sent a hail of arrows down at them, but the shafts clattered and broke on their smooth, dark skin. The Creneach placed their hands on the great doors and their fingers seemed to sink into the wood as if the oak were no more substantial than newly-churned butter: they ripped the gates open, splinters and shards of reinforcing metal flying, the portcullis torn out and flung aside as if it were made of sticks. The Inish troops cheered; they began to surge forward again. A ferocious battle was quickly underway at the ruins of the gate as the defending soldiers within came forward to meet the Inishlanders.
'Holder of the All-Heart!' Jenna heard Treoral’s voice, mingled with the warbling sound of its true language. 'We tasted the need of the All-Heart, and so we came.' Jenna wanted to answer, but the clochs had not forgotten her with the appearance of the Creneach; as she heard the call and felt Treoral’s presence approaching from behind her, they attacked again as one. Forms and shapes and colors swept over her like a tide, too quickly for her to do more than glimpse them. A dire wolf flew at her; she split it asunder with a blade of energy; lines of bright color wrapped around her like a snake; she tore them away. The yellow dragon coiled above her; the black funnel began to draw power from her; Mac Ard's fire spitting at her like great glowing meteors.
In the cloch-vision, an ebon wall interposed itself between Jenna and the others. They shattered against it, energy flaring in a mad explosion. For a moment, the wall held, but the massed clochs continued to strike, battering it. With her own eyes, she saw Terrain shamble forward to stand facing her, and she heard the shrill trill of Treoral’s voice. 'The Soft-flesh must give in to the heart that you hold in your hand,' it said. 'Find Ceile inside. You must-'
'I can't,' she told Terrain, not knowing if the Creneach could hear or understand her. 'It's too late.'
'If not for you, then for the life you carry,'
Terrain answered. 'You can, if-' Its hand plunged into its own chest, ripping a fissure in its body, and emerged again holding a tiny blue crystal. 'Give this to her. . Treoral’s voice went silent as the clochs broke down the wall. Jenna heard the sound of falling stone; before her, the bodily form of Terrain collapsed into a heap of rocks and boulders. The crystal fell to the ground.
The Clochs Mor surged toward her.
THEY hammered her down. They took her cowering to her knees. Jenna shrilled her pain to the world, nearly losing her grip on Lamh Shabhala as she fell. Her own sight was gone now; there was only the terrible light and agony of the cloch-world, and she sank down inside Lamh Shabhala as she had with An Phionos at Bethiochnead, desperately seeking a place to hide from the assault. The voices of the Holders shrieked at her or laughed or shouted contradictory advice.
She burrowed deeper, seeking escape. The Clochs Mor followed her. She tumbled into a crystalline, twisting well. The faces of the ancient cloudmage Holders flashed past her: the Daoines, then the Bunus Muintir, then tribes and peoples for whom she had no names at all, falling deeper into the past. And there, at the bottom. .
Lamh Shabhala throbbed like a live thing, waves of colors pulsating around her. This was the place.she had glimpsed during the Scrudu, the place she’d not been able to reach. She went toward it as the Clochs Mor continued to pummel her, and again she was held back. 'No…' a voice whispered. 'You’re not allowed here. You have not passed the test.'
'Then I’ll die!' she shouted back.
The voice sounded amused. 'We thought that no longer mattered to you.' The energy of the Clochs Mor crackled around Jenna, and she pushed back at them. She could feel the baby in her womb, frightened and in pain because Jenna was in pain, suffering because she suffered. The voice at the heart of Lamh Shabhala seemed amused. 'So that’s why you fight, even though you still don’t understand. What have you brought me?'
Jenna could only shake her head in confusion and terror. 'I don't know what you mean? The clock?'
'No. There, in your hand.' Jenna could see blue light radiating from between the fingers of her left hand-the crystal that Terrain had pulled from itself. She held it out, felt the presence take it from her. The light danced away in darkness. 'Ah, such a gift…' The voice seemed to sigh 'So my children ask me to help you. How can one refuse one's own…' The voice faded, and Jenna thought it had gone. Then the feeling of nearness crawled over Jenna's skin again. 'AH the hearts of my children connect to the mage-lights through you. You fight yourself when you fight them.'
'What do you mean?'
'I will give you a gift for the sake of my children, though I don't know if you are capable of using it. This once, in this moment, you must accept what they give you,' the voice answered. It was sounding fainter now, and Jenna felt herself being pushed away, rising through the levels of the cloch once more back to reality. 'Accept it…' the voice said again, a whisper.
Jenna lay like a broken doll on the cold ground before the keep. The power of the Clochs Mor played around her, keeping away the Inish sol-diers who were trying to reach her and pull her free. The pile of stones that had been Terrain were at her right hand, and the mage-lights had appeared in the sky above. She could feel the threads connecting all the clochs na thintri: running through Lamh Shabhala and into the sky, creat-ing loops of energy, endless circles and spirals. .
'This once, in this moment, you must accept what they give you…' That's what the voice of Lamh Shabhala had said.
Jenna let the shields fall. The energy poured into her and through her. She marveled at the feel of it. She seemed to have been thrown entirely away from her body into some new reality where she was with all the clochs, and their energy filled her, but it no longer hurt, not with the mage-lights in the sky. Instead, she had become a vessel, and they filled her to overflowing. She held the power in her hand.
She rose. She found five of the Clochs Mor and took hold of them.
She thought.
The wind blew cold and salty. The mage-lights flared and vanished, but
their radiance seemed to remain, illuminating the cliffside and the weathered, ruined statue of Bethiochnead.,
Six people stood there, each with a cloch na thintri in his or her hand all of them battered and bruised and bloody, all but one of them with confusion on their faces.
'Where are we?' Banrion Aithne asked. She stood next to MacEagan and Moister Cleurach, both of whom stared up at the statue. 'Holder, did you do this?'
'Aye, I did,' Jenna answered. 'I think I did. I’m not entirely certain.' Power filled Lamh Shabhala as it never had before, so potent that her body seemed to vibrate with it. She felt like a piece of parchment trying to hold back a frothing torrent. Is this what it would have been like if I’d passed the Scrudu? she wondered. How can anyone handle this? The energy buzzed in her head, making her giddy and delirious. Her face burned with it so that she was surprised that she wasn’t literally glowing. Her voice seemed too loud and too fast. She wanted to laugh. 'Banrion, Tiarna MacEagan, Moister Cleurach, this is Nevan
O Liathain, the Tanaise Rig, and Tiarna Padraic Mac Ard. And this,' she swept a hand about to indicate the cliffside on which they stood, 'is the place they call Bethiochnead, in Thall Coill.'
Before she’d finished talking, she felt O Liathain’s Cloch Mor open; before he could use it, she clamped an ethereal hand around it, letting the power flow not to his stone but to her, the Tanaise Rig gaping in astonish-ment as nothing happened. The feel and color of the energy was all too familiar to Jenna, and she did laugh now, high and maniacal. 'Why, Ta-naise Rig,' Jenna said. The power of his cloch wriggled in the grasp of her mind, and she saw him grimace in pain and cry aloud, falling to his knees. 'So it was you who wielded the mage-demon. I should have known. I’m sorry, I really can’t allow him to walk here.'
Mac Ard and O Liathain were truly frightened; she could see it in their faces. MacEagan, Aithne, and Moister Cleurach seemed bewildered,
un-certain of whether they should attack the Tuathians or wait. Jenna could feel all the clochs; she held the strings to them in her mind like puppets, but they were puppets who had wills of their own and who fought the control. She could not hold them long, not when the energy ached to be used, rattling the bars of her mind. She heard her voice again. 'Tanaise Rig, you were right to name me the Mad Holder. You were right to call me dangerous. But you want to know why you're here now, don't you?' Jenna realized she was babbling, but she had to talk, had to find some way to dissipate at least some of the energy or it would consume her utterly. 'That's simple enough. I will have an end to this war. Now.'
Mac Ard and O Liathain looked at each other; O Liathain had risen shakily to his feet again. His voice, even through the fear, was still oily and smooth and dangerous. 'That's what we all want, isn't it, Holder? But it wasn't
