, torcs of gold and braided silver that glistened in the moving radiance. Clothing had once lain here as well; she could see mouldering scraps of brightly-dyed cloth. These had been funeral gifts, obvi-ously, and the urn undoubtedly held the ashes and bones of Riata. But his specter had vanished.

"Hello?" she called.

Air moved, her hair lifting, and she felt a touch on her shoulder. Jenna cried out, frightened, and the sound rang in the chamber, reverberating. She dropped the cloch na thintri, and as she started to reach for it, the pebble rose from the floor, picked up by a hand that was barely visible in the stone’s glow.

"Aye," Riata’s voice said in her head, full of satisfaction, the tones dark and low. "Tis true. This was once mine." Pale light stroked the lines of his spectral face, sparking in the deep hollows where the eyes should have been. His voice seemed more ominous, touched with hostility. "Or more truthfully, I once belonged to it. Until it was stolen from me and found its way to another."

"I didn’t steal it," Jenna protested, shrinking back against the wall as the shadowy form of Riata seemed to loom larger in front of her. "I found it on the hill near my home, the first time the mage-lights came. I didn’t know it was yours; I never even knew of you. Besides, it’s only a little stone. It can’t be very powerful."

Cold laughter rippled the dead air of the tomb, and the stench of death wafted over Jenna, making her wrinkle her nose and turn her face away. "I don’t accuse you of stealing it," Riata’s voice boomed.

"This cloch na thintri has owned many in its time and will own many more. Davali had it before me, and Oengus before him, and so on, back into the eldest times. And it may be little, but of all the clochs na thintri, it is the most powerful."

"It can’t be," Jenna protested. "Tiarna Mac Ard… he would have said. ." Or he didn’t know, she suddenly realized. She wondered if he would have handed it back to her, if he had.

"Then this tiarna knows nothing. This cloch even has a name it calls itself: Lamh Shabhala, the Safekeeping. The cloch was placed here when I died, on the offering stone you see in front of you. And it was taken over a thousand long years ago-I felt its loss even in death, though I didn’t have strength then to rise. For hands upon hands upon hands of

years I slumbered. Once, centuries ago, the lights came again to wake me and I could feel that Lamh Shabhala was alive with the mage-lights once more.

I called out to Lamh Shabhala and its holder, but no one answered or they were too far away to hear me. With the mage-light's strength, I was able to rise and walk here among the tombs when the mage-lights filled the sky, but few came to this place, and though they were Bunus Muintir, they appeared to be poor and savage, and seemed frightened of me. None of them knew the magic of the sky. I realized then that my people had declined and no longer ruled this land. But someone held Lamh Shabhala, or the lights could not have returned. For unending years I called, every night the lights shone. Then, as they have before, the mage-lights died again, and I slept once more." The shape that was Riata drew itself close to her. "Until now," he said. "When the mage-lights have awakened again."

"Then take the stone," Jenna said. "It's yours. Keep it. I don't want it."

Riata laughed again at that. "Lamh Shabhala isn't mine, nor yours. Lamh Shabhala is its own. I knew it wanted me to pass it on as it had been passed to me. I could feel its desire even though the mage-lights had stopped coming a dozen years before I became sick with my last illness, but I held onto it. There were no more cloudmages left, only people with dead stones around their necks and empty skies above. I believed my cloch to be as dead as theirs; in fact, I prayed that it was so. I should have known it wasn't. Lamh Shabhala is First and Last." The voice was nearly a hiss. "And a curse to its Holder, as 1 know too well, especially the one who is to be First."

The stone hung in the air in front of Jenna, held in invisible fingers. "Take Lamh Shabhala," Riata said. "I pass it to you, Jenna of the Daoine, as I should have passed it long ago. You are the new First Holder."

Jenna shook her head, now more afraid of the stone than of the ghost. Yet her hand reached out, unbidden, and took the cloch from the air. She fisted her hand around the cold smoothness as Riata's laughter echoed in her head.

"Aye, you see? You shake your head, but the desire is there, whether you admit it or not. It's