of Knob top. The wind died as a few glowing eyes stared back at them from near the bend in the lane and disappeared again.
The horde had passed.
'Wind sprites,' O'Deoradhain said. His voice was hushed and awed, as if he were standing in one of the Mother-Creator's chapels. Jenna looked at him in puzzlement. 'My great-mam used to tell me tales at night, and she spoke of eyes in the dark, and horns, and the wind as they rushed by in their hunts. I thought the stories she told me were all legends and myths.'
He shook his head. 'Now I think the legends were only sleeping.'
Chapter 32: Ballintubber Changed
THE next morning, they walked up the High Road to the village. The morning was a drizzle of mist and fog that beaded on their clocas and hair, and the spring’s warmth seemed to have fled. As they approached, Jenna began to sense that something was wrong. It was the silence that bothered her. A Ballintubber morning should have been alive with sound: the lowing of milch cows in their barns; the steely clatter of a hammer on hot iron or bronze from the smithy; the creak and rumble of produce carts going out to the fields; the shouts and hollers of children; laughter, conversations, greetings. .
There was nothing. She could see the buildings up the rise, but no sound wafted down from them to challenge the birdcalls or their footsteps on the muddy road. O’Deoradhain noticed it as well; he swept back his cloca and placed his hand on the hilt of his knife. 'Perhaps they all de-cided to sleep late this morning,' he said, and gave a bitter laugh at his own jest.
Not likely,' Jenna answered. Grimacing, she placed her right hand around the cloch. She opened the stone and let its energy flow outward, her own awareness drifting with it. O’Deoradhain had offered to teach her some of the craft of the cloudmage during their months in Doire Coill, and she had-grudgingly-accepted his tutelage. She wasn’t sure how good a pupil she’d been, suspicious of her teacher’s intentions and instruction, but she had learned a few skills. She could sense life in the way the power flowed, and that told her there were people nearby, though only a few.
And there was something else, at the edge of what she could detect: a pull and bending in her consciousness, as if another cloch were out there as well. She brought up the walls that O’Deoradhain had taught her to create around the cloch, but at that moment, the hint of another presence vanished. She put her attention there, to the south and east, but it was gone. Perhaps it had never been there at all.
She opened her hand and her eyes. A shiver of
discomfort traveled from wrist to shoulder, and she groaned. 'Jenna?'
'I'm fine,' she told O'Deoradhain sharply. 'Come on; there's no one there we need to be concerned with.' She began walking rapidly toward the cluster of buildings.
Things had changed. The High Road was marked with stone flags through the village, but grass grew high between the flat rocks. Dogs would usually have come running to greet newcomers, but the only dog Jenna glimpsed-black and white and painfully reminiscent of Kesh- was bedraggled and thin, skulking away with lowered tail and ears as soon as it caught a glimpse of them. The Mullin house, near the outskirts of the village, hadn't been whitewashed this spring as Tom and his sons usually did, and the thatch roof sagged badly just over the doorway. The door hung on one hinge, half-opened and leading into a dark interior. 'Hello,' Jenna called as they passed, but no one came out.
'Not the place you remember, is it?' O'Deoradhain ventured. 'You're certain there are people here?'
'Aye,' Jenna answered grimly. 'Near the tavern,
I think.'
'I'd be drinking if I lived here.'
Jenna gave him an irritated glance; he stared blandly back at her. Turn-ing her back on the man, she walked quickly to Tara's Tavern. The village square was overgrown and shabby, but peat smoke curled from the chim-ney of the inn and she could smell bacon frying. The stone steps leading up to the door were achingly familiar, and she pushed open the door and entered.
'By the Mother-Jenna?' Tara's voice cut through the dimness inside, and the woman set down a tray of glasses with a clatter and a crash, and she came running from behind the bar. She stopped an arm's length away from Jenna and looked her up and down, her mouth open. 'Would you look at you-all dressed up in a Riocha's clothes, and that silver chain around your neck.' Tara's gaze snagged on Tara's scarred right arm, and the mouth closed. Behind her, O'Deoradhain entered, and Tara took a step back. 'You've. . you've not changed a bit,' Tara finished, and Jenna smiled wanly at the obvious lie. 'Sit down, sit down. You and your..
companion take that table over there, or any you want. It's not like we're going to have a crowd, though once people hear that you've come back, I expect we'll see as good a one as I've had all year. I have bacon going in the pan, and good eggs, and biscuits I just made this morning. I'll get me tea for you… Sit.. ' Tara turned and scurried into the kitchen;
Jenna shrugged at O'Deoradhain.
'It's a better breakfast than we're likely to have for a while,' she told him. 'If it's not our last.'
Jenna sniffed. 'I know these people,
O'Deoradhain. They're my friends.'
'They were once, aye. But friendship can be as hard to hold onto as a salmon in a stream.' He didn't say more, but slid behind the table nearest the door. She noticed that O'Deoradhain sat with his back to the wall where he could see both the door and the rest of the room, and his hand stayed on the hilt of his dagger. She took a chair across from him.
They weren't alone. There were two other tables occupied, one by Erin the Healer, who lived to the north of the village. He nodded to Jenna as if seeing her was no more unusual than seeing any of the rest of Ballintubber's residents. At the other table were two men she didn't recognize; travelers, evidently, since they had packs sitting next to their chairs. A head poked out from the kitchen: Tara's son Eliath. He was a few inches taller than Jenna remembered, and a new, puckered scar meandered from his forehead to the base of his jaw. 'Hey Jenna! Mam said you were out here.'
'Eliath! It's good to see you. .'
He grinned and came over to the table. He glanced at O'Deoradhain, and the grin faded to a careful smile before he turned back to Jenna. 'Good to see you, too. Everyone thought you and your mam were dead, when the Troubles started. Is your mam. .
?'
'She's fine. She's in Lar Bhaile.'
The grin returned. 'Lar Bhaile? That's where Ellia went. She married Coelin Singer, did you know that?'
'I know,' Jenna said, forcing a smile. 'I saw her, big with child.'
Tara had come up with a tray loaded with steaming mugs of tea and platters of food. She set them down on the table. 'You saw my Ellia?' she asked. 'Did she look well? Did she ask after us? We didn’t. .' Tara blushed. 'I’m afraid we didn’t part on the best of terms, and I haven’t heard from her since.'
She looked lovely and wonderful and happy, and they’re living in a fine house in the town,' Jenna responded, giving them the lie she knew Tara wanted desperately to hear. 'She’ll be a mam soon, probably already is by now, since I saw her last a few months ago. Coelin’s even sung for the RI, and for the Tanaise Rig when he visited there. She told me to give you her love when I came back to Ballintubber and to say that she missed you.'
'Truly?' Tara sighed. 'I should go there,' she said. 'The Mother-Creator knows there’s not much here. Not since the Troubles and all the death. I should go and see her and the babe. And your mam, too. Maybe this summer, once the spring rains have stopped.'
She wouldn’t go, Jenna knew. Like the rest of them, she would never leave Ballintubber. 'I’m certain they’d love that. Both of them.'
Tara nodded. 'You know, Jenna, I thought you were sweet on that Coelin yourself. The boy had half the young women of the village hanging on him, and my Ellia no different.'
'I didn’t have a chance with him,' Jenna answered. The smile was difficult to maintain. 'Not with Ellia.'
Another sigh. Then Tara stirred. 'But here I am prattling on about things and your food’s getting cold. Eat, and drink that tea before it turns to ice-it’s a cold day for the season, ’tis.' Despite the words, Tara seemed content to stay there, standing before the table. 'Are you back home? Will you be building a new place on your mam’s land?' she asked, and her gaze drifted significantly to O’Deoradhain.
