'Stay,' he said. 'I’ll be singing in a minute.'
'And I’ll hear you just as fine from there,' Jenna answered. 'Besides, you have Ellia to listen to you.'
A trace of irritation deepened the fine lines around his eyes for a breath, then they smoothed again. His fingers flicked over the strings of his giotar discordantly. Ellia pulled him back toward her, and he laughed, turning his head away from Jenna.
She went back to the table. Mac Ard was leaning toward Maeve, his arms on the table, his hands curled around a mug of the ale, and her mam was talking.'. . Niall would go walking on Knobtop or the hills just to the east, or follow the Duan down to Lough Lar, or go wandering in the forests between here and Keelballi. But he always came back, was never away for more than a week, maybe two at the most. There was a wander-lust in him. Some people never seem satisfied where they are, and he was one. I never worried about it, or thought he was traipsing off with some lass. Once or twice a year,
I’d find him filling a sack with bread and a few potatoes, and I’d know he would be going. Jenna,'
Maeve glanced up as Jenna approached, and she smiled softly, '-she has some of that restless-ness in her blood. Always wanting to go farther, see more. I don't know what Niall was searching for, nor whether he ever found it. I doubt it, for he was wandering up to the end.'
Mac Ard took a sip of the ale. 'Did you ever ask him?'
Maeve nodded. 'That I did. Once. He told me. .' She looked away, as if she could see Jenna's da through the haze of pipe and peat smoke in the tavern. Jenna wondered what face she was seeing. 'He told me that he came here because a voice had told him that his life's dream might be here.' Meave's eyes shimmered in the candlelight, and she blinked hard. 'He said it must have been my voice he heard.'
Coelin's giotar sounded, a clear, high chord that cut through the low murmur of conversation in the bar. He'd moved over near the fire, Ellia sitting close to him and a mug of stout within reach. 'What would you hear first?' he called out to the patrons.
On any other night, half a dozen voices might have answered Coelin, but tonight there was silence. No one actually glanced back to Tiarna Mat Ard, but everyone waited to see if he would speak first.
Mac Ard had turned in his chair to watch Coelin, and Jenna could see something akin to disgust, or maybe it was simply irritation, flicker across his face. Then he called out to Coelin. 'I'm told your teacher was a Song-master. He must have given you the 'Song of Mael Armagh.''
'Aye, he did, Tiarna,' Coelin answered. 'But it's a long tale and sad, and I've not sung it since Songmaster Curragh was alive.'
'All the more reason to sing it now, before you lose it.'
There was some laughter at that. Coelin gave a shrug and a sigh. 'Give me a moment, then, to bring it back to mind. .' Coelin closed his eyes. His fingers moved soundlessly over the strings for a few moments; his mouth moved with unheard words. Then he opened his eyes and exhaled loudly. 'Here we go then,' he said, and began to sing.
Coelin's strong baritone filled the room, sweet and melodious, a voice as smooth and rich as
new-churned butter. Coelin had a true gift, Jenna knew-the gods had lent him their own tongue. Songmaster Curragh had heard the gift, unpolished and raw, in the scared boy he'd purchased from the Taisteal; now, honed and sharpened, the young man's talent was apparent to all. Mac Ard, after hearing the first few notes, sat back in his chair with an audible cough of surprise and admiration, shaking his head and stroking his beard. 'No wonder the boy has half the lasses here in his thrall,' Jenna heard him whisper to Maeve. 'His throat must be lined with gold. Too bad he's all too well aware of it.'
Coelin sang, his voice taking them into a misty past where fierce Mael Armagh, king of Tuath Infochla four hundred years before, drove his ships of war from Falcarragh to Inish Thuaidh, where the mage-lights had first shone in the Eldest Time and where they glowed brightest. The verses of the ancient lay told how the cloudmages of the island called up the wild storms of the Ice Sea, threatening to smash the invading fleet on the is-land's high cliffs; Mael Armagh screaming defiance and finally landing safely; the sun gleaming from the armor and weapons of Mael Armagh's army as they swarmed ashore; the Battle of Dun Kill, where Mael Armagh won his first and only victory; Sage Roshia's prophecy that the king would die 'not from Inish hands' if he pursued the fleeing Inishlanders to seal his victory. Yet Mael Armagh ordered the pursuit into the mountain fast-nesses of the island and there met his fate, his armies scattered and trapped, the Inishlanders surrounding him on all sides and the mage-lights flickering in the dark sky above. The last verses were filled with the folly, the courage, and the sorrow of the Battle of Sliabh Michinniuint: the Inish cloudmages raining fire down on the huddled troops; the futile, suicidal charge by Mael Armagh in an attempt to win through the pass to the Lowlands; the death of the doomed king at the hands of his own men, who presented Mael Armagh's body to Severii O'Coulghan, the Inishland-er's chief cloudmage, to buy their safe passage back to their ships. And the final verse, as Mael Armagh's ship Cinniuint, now his funeral pyre, sailed away from the island to the south never to be seen again, the flames of the pyre painting the bottom of the gray clouds with angry red.
The clock-candle on Tara's bar had burned down a stripe before Coelin finished the song, and Mac
Ard’s hands started the applause afterward as Coelin eased his parched throat with long swallows of stout. 'Excellent,' Mac Ard said. 'I’ve not heard better. You should come to Lar Bhaile, and sing for us there. I’ll wager that in another year, you would be at the court in Dun Laoghaire, singing to the R1 Ard himself.'
Coelin’s face flushed visibly as he grinned, and Jenna saw Ellia’s eyes first widen, then narrow, as if she were already seeing Coelin leaving Bal-lintubber. 'I’ll do that, Tiarna. Maybe I’ll follow you back.'
'Do that,' Mac Ard answered, 'and I’ll make sure you have a roof over your head, and you’ll pay for your keep with songs.'
The patrons laughed and applauded (all but Ellia, Jenna noticed), and someone called out for another song, and Coelin started a reel: 'The Cow Who Married the Pig,' everyone clapping along and laughing at the non-sensical lyrics. Mac Ard inclined his head to Maeve, nodding once in Jenna’s direction. 'Those were her ancestors the boy sang of,' he said. And your husband’s. A fierce and proud people, the Inishlanders. They never bowed to any king but their own, and they still don’t.' He sat back, then leaned forward again. 'They also knew the mage-lights. Knew how to draw them down, knew how to store their power. Even then, in the last days of the Before, in the final flickering of the power and the cloud-Aages. They say it’s in their blood. They say that if the mage- lights come again, when it’s time for the Filleadh, the mage-lights will first appear to someone of Inish Thuaidh.'
Jenna saw Maeve glance toward her. She wondered if her mam had felt the same shiver that had just crept down her spine. 'And are you thinking that my daughter and I had anything to do with this, Tiarna Mac Ard?' Maeve asked him.
Mac Ard shrugged. 'I don’t even know for certain that what we saw were mage-lights. They may have just been some accident of the sky, the moon reflecting from ice in the clouds, perhaps. But. .' He paused, listening to Coelin’s singing before turning back to Maeve and Jenna. 'I told you that when I saw them, I wanted to come here. And I… I have a touch of the Inish blood in me.'
Chapter 4: The Fire Returns
JENNA left before the clock-candle reached the next stripe: as Coelin sang a reel, then a love song; as Mac Ard related to Maeve the long story of his great-great-mam from Inish Thuaidh (who, Jenna learned, fell in love with a tiarna from Dathuil in Tuath Airgialla, who would become Mac Ard's great-great-da. There was more, but Jenna became lost in the blizzard of names.) Maeve seemed strangely interested in the intricacies of the Mac Ard genealogy and asked several questions, but Jenna was bored. 'I'm going back home, Mam,' she said. 'You stay if you like. I'll check on Kesh and the sheep.'
Her mam looked concerned for a moment, then she glanced at Ellia, who was leaning as close to Coelin as she could without actually touching him. She smiled gently at Jenna. 'Go on, then,' she told Jenna. 'I'll be along soon.'
It was no longer raining at all, and the clouds had mostly cleared away, though the ground was still wet and muddy. Her boots were caked and heavy by the time she reached the cottage. Kesh came barking up to her as she approached. Jenna took off her boots, picked up a few cuttings of peat from the bucket inside the door, and coaxed the banked fire back into life until the chill left the room. Kesh padded after her as she went from the main room to their tiny bedroom and sat on the edge of the straw-filled mattress. She stared at the mud-daubed hole where the stone lay hidden.
'They say it's in their blood,' Tiarna Mac Ard had said. 'When I saw them, I wanted to go there…'
