in brilliant flame a hundred yards short of the target. A cheer went up from the Inishlanders and they began to run toward the keep. Jenna heard the first ululations of the caointeoireacht na cogadh, shrieking from their throats as they charged toward the castle. .
. . she ran with them, half blind with the overlay of the cloch-vision. The rush carried her along, and she glimpsed MacEagan and Aithne near her. The air was loud with the keening and the rattling of mail and the thudding of feet on the earth. .
. . even as the last glare of the fireballs faded, Jenna ripped at the tower with the cloch as if tearing the stones apart with her own hand- great blocks tumbled away from the window where Mac Ard had been. He was a raging, throbbing scarlet in the cloch-vision, like a volcano spewing lava. Jenna could feel the heat of him, and she countered with the cold of the void, wrapping him in blue-white ice, placing more and more of it around him as he melted away each layer desperately. The glow was beginning to dim as he poured more energy from his Cloch Mor to keep her away, and for a moment, she dared to believe that she could end it here. .
. . they were close to the keep now, and arrows filled the air in a deadly rain. She saw the man beside her suddenly drop, a feathered shaft sprouting from his neck as blood spurted, but then he was gone under the rush. The main gates to the keep loomed ahead, but they were still shut. .
. . something snarled, and a whip of arcing yellow slapped down across her shoulders. Jenna whirled and saw a dragon's face, jaws open with needled teeth as it clamped down on her shoulder and coiled the rest of its body around her. Jenna howled, the teeth digging deep into her, the writhing scales flaying the skin from her body everywhere it touched. 'MacEagan!' Jenna shouted, but even as she called, she realized that both MacEagan and Aithne were each struggling with a rival Cloch Mor and couldn't come to her aid. Mac Ard was nearly free of his confinement. Jenna imagined herself growing larger, her skin hard as stone, and energy flowed from Lamh Shabhala into her. The yellow coils of the dragon's body snapped and broke, and she followed fading energy back to its source-a young man, his face pale and frightened as he realized who he faced-but she saw him only for an instant as Lamh Shabhala tore at his Cloch Mor, draining it. She thought she could hear the young man whim-per, and Jenna wondered if she had killed him. .
. . The charge faltered with the sight of the closed gates, the front ranks spreading out along the walls as the arrows continued to arc down on them. 'The doors were supposed to be opened!' someone shouted. 'We can't go forward… '
. . furious now, Jenna swept the cloch-vision about, searching for Mac Ard, but she was given no chance to find him. The mage-demon landed just outside the keep, towering above the onrushing
Inishlanders, and it roared as it plunged into their ranks, tearing and ripping with its clawed hands and feet. She saw it storm forward and pick up a man bodily, legs and arms flailing, and rip the body apart as if it were a rag doll, blood and entrails splattering as it tossed the broken corpse aside. The war-keening faltered; the advance slowed like a tide striking a rising seabed. The beast laughed, its wings spreading and blotting out the setting sun, and it bent to its terrible task once more. Jenna shouted and unleashed Lamh Shabhala again, reaching out with arms of energy to pluck the thing up and smash it down on the ground again before it could react to the attack. She sent thunderbolts raining down on it, striking it again and again and yet again. The creature bellowed as she tore at it, and she heard the mirroring cries from its Holder within the keep. In the cloch-vision, a coiling line of gold led from the mage-creature back to the Cloch Mor which spawned it, and Jenna sent of blade of energy down on it, severing the link. The mage-demon howled once more and vanished, and Jenna would have finished it then. .
… the arrows no longer fell, but something else did: several hands of round balls arced over the walls, rolling into the midst of the Inishlanders. Where the jell, great cries of anguish went up. One fell near Jenna and she saw that it was not a stone but a severed head, the eyes still wide open, long black hair matted with mud and caked blood. She recognized the gory features even through the distortion of the death rictus: it was Tiarna 0 Beolldin, and she knew then that those who had been sent to open the keep from the inside had failed. The last glow of sunlight was fading; darkness was falling, and when she looked up at the walls of the keep, she saw the first stars glitter in the dome of the sky
. . light blazed all around her, suddenly. A half-dozen flares of power multihued and dangerous, Mac Ard among them. Jenna reflexively threw up shields as they attacked as one, and she was suddenly contending with attacks from all sides, the snarl and blinding light of mage-energy pound-ing at her. Mac Ard sent his fire; she caught it with Lamh Shabhala and threw the flame toward the great glowing wolf that was leaping toward her. Spears of golden sunlight cascaded from the shield, but she couldn’t respond fast enough to the others.
A stream of rich azure slithered through, burning her while a funnel of utter black whirled above, its
mouth twisting ravenously. She could feel the power of Lamh Shabhala being leeched away by the tornado. .
. . the war-keening had died. Around her, the soldiers milled, confused and stymied. Rams were brought forward to break down the gates, but archers on the walls cut down half the men wielding them. The gates shuddered with the impact but held. MacEagan's lava-creature-bright in the growing darkness- came lumbering forward to smash open the iron-barred wood, but the mage-demon, returning to the battlefield, met him, the two struggling before the gates so that none could get past. The moving shadows of their contest played over the faces of the soldiers, and Jenna could see the despair and resignation there. Jenna knew that the gates must go down now or they must retreat. To stay would mean being decimated by the archers on the walls and the Clochs Mor. .
. . This was the end, Jenna realized, even as she fought the Clochs Mor arrayed against her, even as she tossed wild power around her and threw them all momentarily back. She was stronger, aye, but they would bear her down under sheer numbers. The Inish hope had been that the army could gain the keep, that sword and spear would cut down a few of the Mages or cause them to look elsewhere. Mac Ard's cloch attacked her again, and this time she could not push it aside. The force struck her, enveloping her in fire, and she screamed as the blow sent her reeling backward and her freshly healed wounds ripped open again. Unseen hands caught her and held her upright, but they, too, shouted in pain as they touched Mac Ard's blaze. Jenna held Lamh Shabhala aloft in futile defiance, gathering power in the fist of her mind and sending it smashing down to where she sensed Mac Ard standing-but the other clochs inter-posed themselves, shunting the energy aside or absorbing it themselves. She could feel their realization that victory was to be theirs, that they were enough to overwhelm Lamh Shabhala. Their colors circled her, like hun-gry wolves harrying an injured but still dangerous storm deer stag. They would come in for the final kill now, and Jenna found that the anger inside her, even toward Mac Ard, had dissolved into resignation. She hadn't wanted this fight in the first place, and people all around her were dying, all because of the cloch she held. .
the men around the mage-demon hacked at it,
but it kicked them aside as if they were bothersome flies. It leaped upon the lava-creature, and Jenna saw its clawed hands grasp the glowing head and twist it. A sound came like stones splitting, and MacEagan’s clock- created creature was gone. She saw MacEagan, several yards away, collapse as Alby wailed, dropped his sword, and sank down alongside him, cradling the unconscious tiarna in his lap. The mage-demon began rampaging through the Inishlanders closest to the gate, and Jenna saw men starting to retreat in panic into the gathering night, pushing back against the ranks behind them. .
. . her cloch-vision was filled with the lights of the Tuathian Holders. She gathered a shield around her; they broke it down. Lamh Shabhala was weakening now; she was using its stores quickly.
She could prepare a final stroke, perhaps aiming it at Mac Ard, or she could simply allow it to happen-quickly and hopefully without too much pain. The mage-demon had fastened its eyes on her, and was plowing through the soldiers between it and her. .
. . now. It’s better that we die now, she told herself and her unborn child. 1/ we die, this ends. The Tuathians will have what they want, and Inish Thuaidh will have to retreat and then negotiate for peace, but the battle will end. In the final tally, we will have saved hundreds of lives. Won’t that be better. .?
. . but there was something else in Lamh Shabhala’s vision now, mov-ing swiftly toward them from the tumbled rocks at the feet of the moun-tain close to the keep, and there was the sound of rocks clashing together in furious handclaps, a storm of sound, and mingled with it a musical warbling that Jenna remembered well. She blinked, wonderingly. The Creneach. .!
In their valley near Thall Coill, she had never seen them move this quickly. They were surprisingly graceful despite their size and appearance, their craggy bodies sliding among the amazed Inishlanders. The mage-demon howled, fluttered its leathery wings and flung itself at them; one of the Creneach slapped at it with a bouldered hand and the mage-demon shattered like glass. Several more of them went to the gates of the keen The archers
