S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

Aoife had smiled knowingly at Jenna. "1 do know, mistress," she said. "Down in Cat’s Alley, no more than fifty strides from where it meets Low Town Market. You’ll see the sign on your right.

Jenna counted the steps, trying to avoid the worst of the muck on the ground. Before she reached forty, she saw the weathered board with faded letters: Du Val, Apothecary & Herbalist. She couldn’t read the words, but the tutors Tiarna Mac Ard had assigned to her had taught her the letters

and she could compare then with the note Aoife had given her. "Stay here," she told her escorts.

"Mistress, our orders. ."

She'd learned quickly how to deal with the objections of gardai. "Stay here, or I'll tell the Ri that you lost me in the market. Would you rather deal with that? I'll be careful. You can stay at the door and watch me, if you'd like." Her words emerged in puffs of white vapor; she wrapped her cloca tightly around her. "The sooner I'm done here, the sooner we can get back to the keep and some warmth."

They glanced at each other, then shrugged. Jenna pushed open the door. A bell jingled above. In the wedge of pale light that came in through the open door, she saw a small, windowless room. The walls were lined with shelves, all of them stuffed with vials of glass and crockery. Ahead of her was a desk piled high with more jars, and beyond into dim shadows were cabinets and cubbyholes. There was a fireplace to the right, but the ashes looked cold and dead. "Hello?" Jenna called, shivering.

Shadows moved in the darkness, and Jenna heard the sound of slow footsteps descending a staircase behind a jumble of boxes and crates. A short dwarf of a man peered out toward her, squinting, a hand over his eyebrows. "Shut the door," he barked. "Are you trying to blind me?"

"Shut it," Jenna told the garda, then when he hesitated, added more sharply, "do it!"

The door closed behind her, and as Jenna's eyes adjusted, she saw that some light filtered in through cracks in the doors and shutters, and that candles were lit here and there along the shelves. The little man shuffled forward to the desk with an odd, rolling gait. He was dressed in a dingy, shapeless woolen tunic and pants, held together with a simple rope. His face reminded her a bit of Seancoim's-the same bony ridge along the eyebrows, the flattened face. She wondered if there wasn't Bunus Muintir heritage in him somewhere. He glanced up and down at her appraisingly. "What can I do for you, Bantiarna?" he asked.

"Are you du Val?" He sniffed. Jenna took that for an affirmative answer.

"I’m looking for a certain herb that none of the healers in the keep seem to know," she told him. "I was told that you might have it."

"The healers know shite," du Val spat. "They forget the lore their ances-tors knew. What are you looking for?"

"Anduilleaf."

Du Val said nothing. He came from behind the desk and stood in front of her. He was no taller than her chest. He stared up at her face, then let his gaze travel over her body. He saw the cloth wrapped carefully around her right arm and took her arm in his hands. Jenna didn’t protest as he unknotted the cloth strip and rolled it back. When her hand was exposed past the wrist, he turned it over and back, examining the skin with its mottled, scarred patterns. Then, with stubby hands that were surprisingly graceful, he wrapped the arm again.

"So you’re the one? The one who calls the mage-lights?" Jenna didn’t answer. Du Val sniffed. "You don’t have to tell me; I can look at your arm and see it. I’ve seen the mage-lights swirling around the keep and heard about the young figure that stands on the keep’s summit at their bidding and swallows them. I’ve heard the name Lamh Shabhala bandied about. I’ve heard the rumors, little ones and big ones, and I know more about the truth of them than some of the Riocha up in the keep. I’ve seen the Riocha come to Lar Bhaile all of a sudden with bright stones around their necks, and I know that the eye of the Ri Ard in Dun Laoghaire looks this way as well, and he’s also very interested in what’s going on. And the goons outside-I suppose they’re here to protect you and stop me from taking the cloch from you."

Jenna felt a shiver not born of cold run through her. "They’re fast and strong, well-armed and mean, and they will kill you if you so much as scratch me," she told du Val. He seemed unimpressed. He scratched his side.

"Vermin," he said. "You can’t get rid of them. Not here in their natural habitat: the city. How long have you been taking the leaf?"

"Almost two months now."

"Regularly?"

"Almost every day." In truth, it was every day.

Sometimes twice. On the really bad days, the days after the mage-lights, even more. Du Val stroked his chin.

"You know that anduilleaf's addictive?"

Jenna shrugged. "It takes away the pain."

"So it does, so it does-though your healers would tell you that the leaf has no known pharmacological properties, if they recognize the herb at all. They wouldn't know where to find it, wouldn't notice it growing.

That knowledge's lost to them. The Old Ones knew, the Bunus Muintir. The few of them who are still around know, too. They also know how careful you have to be with the leaf, if you don't want to end up needing it forever."

"If you're planning to talk me to death, I'll go elsewhere," Jenna told him speaking to him in the tone she'd heard the bartiarnas use with their servants. "I have another source." She turned to go, hoping the bluff would work. She could feel tears welling up behind her eyes and knew that she couldn't hold them back once she closed the door behind her, no matter what the gardai might think. She was scared: lost in the need for the relief from pain the herb brought, lost in a level of society she didn't understand. There was no "other source"-she had no idea how she could find Seancoim again, or how she would find her way to Doire Coill with-out having to explain it to the Ri and Mac Ard.

"All right," du Val grunted behind her, and she wiped surreptitiously at her eyes before turning back to him. "I have the leaf. 'Tis expensive." He almost seemed to laugh. "But considering who you are, that's probably not a consideration, is it? Who else knows you're dependent on it?" When she didn't answer, he did laugh, a snorting amusement that twisted his swarthy, broad face. "If you're afraid that I'll use the information to black-mail you, forget it. You have worse worries than that."

He went to the back of the room, rummaging around in the shadowy recesses of a leaning, bowed case of shelving. He returned with a glass jar half-filled with brown leaves. "This is all I have," he said. "'Tis old, but still potent." Jenna reached for the jar, and du Val pulled it back to his chest, scowling up at her. "First, it's two morceints."

"Two morceints?" Jenna couldn’t keep the shock from her voice. Two morceints was more than a good craftsman made in a year. Back in Ballintubber, that might have been more money than the entire village together saw in the same time.

’Two morceints," he repeated. "And don’t be complaining. There’s few enough of us who would even know how and where to find this, and it grows in only one place anywhere near here."

"Doire Coill," Jenna said.

If du Val was surprised by her knowledge, he didn’t show it. "Aye," he said. "The dark forest itself, and only in special places there. Two morceints," he repeated, "or you can check your ’other source.’" He smiled at her, with black holes where several teeth should have been.

All right," she said. She fumbled in the pouch she carried. At least Tiarna Mac Ard wasn’t stingy with his money; she had the two morceints and more. She counted out the coins into du Val’s grimy, callused palm, then reached again for the jar. He wouldn’t release it.