suit them better. It's no different with Lamh Shabhala.'
'Are you intending to talk me to death?' Jenna asked.
An Phionos laughed. It stopped, hovering in front of her with slow beats of its leathery wings. 'Perhaps. Do you die that easily?'
'No,' Jenna answered. 'I don't plan on dying at all.'
The teeth bared again. 'No? Even to be with him?'
Now Ennis stood before her. He smiled, almost shyly, holding out hand. 'Jenna,' he said. 'I wish.
There was so much I wanted to you, just to say one last time that I loved you. .'
She wanted to take that hand, wanted desperately to take him in her arms, to bruise her lips with his kisses. She started to lift her left hand, then forced
it back to her side. She looked at An Phionos, not Ennis. 'You can’t seduce me with false images,' she told it.
The huge, scaled head lifted. 'Not false,' it said. 'That is Ennis, or the spirit that was once him. I brought him here. He awaits you, Jenna, on the other side of death.'
'It didn’t hurt,' Ennis said to her, his familiar voice awakening a deep longing in her. 'You should know that. I felt the knife move and the heat of my blood pouring out, then… I don’t know. It was as if I were outside myself. There was no pain, just a slow fading and a feeling of regret, and
I was gone. I watched you cry over the body, Jenna, and I tried to touch you and comfort you. I tried to tell you that I was still with you, but I
couldn’t. I am with you, Jenna, each day. And we’ll be together again.'
She listened to him, shaking her head in denial and disbelief, and Ennis glanced over at An Phionos. 'Death doesn’t hurt, Jenna. All you have to do is accept it.'
'I will make it easy and quick,' An Phionos told her. A forepaw lifted, the scythes of its claws scissoring in the air. 'One stroke. One quick flash… '
'Ennis. .' The word was a sigh, a plea. Jenna closed her eyes, letting Lamh Shabhala’s force flow out to him. Where it touched the body, she felt strings leading back to An Phionos. She could feel An Phionos trying to push her away with its own power, but she concentrated, letting more power flow from the cloch. She formed the energy into hands and ripped away the strands of connection even as An Phionos tried to stop her. Ennis wailed, his body went pinwheeling away like a rag in a storm, finally vanishing in a point of white light that made Jenna squint and throw her hand in front of her face. A wave of intense cold flew past her.
'It’s just us,' Jenna told An Phionos. 'No ghosts. No lies. No tricks.'
'There’s no trick in what I said,' it told her. 'I can make this painless and fast for you. You simply have to allow it.'
'No.'
She could hear the shrug in its voice. 'Then it will be the other way.' Muscles bunched and wings flexed. An Phionos stooped like a hawk about to swoop down on a helpless field mouse. The wings folded in and the apparition fell in a rush, plummeting toward her. Jenna raised her cloch, concentrating its force on the onrushing creature, pushing back at
II Jenna grunted with the impact as An Phionos seemed to dissolve, slipping through the web of force like water through a sieve. Jenna searched for it with the eyes of the cloch: there! She hurled lightning at the m glow that was An Phionos, but it swept the bolts aside.
Frantically, she created a creature like An Phionos, molding it from mage-stuff and launching it at the creature. They collided in a snarl f talons and wings and teeth, and Jenna felt the concussion as if it were her own body that smashed into her opponent. She was flung backward, her eyes rolling back in her head, a red-shot blackness threat-ening to drown her-and she fought to hold onto consciousness. Her own fingers curled and slashed as she gouged at An Phionos, and for a mo-ment, the creature retreated. Jenna breathed, gulping and tasting blood
'This is good,' it said. 'Usually the Daoine are so weak.' An Phionos looked at her, and it seemed to Jenna that its eyes saw past the surface of her skin and deep into her being. 'But you're not just Daoine, are you? Part of you is also Saimhoir, and much farther back, there is also Bunus Muintir. Ah, that surprises you, does it? You're a mongrel, and mongrels are often the strongest.'
Then An Phionos came again with a roar; Jenna fought back in the form of the mage-creature, but An Phionos was immensely strong, far more powerful than any of the clochs she had encountered. In the space of a few breaths, her mage-creature was shredded and fading like smoke.
Lamh Shabhala was nearly empty; there was nothing left but the dregs of power. Jenna was no longer floating in nothingness. The hard gray rocks of Bethiochnead pressed into her back, and she lay looking up at a storm-lashed sky.
An Phionos hovered over her. 'Now,' it whispered, 'even the mongrel falls.'
Jenna threw a final bolt at the creature. The attack was weak and slow; An Phionos pushed the flickering brilliance aside contemptuously. 'You re an empty vessel, Jenna,' it told her. 'Do you remember Peria? Do you remember how I crushed her? Do you remember the sound of bones cracking and splitting and ripping through flesh? That’s what will happen to you now.'
An Phionos descended. It picked up Jenna in its talons as she beat futilely at the beast with her fists, the scales scraping the flesh from her knuckles. She felt the knife-edge points digging into her flesh. Its head came down; its too-human eyes regarded her almost sadly. 'You came close,' it said. 'Closer than you know. Perhaps. .'
Its claws closed around her, She felt them begin to tighten, felt her nA crack. An Phionos was inside her head now, its awareness flooding _ She was still holding Lamh Shabhala. Mage-energy crackled inside with An Phionos’ intrusion. 'Now,' it said gently. 'You’ll be with him again. I promise you that much… '
The pressure against her body increased. Jenna screamed in terror and pain. The mage-energy burned her. She tried to push back with Lamh Shabhala, but there was nothing there. She took her awareness deep into the cloch, deeper, to the utter bottom of the well, and there. .
A glimpse… A hope. .
'No!'
The pressure was suddenly released. An Phionos dropped her, and Jenna gasped in pain and surprise as she fell back to the ground, strug-gling up to a sitting position with her legs folded underneath her. The beast coiled above her, the wings and body blocking the sky. 'Why did you come here?' it raged at her. 'I can take your life if you give it to me, but I can’t take a life that doesn’t come here willingly- She whose servant I am won’t allow that. Why would you do this?'
It glared at her, mouth gaping dangerously, then the eyes and its voice softened. 'You don’t know, do you?' it asked.
Jenna shook her head. 'I don’t understand. No.'
'Look,' An Phionos answered. 'Look within yourself.'
An Phionos gestured, and Jenna saw herself as the creature saw her: a form of energy and light, her heart beating like a candle fluttering in the wind, and in her belly, a tiny flame burned.
'Mother-Creator. .' Jenna breathed. She cupped her abdomen, as if she could warm her hands in that small radiance.
'Aye,' An Phionos answered. 'You're with child. You didn't know?'
Jenna could only shake her head mutely. An Phionos snorted. It came to earth, resting again as she had first seen it: sitting on its haunches, the wings down against its body, the tail wrapped around one side, staring down at her as she lay in front of it. 'There can be no finish to this Scrudu,' it said. There was a note almost of triumph in its voice. 'I let you live.'
'But I found the path,' Jenna told the creature, still cradling herself and staring in wonder at the sparkle of life in her womb. She raised her head as the cloch-vision faded. 'I saw the way to defeat you.'
An Phionos shook its head. 'Perhaps,' it said.
'And perhaps not. You'll never know now.'
Why not?' Jenna asked. 'I could come back, after the child is born. .' Ahe stopped, realizing that what An Phionos had said was the truth.
Aye,' it said. 'You nearly died this time, with no certainty that what you found would have helped you. Could
