Holder of Lightning

Moister Cleurach glared at her as if she were a dim-witted student. "Aye. That was his name. A well-known Riocha name in Tuath Infochla, and Gabair, too, where a Mac Ard was once Ri long ago. Most of our acolytes are Riocha. You would hear many famous names among them.

Jenna felt dizzy and nauseous. My great-da was a Mac Ard. Did Padraic Mac Ard know that? She glared at O'Deoradhain angrily. "You knew!" she said to him. "You knew and you didn't tell me."

He was shaking his head, and the confusion in his face seemed genuine

"No, Jenna. I swear I didn't. I knew the story, aye, but not the acolyte's surname… All that happened forty years before I came here as a boy. It was just an old cautionary tale given to the acolytes and Mall's last name was never mentioned. None of us were old enough to have known them, and the elder Brathairs who might have been here then wouldn't talk about it."

"They were told not to talk about it," Moister Cleurach interrupted. "It was a foolish deed done by a naive young man that cost him his life, and what was important was that it not happen again, or we might lose one of the stones we knew were true clochs. What Niall stole was probably just a pebble and not a true cloch, and almost certainly not the cloch it was reputed to be."

"Moister," O'Deoradhain said, "Jenna is the First. The Holder of Lamh Shabhala."

The Maister’s eyes widened in sudden realization and he frowned at her so harshly that Jenna took an involuntary step backward, her hand going to the cloch under her tunic. Her sleeve fell away, exposing the scars, and Moister Cleurach huffed once. He glanced back-the clerks were staring also, and he waved a hand at them. They scattered, leaving the room by the rear door as Moister Cleurach turned back to Jenna and O’Deoradhain. "Then. ."

"Aye, Moister," O’Deoradhain told him. "The cloch Niall took was what it had been said to be."

"No…" Moister Cleurach protested, then his mouth snapped shut and his eyes narrowed. He seemed filled with a cold anger as he regarded Jenna again. "If you hold the cloch Niall Mac Ard stole from us, then Lamh Shabhala is not yours, but the Order of Inishfeirm’s." He held out his hand, as if he expected her to place the stone there.

Jenna returned his glare. Her arm throbbed as she pulled the cloch out and forced the fingers of her right hand to close around it. She shut her eyes momentarily: no, there were no other clochs na thintri here other than the ones she and O’Deoradhain carried. "Lamh Shabhala is its own," she told Moister Cleurach, "and it has chosen me."

His eyes stared greedily at the stone. "That is the cloch na thintri I have had described to me. There is a record of it here: we have paintings and drawings of all the clochs na thintri that were in our collection, and I recognize this-there was no other like it. So… plain."

"And your Moister at the time thought the stories about the cloch being Lamh Shabhala were false, or that it was at best a minor stone," Jenna retorted. "That’s what my great-mam believed; that was what Niall had told her."

"Indeed, that was Moister Dahlga’s belief,"

Moister Cleurach responded "He wasn’t the most intelligent man and I heard him say that myself, but what else was he going to claim but that bit of wishful thinking? We thought the stone lost at sea-Mall’s body was found a few days later on the coast of Tuath Infochla and brought back here; we believed your great-mam had suffered the same fate until two years ago, when we learned that she’d actually lived, and that her son-Mall’s child-had left Tuath Infochla and traveled south. By then we also knew that mage-lights would return soon, and so we sent out some of the Brathairs to look for this offspring of Niall Mac Ard in case he still had the cloch that might be-" He stopped. His lips pressed together. "-that was Lamh Shabhala."

"You're mistaken if you believe you have any claim to Lamh Shabhala," Jenna told him. "Not after what my family's gone through. Not after what I've gone through." She looked at O'Deoradhain. "And I made a mistake coming here." She turned on the balls of her feet, ready to leave.

"Wait!" The note of panic in Moister Cleurach’s voice halted Jenna in midstep. "Why did you bring Lamh Shabhala back here?"

O'Deoradhain answered. "She came to learn, Moister. She came because I told her that you would teach her to be a cloudmage, a Siur of the Order. She came because this was her family's home and I told her that the Order would help her. If all that's wrong, and I've unintentionally lied to Jenna, then you can have my resignation. I'm leaving with her."