He drummed the table with his fingers. 'A dozen or more generations ago, I’m told, my own ancestors were among the last of the cloudmages as the mage-lights in the sky weakened. Then the lights vanished entirely, and with them the power to perform spells. If you listen to the old tales, with the lights also went other magics as well: that of mythical creatures and of hidden, ancient places. Now half the people think of those tales as myth and legend, no more than stories. At times, I’ve thought that, too. But looking at the lights, I felt. .' He tapped his chest, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. 'I felt them calling me, here. I went running down from the tower, and dragged the town’s Ald back up so that I could show him. ’By the Mother-Creator, those are mage- lights, Tiarna,’ he said. They can’t be anything else. After so long…’ I thought the poor old man might cry, he was so moved by the sight of them. So I asked the Ri’s leave to come here, because they called me, because I wanted to see where they’d chosen to return.' His eyes found Jenna, and again she felt the shock of that contact, as if his gaze could actually bruise her. 'I’m told that you were up there that night, on Knobtop.'
She wanted to shout denial, but couldn’t, not with her mam there. 'Aye,' she started to say, but the admission was more squeak than word. She cleared her throat. 'I was there.'
'And what did you see?'
'Lights, Tiarna Mac Ard. Beautiful lights, rippling and swaying.' She could not stop the awe the memory placed in her voice.
'And nothing more?'
'They flashed at the end, brighter than anything I'd ever seen. Then they were. .' Her shoulder lifted. 'Gone,' she finished. 'I told Kesh to bring the sheep along, and we came back here.'
Mac Ard ruffled Kesh's head and fed him a piece of the mutton. 'Strange,' he said. 'And nothing else happened? Nothing else. . un-usual?' His eyes held her. Jenna found herself thinking of the stone hid-den in the wall in their bedroom, not six strides away from Mac Ard, and of the cold lightning that flared from it and the red-haired man. She could feel her cheeks getting hot, and her mouth opened as if she wanted to speak, but she forced herself to remain silent as Mac Ard continued to stare. She thought that he could see through her, could sense the lie of omission that lay in her gut, burning, all the worse because now she was lying to a Riocha, one of the nobility of the land. Mac Ard's nostrils flared on his thin nose and he almost seemed to nod. Then he blinked and looked away, and the terror in her heart receded.
'How odd,' Mac Ard said, 'that the mage-lights would choose to reap-pear here.'
'I'm sure neither of us know why, Tiarna,' Maeve told him.
He pursed his lips. He glanced back once at Jenna before turning his attention to her mam. 'I'm sure you don't. Tell me this, Widow Aoire, did you know your husband's family well?'
Maeve shook her head. 'I was born and raised here. The truth, Tiarna, is that I know very little about them, and never at all met any of them. The farthest I've ever been from Ballintubber is Bacathair, a few months after my husband's death. I went there to see if the gardai could help me find out more about how he died, and who the murderers were.'
'And did the gardai help you?'
Jenna saw Maeve's head move softly from side to side. 'No. They had nothing more to tell me than I already knew, nor did they care much about the death of 'some Inishlander.''
Mac Ard nodded slowly, contemplatively. 'I've taken enough of your time and hospitality,' he said. 'Let me repay you. I understand that there's a
young man with an excellent voice who sings at the inn where I'm staying tonight. Come back there with me; be my guests for the evening, both of you. We can talk more there, about whatever you'd like.'
Jenna had to stop herself from grinning, both from relief that the tiar-na's interrogation seemed to be over, and at the suggestion to go to Tara's. Coelin had promised her a song, and she hadn't wanted to ask, with the awful weather. But if the tiarna insisted. .
'Oh, no, Tiarna,' Maeve started to say automatically, then glanced back at Jenna. He smiled at her and nodded, as if they shared a secret.
'Your daughter wants you to accept,' Mac Ard said. 'And I would be honored.'
'I don't-' Maeve began. Jenna tightened her arms around her moth-er's shoulders, and felt her sigh. 'I suppose we'd also be honored,' she said.
The rain had subsided to a bare, cold drizzle. Mac Ard brought his stallion out from the barn. 'You want to ride him?' he asked Jenna. She nodded, mutely. He picked her up, hands around her waist, and placed her side- ways astride the saddle, handing her the reins. He patted the muscular neck, glossy and as rich a brown as new- turned earth. 'Behave yourself, Conhal,' he told the horse, who snorted and shook his head, bridle jin-gling. 'That's a special young woman you hold.'
For a moment, Jenna wondered at that, but then Mac Ard clucked once at Conhal, and the horse started walking, startling Jenna. They moved up the lane to Tara's, Mac Ard and Maeve walking alongside. The tiarna seemed to be paying most of his attention to Maeve, Jenna noticed. His head inclined toward her, and they talked in soft voices that Jenna couldn't quite overhear, and he smiled and, once, he touched Maeve's arm. Her mam smiled in return and laughed, but Jenna noticed that Maeve also moved slightly away from the tiarna after the touch.
Jenna frowned. Her mam had never paid much attention to the other men in Ballintubber, though enough of them had certainly indicated their interest. She'd always rebuffed them-some gently, some not, but all of them firmly. But this dark man, this Mac Ard… He seemed to like Maeve, and he was Riocha, after all. Maeve had always told her
how Niall, her da, was strong and protective and loving, and she could imagine that this Mac Ard might be the same way. .
The conversation inside Tara’s stopped dead when Tiarna Mac Ard pushed open the door of the tavern so that Maeve and Jenna could enter, then, as quickly, the chatter resumed again as everyone pretended not to notice that the tiarna had brought company with him. Tara came out from behind the bar, and shooed away old man Buckles from one of the tables. 'What will you have, Tiarna Mac Ard?' she asked with an eyebrows-raised glance at Maeve. Mac Ard tilted his head toward Jenna’s mam.
'What do you recommend?' he asked.
' Tara’s brown ale is excellent,' Maeve said. She was smiling at Mac Ard, and if she remained a careful step away from him, she also kept her gaze on him.
'The brown ale, then,' Mac Ard said. Tara nodded her head and bus-tled off. Maeve sat across the table from Mac Ard; Jenna went over to where Coelin was tuning his giotar. Ellia was there also, her arm around Coelin. He glanced up, smiling, as Jenna approached; Ellia just stared.
'So the tiarna found you, eh?' he said. 'He came up right after you left and asked where you lived.' Coelin glanced over at the table, where Mac Ard’s dark head inclined toward Maeve. Coelin lifted an eyebrow at Jenna. 'Seems he likes what he found.' Ellia grinned at that, and Jenna frowned.
'I don’t find that funny, Coelin Singer,' she said. She lifted her chin and turned to walk away.
Coelin strummed a minor chord. 'Jenna,' he said to her back. 'I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.' She looked over her shoulder at him, and he continued. 'So what did he ask you? ’She’s the one who was up there,’ he said to me. ’I know this. I can feel it.’ That’s what he told me, before he even knew who you were.'
'What did the tiarna mean by that?' Jenna asked.
Coelin shrugged. 'I’m sure I wouldn’t know. What did he say to you? What did he ask?'
'He only asked whether I saw the lights, that’s all. I told him that I had, and described them for him.'
'We all saw them,' Ellia said. 'That’s nothing special. I could describe the lights for him just as easily, if that’s all he wants to know.' She tight-ened her arm around Coelin. Jenna looked at her, at Coelin. She tried to find a hint in his bright, grass-green eyes that he wanted her to stay, that her presence was special to him. Maybe if he’d spoken then, maybe if he’d moved away from Ellia, if he’d given her any small sign. .
But he didn’t. He sat there, looking as handsome and charming as ever, with his long hair and his dancing eyes and his agile, long-fingered hands. Content. He smiled, but he smiled at Ellia, too. And he’d let either of us lift our skirts for him, too, with that same smile, that same contentment. The thought struck her with the force of truth, the way Aldwoman Pearce’s proclamations sometimes did when she scattered the prophecy bones from the bag she’d made from the skin of a bog body. There was the same sense of finality that Jenna heard in the rattling of the ivory twigs. You’re no more to him than any other comely young thing. His interest in you is mostly for the reflection he sees of himself in your eyes. He flirts with you because it is what he does. It means no more than that.
'I’ll be going back to my table,' she said.
