’Please. .' She was crying now: from the pain, from the refusal. Seancoim, it hurts. . You don’t know how it hurts. .'
His blind eyes seemed to stare at her. Callused fingers brushed her cheek. On his shoulder, she could see Denmark, the bird’s black eyes giving back twin, tiny reflections of her face. 'Jenna, what’s hurting you most right now is the lack of the anduilleaf and not the sky-magic. should never have given the herb to you in the first place. Some people
I can t stop once they take it, and eventually the craving becomes so intense that it drives you mad. You will have to get through this without it.'
'I can’t,' she wept. She huddled in a fetal position, cradling her right arm against herself, but nothing would warm its cold flesh. Nothing would ever make it normal again. The chill seemed to have crept all the way to her shoulder, and she shivered. She couldn’t see Seancoim any-more; her vision was
narrowing again, as it had in the keep, all her periph-eral vision gone until there was nothing there but what was directly in front of her. The headache raged in her skull, and she was afraid that if she moved, her head would burst. 'Seancoim. .' she wailed.
'I'm here,' his voice answered, and she heard his staff clattering against stone as he moved. 'I'll stay with you. Here, drink this.'
He pressed a bowl to her lips. She sipped the warm liquid, hoping irrationally that despite his words it was anduilleaf. It was not: sweet mint tea, with a hint of something else. She swallowed, more eagerly than she expected, for the taste made her realize how hungry and thirsty she was. He gently laid her head back again. 'Seancoim, just this once. The mage-lights… it hurts…'
'I know it does,' he told her. 'But you can bear it.'
'I can't' she answered, but the words were hard to speak. She was sleepy; she could feel the weariness spreading through her, radiating out from her belly. 'Where's O'Deoradhain?' she asked.
'He'll tell you what's happened…'
'He's here. Just outside.' Seancoim's face was receding, as if she were falling away from him. 'And he's told me everything.'
'It hurts,' Jenna said again.
'I know,' he answered, but his face was so tiny and his voice so soft and it was easier to close her eyes and give in to the urge to sleep.
'Seancoim?'
A hand brushed lank hair away from her face.
'No, it's Ennis,' O'Deoradhain's voice answered. 'Seancoim's gone for a bit. Should I go look for him?'
Her head felt huge and heavy, and the headache still pounded. Her right arm was a log of ice cradled against her stomach. She tried to lift it and couldn't. She couldn't feel her fingers at all. Her body was trembling and despite the chill air, she could feel sweat breaking out on her fore-head. A soft cloth brushed it away. Jenna licked dry, cracked lips. 'Thank you,' she husked.
'Feeling better?'
Her left hand felt for the cloch around her neck. When she felt the she clasped it with a sigh. 'Worse,
I think. I'm not sure.' 'Here then. He left this; said to have you drink it when you woke up.' The bowl touched her lips again and she drank the sweet brew. Afterward, she lay back. O'Deoradhain looked down at her worriedly. There was a across his forehead: a line of dried blood with black thread sewn through it to hold the gaping edges shut, and both his eyes were swollen nearly closed and blackened.
'What happened to you?' Jenna asked. 'Did the Ri's gardai. .?' O'Deoradhain shook his head. He touched the wound, his mouth twisting ruefully.
'No. After you took in the mage-lights, you collapsed, and this crow came flying past me and an ancient Bunus Muintir appeared right behind me. I thought he was about to attack or cast a spell. I drew my dagger, and all of a sudden the old bastard cracked me on the head with his damned staff, a lot faster and harder than an old blind man had any right to move. .'
Despite the pain, Jenna found herself chuckling at the image of Seancoim rapping O'Deoradhain over the head with his staff. O'Deoradhain frowned at first, then finally smiled back at her. 'I'm glad you find that funny. I assure you I didn't at the time.'
'If you wouldn't go pointing your weapon at people, it wouldn't have happened at all,'
Seancoim's voice answered from behind O'Deoradhain. A moment later, Denmark fluttered past O'Deoradhain to land at Jenna's left side. She lifted her hand to stroke the glossy black feathers, and the crow cawed back at her. 'He was rather insistent about protecting you,' Seancoim told her. 'Even when he'd been knocked on the skull. Doesn't listen well, either. I had to hit him twice more. I nearly left him there, but I decided that if he brought you this far, he deserved better.' Seancoim shooed O'Deoradhain aside. He crouched down next to Jenna's pallet. His gray-bearded, flat face was solemn. The cataract-whitened eyes gleamed in a nest of wrinkled brown flesh. 'It's time to get up,' he told her. Jenna shook her head. 'No. Let me lie here. I couldn't. .' His gnarled, thick-knuckled hand reached down and took her arm. His grip surprised her with its strength as he pulled her up to a sitting position. Her head whirled with the movement, and for a moment she thought she would be sick. 'Breathe,' he told her. 'Slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. That’s it.'
She could feel his hand on one side, O’Deoradhain’s on the other, lifting and she shook her head again.
'It hurts. I don’t want to. .'
'You will,' Seancoim answered. 'You are stronger than you think. And there is something you must see.' Suddenly she was standing on weak, wobbly legs. The room, she saw for the first time, was less a cave than deep, sheltered hollow below an overhanging limestone cliff. Ahead of her down a grassy embankment was a creek, and beyond that the dark tangle of oaks and brush of the forest.
They helped her walk down the embankment and out past the vine-fringed cliff wall into sunshine. Jenna squinted, but the heat on her shoulders felt good. The day was warm for the season; she could not even see her breath before her. 'Sit here,' Seancoim said, and Jenna was happy to do so, sinking down into the blanket of grass. 'Look. . Straight across the stream, near the tallest oak.'
Jenna saw it then, in a shifting of shadows as it moved. At first she thought it was simply a stag deer, but then it came out from under the trees, and Jenna gasped as she realized that the animal was huge, taller than O’Deoradhain at the shoulders, with a rack of massive antlers that echoed the great branches of the oaks. Its coat was a brilliant russet with a white, powerful breast, and the black, gleaming hooves were larger than Jenna’s hands. The creature was magnificent, almost regal, as it walked slowly down to the stream’s edge and lowered its crowned head to drink for a moment. Then the head lifted again to gaze across the river to the three people with eyes that seemed calm and intelligent.
'That’s a fia stoirm,' Seancoim said quietly, answering Jenna’s unasked question. 'The storm deer. In the Bunus Muintir histories, they speak of herds of them, their hooves so loud pounding against the earth that it sounded like thunder.
When the sky-magic died, so did they.'
'Our stories are the same,' O’Deoradhain said.
'From the Before, cen-turies ago. But if they all died
!!
'Not all,' Seancoim answered. 'A few survived, hiding in the oldest places. When I was young, I
once glimpsed a storm deer deep in Doire Coill. But in the past year, I have seen dozens, and not in the depths of the forest but here near the edge. I have seen other things, too, that were once legend and are not as beautiful and gentle as these: dire wolves, who have a language of their own; boars with long tusks as sharp as knives, and whose bristles are gold; snakes with white scales and red eyes, as long as any of us are tall. From my brothers to the west,
I have learned that a dragon's scream was heard on one of the islands in the Duan Mouth. And from another, that blue seals were gathering along the northern coast. Jenna remembered the seals she'd seen in Lough Lar, the way their satin fur had gleamed. She glanced at O'Deoradhain, but he would not look at her. 'The myths are awakening again,' Seancoim continued. 'Things walk the land that have not been seen in many generations. Even the trees of Doire Coill are more awake now than I have ever felt them.'
Almost as if in response to Seancoim's words, the wind rose slightly and shook the branches of the oaks. The stag's nostrils widened as it sniffed the breeze. The creature took a last look at them before bounding away, its
