Jenna dropped to her knees in front of the hole. She picked at the dried mud with her fingernails until she could see the stone. Carefully, she pried it loose and held it in her open palm. So oddly plain, it was, yet…
It was cold again. As cold as the night she'd held it in her hand on Knobtop. Jenna gasped, thrust the stone into the pocket of her skirt, and left the bedroom.
She sat in front of the peat fire for a few minutes, her arms around herself. Kesh lay at her feet, looking up at her quizzically from time to time, as if he sensed that Jenna's thoughts were in turmoil.
She wondered whether she should go back to Tara’s and show the stone to Mac Ard, tell him everything that had happened on Knobtop. It would feel good to tell the truth-she knew that; she could feel the lie boiling inside, festering and begging for the lance of her words. Mam certainly seemed to trust the tiarna, and Jenna liked the way he spoke to her mam, and the way he treated the two of them. She could trust him, she felt. And yet…
He might be angry to find that she’d lied. So might her mam. Jenna swore-an oath she’d once heard Thomas the Miller utter when he’d dropped a sack of flour on his foot.
The ram, in the outbuilding, bleated a call of alarm. A few of the ewes also gave voice as Kesh’s ears went up and he ran barking to the door. Jenna followed, pulling the muddy boots back over her feet, guessing that a wolf or a pack of the wild pigs was prowling nearby, or that Old Stub-born had simply got himself stuck somewhere again. 'What’s the matter with-' she began as she walked toward the pens.
She stopped, looking toward Knobtop.
Something sparked in the air above the peak: a flicker, a whisper of light. Then it was gone. But she’d seen true. She could still see the ghost of the light on the back of her eyes.
'Kesh, come on,' she said.
She started toward Knobtop, her boots sloshing through the muck.
By the time she started walking up the mountain’s steep flanks, the sky flickered again with flowing streams and billows of colors, tossing multi-ple shadows behind her over the heather and rocks. Kesh barked at the mage- lights, lifting his snout up to the sky. They were brightening now, fuller and even more dazzling than they’d been the last time. By now, Jenna knew, someone in Ballintubber would have seen them. They’d be tumbling out of Tara’s, all of them, gawking. And Tiarna Mac Ard.
She imagined him, running to the stable behind Tara’s, leaping on his brown steed and riding hard toward Knobtop. . She frowned. Now that the lights had appeared again, she didn’t want to share them with him. They were hers. They had given her
the stone; they had shown her the red-haired man.
The stone. . She could feel its smooth weight now, cold and pulsing in the woolen pocket. She pulled the stone out: the pebble glowed, shim-mering with an echo of the sky above, the colors tinting her fingers as she held it. The mage-lights seemed to bend in the atmosphere directly above her, swirling like water, as if they sensed her presence below. Jenna lifted her hand, and the mage-lights coalesced, forming a funnel of sparkling hues above that danced and wriggled, lengthening and elongating. Jenna started to pull her hand away, but the funnel of mage-light had wrapped itself around her hand now, like a thread attached to the maelstrom in the sky above her. As she moved her hand, it stretched and swayed, a ball of glowing light attached to her wrist. She could feel the mage- lights, not hot but very, very cold, the chill creeping from wrist to elbow, to shoulder.
Jenna tried to pull away, desperately this time, but they held her like another hand, gripping her shoulders, the cold seeping into her chest and covering her head.
She swam in light. She closed her eyes, screaming in the bright silence, and she could still see the colors, melding and shifting.
Ethereal voices called to her.
A flash.
A deafening peal of thunder.
Blackness.
Kesh was licking her face.
Jenna rolled her head away, and the movement sent pain coursing through her neck and temples. Kesh whined as she shoved him away. 'Get off,' she told him. 'I'm fine.' She sat up, grimacing. 'I hope so, anyway.'
She was still on Knobtop, but the sky above was simply the sky, starlit between shreds of clouds slowly moving from the west. She looked down; she was holding the stone, and it throbbed like the blood in her head, pulsing cold but no longer shining. She was suddenly afraid of the pebble, and she started to throw it away, drawing her hand back.
Stopping.
The mage-lights came to you. They came to you, and the stone. .
She brought her hand back down to her lap.
Kesh whined again, coming up to rub against her, then his head lifted, the ears going straight, his tail lifting and a low growl coming from his throat.
'What is it?' Jenna asked, then she heard it herself: the sound of shod hooves striking rock within the copse of elm and oak trees down the slope of Knobtop. Jenna stood. Whoever it was, she didn’t want to be seen here. She put the stone in her pocket and lifted the hem of her skirts. 'Come, Kesh,' she whispered, and ran. There was a small stand of trees fifty strides away, and she made for the darkness there. She stopped once she was under their shade, looking back through the tree trunks to the field. She saw the horse and rider emerge from under the trees: Tiarna Mac Ard, astride Conhal. The tiarna made his way slowly up the hillside, looking at the ground, glancing up at the sky. Kesh started to run out to them, and Jenna held the dog back. 'Hush,' she whispered. Mac Ard wouldn’t be finding the mage-lights tonight, and she didn’t want him to find her, either, or to have to explain why she was here.
'Come,' she said to Kesh, and slipped deeper into the shelter of the woods, making her way down the slope toward home.
Her mam looked up from the fire as Jenna opened the door. 'Your boots are muddy,' she said.
'I know,' Jenna said. Sitting on the stool at the door, she took them off.
'I was worried when you weren’t here.'
'I went walking with Kesh.'
'On Knobtop.' The way Maeve said it, Jenna understood it was not a question. She nodded.
'Aye, Mam. On Knobtop.'
Maeve nodded, worry crinkling her forehead and the corners of her eyes. 'That’s where he said you’d be.' She didn’t need to mention who 'he' was; they both knew. 'You look cold and pale,' Maeve continued. 'There’s tea in the kettle over the fire. Why don’t you pour yourself a mug?'
Wondering at her mam’s strange calmness, Jenna
poured herself tea sweetened with honey. Maeve said nothing more, though Jenna could feel her mam's gaze on her back. By the time she'd finished, Kesh barked and they heard the sound of Mac Ard's horse approaching. The tiarna knocked, then opened the door, standing there in his cloca of green and brown. Maeve nodded to the man, as if answering an unspoken question, and he turned to Jenna. He seemed too big and too dark in the cottage, and she could not decipher the expression on his face. He stroked his beard with one hand.
'You saw them,' he said. 'You were there.' When she didn't answer, he glanced again at Maeve. 'I saw your boot prints, and the dog's. I know you were there.' His voice was gentle-not an accusation, just a sympa-thetic statement of fact.
'Aye, Tiarna,' Jenna answered quietly.
'You saw the lights?'
A nod. Jenna hung her head, not daring to look at his face.
Mac Ard let out a long sigh. 'By the Mother-Creator, Jenna, I'm not going to eat you. I just want to know. I want to help if I can. Did you see the lights first, or did you go there and call them?'
Jenna shook her head, slowly at first then more vigorously. 'I didn't call them,' she said hurriedly.
'I was here, and I heard Old Stubborn making a commotion and went outside to check and… I thought I saw something. So I went. Then, after I was there, they came.' She stopped. Mac Ard let the silence linger, and Jenna forced herself to stay quiet, though she could see him waiting for her to elaborate. 'Did you see them, Tiarna?' she asked finally.
'From the tavern, aye, and as I was riding toward the hill. They went out by the time I reached the road and started up Knobtop. I saw the flash and heard the thunder when the lights vanished.' He held his right arm straight
