The tears came again then, sudden and hot, pushing from deep within her. She'd thought that she cried away all the pain, but it returned now, redoubled, and she realized how much she'd been holding away, hiding it from Aithne and Moister Cleurach and herself.
'You'll always feel this pain,' Seancoim murmured in her ear as he held her. 'It will always be with you. You'll hear a sound or smell something, and it will remind you of him and you'll feel the loss all over again. But 1 will stop hurting you so much. You'll get used to carrying the grief, as you're starting to carry the pain of Lamh Shabhala without thinking about it.'
'I was there. I saw them kill him and I couldn't do anything to stop it.'
'I know. And that's not your fault. You need to mourn, but you also need to move past the grief. You're still here, Jenna, and while you are, you can't forget this world. If you're going to Thall Coill, I knew I should be with you.'
'Thall Coill. .' She repeated the name, sniffing and wiping at her eyes. 'That's what some of the Holders told me. Riata. .'
'I know. I saw his spirit, wandering restless from his grave and looking north. Come with me; we have a long way to travel and night is the best time.' He hugged her again, then started to move away into the trees. Jenna began to follow, then glanced back up into the hills, where the campfire glimmered like a yellow-orange star. 'You can choose only one path, Jenna,' Seancoim said.
'How do I know which is the right one?' Jenna asked him.
'You don't,' he answered. 'And you never will
know. Not until the Seed-Daughter calls your soul back to Her and whispers the tale of your life in your ear. But you need to choose now. Go with them, or with me.'
'I’ll go with you,' Jenna answered, and with the words she could feel the doubt dissolve within her. She gave a final glance back at the campfire, wondering whether the Banrion or Moister Cleurach realized yet that she was gone. Soon they would, but Jenna felt certain that she knew what the Banrion’s decision would be: We can’t waste time searching for the Holder. She’s made me a promise, and she’ll keep it if she can. We return to Dim Kiil. .
Jenna turned to Seancoim, and followed his shuffling steps into the deep shadows of the sycamores, Denmark flitting ahead above them.
As Seancoim had indicated, they moved by night and rested by day, slip-ping through the landscape while the people in the villages and farms slept.
They met other Bunus Muintir: they crossed the River Teann in a currach oared by a Bunus they met on the shore, apparently waiting for them. Seancoim and the other man spoke in their own language briefly, the Bunus occasionally glancing at Jenna, but he either didn’t speak the Daoine language or had nothing he wanted to say to her. When she thanked him for his help, he merely grunted and pushed his boat away from the shore, paddling back the way they’d come. Jenna remembered the maps she’d seen in Inishfeirm and Dun Kiil.
Though she couldn’t read the markings on them, both Ennis and Moister Cleurach had pointed out to her the townlands and geography of Inish Thuaidh. Ingean na nUan, through which they walked now, was a lush land of rolling hills, punctuated here and there by the wide, checkered expanse of farmed lands, with small villages that reminded Jenna achingly of Ballintubber, tied together with the narrow ribbons of rutted dirt roads They avoided the settled areas, keeping to the forest that wound in and around the farmland. As the nights passed, they moved steadily eastward and the land started to rise again. With each dawn, as they settled in to rest, Jenna could see the mountains ahead of them less blue with distance, looming higher until their path started to lift toward them and they were walking in green, narrow valleys where rills and brooks rushed frantically down steep slopes toward them, half-hidden in bracken and thickets. They turned northward now, and when they were forced to climb up to one of the ridgelines, Jenna could glimpse off to the east the shore of Lough Athas; then, a few days later, to the north, the endless expanse of the Westering Sea, its waves touched with the milk of moonlight. Jenna wondered if, somewhere out there, Thraisha or her kind swam. But they never came close enough to the shore for Jenna to call for the Saimhoir with the cloch. Seancoim now turned north and east, roughly following the coastline but staying with the spine of mountains, steep hills, and drumlins bulwarking the island from the winds and storms that the sea often flung at it, and passing into the townland of An Ceann Ramhar.
This townland was sparsely settled, and the villages grew even smaller and farther apart as they continued north. They began seeing large herds of storm deer, their hooves striking thunder from the land. Wind sprites wafted in clouds through the branches of trees, and the red, glaring eyes of dire wolves could be glimpsed watching them as they passed, though none attacked. There were other sounds and calls in the dark, and glimpses of creatures Jenna couldn't identify. Even the more normal crea-tures seemed strange. She saw eagles flying high overhead with wingspans wider than she was tall, and they called to each other with voices that sounded almost human; there were enigmatic ripples in the dark lakes, odd footprints in the earth.
'The land has almost fully awakened here,' Seancoim said one morning as they settled into an overhanging hollow in a hillside to sleep. He lit a small fire with dead branches, striking the tinder into reluctant flame with flint and steel. Denmark flapped over to roost on a nearby branch, his head down on his breast. 'It spreads slowly, but soon all places will be like this. When the mage-lights last faded, hundreds of years ago, these creatures faded, too, remembered only in the tales of the old people. In a few generations, they were nothing more than myths and legends, and those who claimed to see them were ridiculed and laughed at. Now the mage-lights bring them back from the hidden, lost places where they rested.'
'All the fables are real?' Jenna remembered the tales she'd heard back in Tara's Tavern: from Aldwoman Pearce or Tom Mullin or in the songs Coelin sang.
'Not all. But most are based on some truth, no matter how twisted and distorted they’ve become over time. In another twenty or thirty turns of the seasons, everyone will have seen the real meaning of the Filleadh.' Seancoim groaned as he settled back against the rocks. He rummaged in his pack for an earthenware pot, filled it with water from one of the skins, and set it at the edge of the fire. He unrolled a packet of dried fruit and meat and passed it over to Jenna. 'In Thall Coill, the awakening is nearly complete.'
'Tell me about Thall Coill,' Jenna said, breaking off a bite of the smoked meat. 'Tell me about the Scrudu. 1 asked En-' She started to say the name, and her throat closed. She forced back the sudden tears, swallowing.'. . Ennis,' she continued, 'but he didn’t know much about it, and Moister Cleurach simply wouldn’t talk about it at all.'
Seancoim shook his head, his white, featureless eyes seeming to stare at the fire. 'I won’t, either,' he said. 'Not until it’s time.'
'Moister Cleurach believes that it’s not real, that it’s a Bunus Muintir trick to kill the Daoine Holders.'
'Is that what you think?'
'I don’t believe you would do that to me.'
Seancoim didn’t answer, only nodded sleepily. The eastern sky was lightening, though the sun was still behind the hills. The clouds were painted with rose and gold. 'If I fail at Thall Coill,' Jenna said, 'I want you to take Lamh Shabhala.'
Seancoim laughed at that. 'Me? An old, blind man? A Bunus Muintir?' He laughed again, setting his pack behind his head as a pillow. 'No,' he answered. 'It’s not a burden I want. Not now. If you fall, I’m certain that Lamh Shabhala will find itself another Holder, all on its own-one that it wants.' He turned on his side, facing the fire. 'And if you don’t let me rest these old bones, we’ll never get there and you won’t have to worry about it at all.'
The mountains curved away east to their end at the long bay that jutted deep into Inish Thuaidh. Here, they were taller and stonier than their green-cloaked brothers and sisters to the south, thrusting jagged peak
into a steel-gray sky, piercing the clouds so that they bled rain and oozed a mist that cloaked the summits and sometimes fell heavily into the valleys
below. This was wild land, and if there were Daoine here at all, Jenna saw no sign of them. 'The only towns of your people are well off to the south in the farmlands away from the coast,' Seancoim told her, Denmark' sitting on his shoulder. He pointed away with his walking stick to the hazy triple lines of ridges, one atop another, receding into the mist, and gestured to the ramparts yet to the north of them, a wall of stone. 'Past there is the peninsula of Thall Coill.'
'Do you know the way through? Have you been here before?'
'No,' Seancoim answered. 'But we'll be shown the way, I'm sure.'
'What do you mean?'
'Be patient,' he told her.
