back to Jenna. 'You will meet the
shades of other Holders, inevitably, especially if you go to Lar Bhaile as you intend. And I’ll warn you; some you will not like and they will not like you. Some will smile and seem fair, but their advice will be as rotten as their hearts. The dead, you see, are not always sane.' She smiled as she said that, a strange expression on her face. 'Be careful.'
'Why didn’t Riata tell me this?' Jenna asked. 'There’s so much I need to know.'
'If he told you all, you would have despaired,'
Eilis answered. 'You’re new to Lamh Shabhala, and you are a First besides.' She shuddered. 'I wouldn’t have wanted to be a First.'
'Riata… he said that the stone was a curse, especially for the First.'
'He was right.'
Jenna shuddered. 'That scares me, the way you say the words.'
Her gaze was calm. 'Then you’re wise.'
'Is the cloch evil, then?'
Eilis laughed, a sound like trickling water. 'Lamh Shabhala-or any of the clochs na thintri, for that matter-don’t know good or evil, child. They simply are. They give power, and power can be put to whatever use a Holder wishes. Lamh Shabhala is First and Last, and so the power it can lend is also greatest. As to evil. .'A smile. 'You bring to the stone what you have inside you, that’s all. In any case, evil depends on which side you stand-what one person calls evil, another calls justice. Let me see it ' she said. 'Let me see Lamh Shabhala again.'
Jenna felt reluctant. She shook her head, the barest motion, and Eilis frowned, taking a step forward. 'I mean you no harm, Jenna,' she said. 'Let me see the cloch I once wielded myself.'
Jenna felt for the stone, closing her fingers around it through the cloth that hid it. 'If Lamh Shabhala has the greatest power of all the clochs, how was it taken from you?'
Eilis’ laugh was bitter now. 'I said its power was greatest, but even the strongest can be overpowered by numbers or make a fatal mistake. Lamh Shabhala is chief among the Clochs Mor, the major clochs, but there are others that are nearly as
powerful. Three of the Clochs Mor were arrayed against me, and I was isolated. Betrayed by. .' She scowled, her face harsh.'. . my own stupidity. By listening to my heart, as Riata said it would be. And so I died. He laid me here, the new Holder, the one who had betrayed me: Aodhfin O Liathain. My lover. He placed me here after he killed me and took Lamh Shabhala for himself. He kissed my cold lips with tears in his eyes. If you should happen to meet him through the cloch, tell him that I still curse his name and the night I first gave myself to him.' Another step, and Eilis' hand reached out toward Jenna. 'My cloch. Let me see it once more.'
Shaking her head, Jenna backed up again. She wasn't certain why she felt this reluctance-perhaps the harsh eagerness in Eilis' features, or the way she had referred to the stone as hers. But Jenna felt a compulsion to keep the stone hidden-too many people had asked to see it already. Eilis took another step closer, and again Jenna retreated. There was a strange yet familiar roaring behind her. She glanced quickly over her shoulder, but there was nothing there, only the white-lit, ethereal fog. She could feel Eilis touching her memories again, and she tried to close her mind to the intrusion. The ghost laughed at her effort. 'You're indeed young and unpracticed,' she said. 'So much to learn. .' Her voice was honey and perfume. 'I know your mind. You showed Riata the stone, didn't you? And Seancoim and that tiarna with you. Why not me?'
Jenna, reluctantly, reached beneath her clothing and pulled out the stone. 'Here,' she said to Eilis. 'Here it is.'
Eilis stared at the cloch, a hand at her breast as if she were having difficulty breathing. 'Aye,' she whispered. 'That is Lamh Shabhala. And you don't know yet how to use it.'
Jenna shook her head. 'No. Can you tell me?'
'I can't,' she answered, but then her eyes narrowed. 'Or perhaps I can. Let me hold it. Give it to me. .' She stretched her arm out.
'No.' Jenna closed her fingers around the cloch, fisting it in her right hand.
'Give it to me. .' Eilis said again. Her hand came closer, and Jenna took a final step backward.
Cold water hammered at Jenna's head and
shoulders, driving her back-ward. The falls tore her away from the ledge and bore her under even as she screamed. She felt herself flung downward with the water, and she knew she was dead.
In that instant, the cloch burned in her hand, and she felt it open to her, as if she became part of the stone itself, her mind whirling with the patterns on her hand, with the identical patterns of the cloch, with the energy locked within it borrowed from the mage-lights. This was different than when she had unleashed lightning on Knobtop or when she had killed the soldiers. Then, there had been no conscious thought involved. This time, she felt herself will the cloch to release its energy, and it an-swered. The water of the Duan still pounded at her, unrelenting and mer-ciless, but she was no longer falling. .
Now you know. . Eilis’ voice whispered in her head.
Now you know. .
Somehow, impossibly, Jenna was standing on the grass above the falls, in the sunlight. The cloch was no longer in her hand. There was no ring on her ringer. She felt at the waist of her skirt: there it was, the familiar lump of cloch, and circular hardness alongside it: Eilis’ ring.
Someone was crying, weeping in pain, and she realized it was her.
'Jenna! There you are! We’ve been calling… By the Mother-Creator, girl, you’re soaked through! What’s the matter?' Maeve came running up to her. Jenna sank into her embrace.
'My arm. .' she cried. 'It hurts so much, Mam.' Sharp, red agony stabbed at her, radiating from her hand downward and into her chest. She shivered with cold, the wind biting at her drenched clothing. Her vision was colored with it, like a veil over her eyes. With Jenna leaning against her mother, they moved down away from the falls. As they turned, Jenna glanced down.
The falls flared white as the water cascaded over the edge of the ravine, and the mist touched her face like tears.
Chapter 13: Smoke and Ruin
A STRIPE later, new wrappings with Seancoim's poultice slathered on the cloth and a mug of the anduilleaf brew had dulled the pain enough so that Jenna could ride. The wan fall sun had dried her clothes somewhat. She told the others that she'd slipped and fallen on the arm- the story appeared to satisfy them, and if she seemed wetter than the mist alone could have managed, no one mentioned the fact.
It was nearing midafternoon when they returned to the High Road. 'A long lunch,' Mac Ard said worriedly when they finally were riding north again. 'It will be dark before we reach the ford at this rate. We still may not reach Ath Iseal tonight.'
Jenna was silent on the ride. Again Mac Ard and Maeve rode together, and O'Deoradhain remained behind with Jenna, but his attempts to draw her into conversation failed. In truth, she barely heard him or saw the landscape as they approached the ford of the Duan. She held the reins of the horse loosely in her left hand, trusting the mare to keep to the road, and stared down at her bandaged arm, letting the fingers stretch and close, stretch and close. She traced the patterns of the scars with her gaze, feeling them even though they were hidden under folds of cotton.
Her thoughts were on Lamh Shabhala. The other times she had tapped the stone's power, she had felt no control of the process. But now. . Even without holding the stone, she could touch it with her mind, as if she and the cloch were linked. She could place her thoughts there and imagine herself sinking into the unguessed depths of the cloch. She could see power flaring between the crystalline structures within the stone, and she could direct that force: she could send it flaring outward and control where it went, what it touched, what it did.
And she could see, at the center of the stone, a hidden well of another power, one that was as yet half-filled, and when she looked there with her mind, she could feel gossamer, invisible threads running away from Lamh Shabhala into the world. At the end of those threads, she knew, lay the other clochs na thintri, the stones of lightning, waiting for Lamh Shabhala to restore their power.
She could not imagine how she would handle that huge reservoir, if the energy that already ran through Lamh Shabhala hurt her so much already. At the same time, she knew that she could not throw the stone away or give it to someone else. Lamh Shabhala wouldn’t allow that. She would not allow it. Even contemplating that action made her arm throb through the veil of anduilleaf. She had opened the stone, but Lamh Shabhala had also opened
