S Farrell - Holder of Lightning

"Aye," the Moister nodded. "The clochs are again in the hands of the Riocha, and again they are used for war."

Moister Cleurach shook himself from reverie,

standing again and rub-bing fingers through the fringe of unruly white hair. For the first time, the frown lifted from his face, though he did not smile.

"I will teach you, Jenna Aoire," he said. "I will teach you to be the cloudmage who holds Lamh Shabhala."

"You’d teach a woman?" she asked, remembering the acolytes she’d seen.

"In Tadhg’s time and Severii’s, when the clochs na thintri were still active, we had female acolytes here, and Siurs of the Order. Not many, true, but some of the Holders were women-for Lamh Shabhala as well as other clochs, as you must know. Aye, we would teach them. It was only after, when the mage-lights had stopped, that we also stopped accepting women into the Order. So few were sent us then and so few came here on their own. ." Moister Cleurach shrugged. "Eventually habit or circum-stance becomes the rule, and rule tradition. But tradition broken is also soon forgotten."

His hands seemed old and tired as he picked up the empty tray and slid it back into its place in the cabinet. He pushed the broken doors together. "At least they didn’t get Lamh Shabhala," he said. "Stay, and I will teach you what is in the books here. You will become a Siur of the Order."

"And Lamh Shabhala?" Jenna asked. "The cloch my great-da stole?"

"You’re its Holder and the cloch is yours," Moister Cleurach replied. "I would be pleased to have the First Holder also be a cloudmage of the Order." He gave her a rueful smile. "It seems you’ll be the only one."

Jenna looked at O’Deoradhain, knowing what she wanted to do and wondering if he knew as well. He nodded to her. "Not the only one," Jenna told the Moister. "Ennis. .?"

O’Deoradhain pulled his cloch from under his cloca. The ruby facets gleamed in the light streaming into the library from the windows facing west and the lowering sun. "This isn’t the cloch you sent me to find, Moister," he said. "But I hold the Cloch Mor that was once held by the Mac Ards of Tuath Gabair."

"And this. ." Jenna reached into the pouch at her belt, bringing out the sea-foam green jewel that

Tiarna Gairbith had once possessed. "This is another Cloch Mor, though I don’t know its long history. " She placed it on the table in front of Moister Cleurach. "1 give it to the Order to do with as you will. Consider it payment for my tuition, and a small compensation for what my great-da took."

Chapter 39: Training

IT was harder than Jenna imagined. "Moister Cleurach is an excellent mentor," O’Deoradhain told her the first day. "I/you can stand him." That wasn’t an exaggeration. The Moister had an encyclopedic knowledge of the lore of the clochs na thintri and was seemingly able to call up in his mind the pages of the entire library of the Order, but he was also sometimes impatient with Jenna, who be-came his only student. He was initially exasperated by the fact that Jenna could neither read nor write. At first he refused to go further until she learned her letters, then a few minutes later reversed himself after finding that Jenna’s memory was quick, facile, and reliable.

"I suppose the Holder of Lamh Shabhala deserves different treatment than a common acolyte," he said grudgingly. "If you weren’t halfway intel-ligent, you’d already be dead." It was as close to a compliment as she was to receive for the next several weeks.

The first day, looking at a scroll filled with the bright, painted images of clochs na thintri, she let the scroll roll itself up once more and she held up her own cloch to his eyes. "Why didn’t you know for certain that this was Lamh Shabhala, since the first two Maisters of the Order both had held this cloch themselves? For that matter, why didn’t Lamh Shabhala get passed on to each of the Misters in turn? I don’t understand."

"You need patience," he replied. "The answers will come in time, when they will make the most sense to you."

"I want the answers now," she persisted.

"I'm the teacher, you're the student. I will determine when you're ready, what you'll learn, and when."

"Aye, I'm the student. And it's my duty to tell you when I don't under-stand something so that you can explain. Don't put me off with platitudes and pleas for patience. When I ask questions, tell me what you know or tell me that you don't know."

"You're an arrogant young lady."

"And you're a crotchety old man who is used to easily cowing the boys who are sent to you because you look sour and mean. Your appearance and reputation aren't going to frighten me, Moister Cleurach. A year ago I might have been as terrified as any of them, but not now. Here's one thing I've learned in that time: when someone refuses to answer me, they either don't know the answer to my question or they're deliberately with-holding it for reasons of their own. Which is it for you, Moister?"

They glared at each other for a few breaths, then Moister Cleurach snorted. "The Holders of Lamh Shabhala evidently have their obstinate streak in common," he said. "As well, evidently, as a tendency to view the world in dualities. One thing I hope you learn here is that things are more complicated than that. You're seeing conspiracies when the truth is more innocent and banal."

He shook his head, rapping his fingernails on the table a few times before continuing. "Here's your answer: Severii O'Coulghan was not Tadhg. Though he did serve as Moister here, which was his da's dying wish, the truth is that he didn't share Tadhg's sweeping vision for the Order. The clochs went dead late in his Holding, and Lamh Shabhala finally died a year or two afterward. Had Tadhg been the Holder then, he would certainly have given Lamh Shabhala to the Order as the ultimate prize of its collection. Then, when the mage-lights returned, we would have seen them shining here over Inishfeirm and known that the time of the Filleadh was approaching. We would have had Lamh Shabhala to protect us if raiders came to plunder the clochs. Severii had the cloch, though, not Tadhg. Rather than treasuring the cloch for the Order, he gave Lamh Shabhala as a gift to his lover." Moister Cleurach gave a sniff of derision. "Lamh Shabhala is not the most beautiful or most striking of jewels, as you know," he continued. "If anything, it's rather

plain. And love, as you may also know, is an emotion that can fade and die like the mage-lights. Severii’s lover one day abruptly left the island never to be seen again. With him went Lamh Shabhala."

Jenna’s face must have shown confusion. "Him?"

Moister Cleurach shrugged. "Life is complicated," he replied simply and continued his tale. "No doubt Lamh Shabhala was eventually given away or lost or misplaced as something not particularly valuable. When Severii was asked by the librarian for a description of Lamh Shabhala, so that it could be painted and written down in our books. ." Moister Cleurach went to one of the shelves and pulled down one of the bound volumes.

"The Book of Lamh Shabhala," he said, placing it before Jenna. He opened the stiff leather cover, the smell of dust and old paper wafting over Jenna. His bony forefinger pointed to an illustration on the first page: a cloch held in someone’s hand: caged in silver wire; whorled with emerald-green and mottled gold; the size of a duck’s egg and glinting as if transparent and full of hidden depths. Jenna could see hints of the actual stone in the representation, but this was Lamh Shabhala magnified and made far more jewel like than the reality.

"Obviously, that’s not Lamh Shabhala," Moister Cleurach said. "Perhaps Severii deliberately lied to the artisan-wanting to make the loss of the cloch and his lover all the more poignant. Or it’s possible that the artisan, knowing that this was Lamh Shabhala, the greatest of the clochs, could not see it as… well. . plain, and Severii obviously never contradicted that image. So when a rather ordinary-looking stone reputed to be Lamh Shabhala did come back to the Order, you can understand why my prede-cessors doubted the identification when they looked here. That’s also why, when your great-da stole it, Moister Dahlga could believe that it was a false cloch that had been lost, not Lamh Shabhala."