O’Deoradhain is well known around the west of the lough. And I know you because I was at the Taisteal’s camp last night seeing if they had anything useful, and Clannhri Sheehan has a mouth large enough to swallow all of Lough Lar itself.' He smiled and laughed at his own jest, and the harsh lines of his face relaxed in his amusement. 'And if it allays your fears, I’m hardly a threat to you, Tiarna. I doubt my knife is a match for your sword.' O’Deoradhain swept his cloca aside, showing them that the only weapon he wore was the knife Jenna had seen the night before.
'In my experience, a knife kills as easily as any weapon,' Mac Ard told the man, but his voice was easier. 'But a freelanded man loyal to the Ri shouldn’t be left alone to brigands, and the High Road’s open to all, if you’d like to ride with us.'
Jenna could have spoken. She saw O’Deoradhain’s gaze flick toward her again, and she set her mouth in a firm, thin line of disapproval. Yet she held back. O’Deoradhain flicked the reins, and his horse moved out onto the road. For a time, he rode alongside Mac Ard, and Maeve, and they conversed in low voices. Then O’Deoradhain dropped back to where Jenna trailed behind. 'And how are you today?' he asked. 'Is the arm better?'
'It's fine,' Jenna answered shortly. She didn't look at him, keeping her gaze forward to the road winding along the lakeshore. Lough Lar was narrowing, now no more than a few hundred strides across as they neared the falls of the Duan.
'So it seems you didn't mention our encounter last night to the tiarna.'
'I didn't think it that important. I'd forgotten it myself until I saw you this morning.' She answered him with the haughtiness she thought a Riocha would display. Now she did look over at him, and found him watching her with a strange smile on his lips. 'Interesting that you'd hap-pen to be going to Ath Iseal today, and at the same time.'
'What would you think if I told you that wasn't entirely coincidence?'
'I'd wonder if I should make up for my error last night and tell Tiarna Mac Ard.'
''Tiarna Mac Ard?' An awfully formal way to refer to your father,' O'Deoradhain commented. Her face must have shown something at that, for he lifted his eyebrows. 'Ah… I see I've been mistaken.
Evidently Clannhri Sheehan didn't know as much as he pretended he did. You never can trust the Taisteal. I thought… '
'I don't care what you thought.'
'This does shed a different light on things, though, I must say,' O'Deoradhain persisted. 'What is your name, then?'
She remembered that Mac Ard had commented on their name being: Inish, and that O'Deoradhain had suggested that he thought her an Inishlander as well. She considered giving him a false name, but it didn't seem to matter now. Her mam would probably tell him, if he asked, or Mac Ard. 'Aoire,' she said. 'Jenna Aoire.'
The startled look on his face surprised her with its severity. For a moment, his eyes widened, and he seemed almost to rise up in his saddle. Then he caught himself, his features masked in deliberate neutrality. 'Aoire. That's an Inish name, 'tis. So my guess wasn't so wrong after all.'
'Aye,' she admitted. 'My father's parents were from the island, or so he claimed, though Mam says that they left the island when they were young.'
O'Deoradhain's head nodded reflectively. 'No doubt,' he said. 'No doubt.' He shifted in the saddle, adjusted his cloca. 'We should be in Ath Iseal by midafternoon,' he said. 'We'll be passing the falls in a bit; they're not as pretty this time of year without all the green, but they'll be impres-sive enough if you've never seen them before.' It was obvious that he intended to change the subject, and Jenna was content to allow that to happen.
They heard the falls long before they saw them. Here, the High Road lifted in short, winding rises up a low series of hills, until they stood well above the level of Lough Lar. Away to the south stretched the dark waters of the lough; to the north, the road was hidden behind yet another set of low hills.
Westward stretched checkered patches of farmland, meadow, and woods, and beyond that, like a green wall, was the forest of Doire Coill, lurking on the horizon.
A trail ran away from the High Road to a ledge overlooking the falls, and Mac Ard turned his horse in. 'We've made good time this morning, and there's not a better day to see the falls,' he said. 'We'll eat here.' As Mac Ard rummaged in the saddlebags for the food, Jenna and her mam walked to the end of the ledge, where the land fell off steeply toward the lough, so that they were looking down at the tops of the trees below. Ahead and to their left, the River Duan splashed and roared as it spilled down a deep cleft in the green hills, cascading white and foaming to the lake below while a white mist rose around the waters. The sunlight sparked rainbows in the mist that wavered, gleamed, and disappeared again. 'Ah, Mam, 'tis beautiful,' Jenna breathed. The wind sent a tendril of mist across her face, and she laughed in shock and surprise. 'And wet.'
'And dangerous, if you get too near the edge.' O'Deoradhain spoke, coming up next to them. He pointed down toward the lake. 'Not two months ago, they brought up a man from Ath Iseal who slipped over the edge and went tumbling down to his death. He was looking at the falls and not his feet, unfortunately.'
Both Jenna and Maeve took a step back. 'The mist has a way of en-chanting, they say,' O'Deoradhain continued. 'The Duan weeps in
'Why in sorrow?' Jenna asked, interested despite herself.
' ’Twas here, they say, well back in the Before, that an army out of Inish Thuaidh met with the forces of the RI of what was then the kingdom of Bhaile; RI Aodhfin, I think his name was. The river ran red with blood that day, the stain washing pink on the shores of the lough itself, and the skies above were bright with the lightnings of the clochs na thintri. Lamh Shabhala itself was here, held by an Inishlander cloudmage whose name is lost to the people around here.'
The name of the cloch made Jenna narrow her eyes in suspicion, and she thought she felt the hidden stone pulse in response. Aye. . The voice, a whisper, sounded in Jenna’s head. Eilis, I was. . 'Eilis,' Jenna said, speaking the name. 'That was the Holder’s name. Eilis.'
O’Deoradhain raised an eyebrow. 'Perhaps. It’s as good a name as any, I suppose. You know this story, then?'
'No,' Jenna answered, then shook her head. The voice was gone, and Jenna wondered whether she’d actually heard it, or if she imagined it in the sound of the falls. Maeve was looking at her curiously, as well. 'Maybe I heard it at Tara’s one night. One of Coelin’s songs-he was always sing-ing about battles and romances from other times.'
O’Deoradhain shrugged. 'Whatever the name, Aodhfin wrested Lamh Shabhala away from the Inishlander cloudmage during the midst of battle; then, for two hundred and fifty years, Lamh Shabhala was held here in Talamh an Ghlas. They say that the mist of the falls is the tears of the cloudmage who lost Lamh Shabhala, and that’s why it’s dangerous. He, or she,' he added with a glance at Jenna, who was watching the water spilling down the ravine, 'still seeks revenge for the loss.'
'That’s a pretty tale,' Maeve said. 'And an old one.'
This is an old place,' O’Deoradhain answered. He gestured straight out from the ledge. 'They say that back when the first people came here to the lough, the falls were out here. But the river’s hungry, and it eats away a few feet of the cliffs every year and so
the lough keeps growing at this end. One day, thousands and thousands of years from now, the falls will be all the way back to Ath Iseal. We look at the land, and from our perspective, it all seems eternal: the mountains, the rivers, the lakes-they are there at our birth, and there looking the same at our death. But the stones themselves see that everything is always changing, and barely see us or our battles and legends at all. We're just ghosts and wisps of fog to them.'
'Ah, you have a poet in you,' Maeve said. 'Tis well said.'
O'Deoradhain touched his forehead, smiling at Maeve. 'Thank you, Bantiarna. It's my mam's gift. She had a wonderful way with tales, espe-cially those from the north. She was from Inish Thuaidh, as I told your daughter.'
Jenna refused to look back at him. 'An Inishlander?' Maeve said. 'So was my late husband-or his parents were from there, anyway. But he wasn't one for stories, I'm afraid. He didn't speak much about his family or the island. I don't think he'd ever been there himself.'
'Perhaps not, but I've heard the name Aoire before, in some of the tales my mam used to tell me.' He seemed as though he were about to say more and Jenna looked away from the falls toward him, but Mac Ard came striding up, and O'Deoradhain went silent at the tiarna's approach.
