Holder of Lightning

Jenna gave a bitter laugh. "I don’t know. I can’t hear it through all the confusion." She picked up the mug of anduilleaf.

"Will that help you hear it, or just cloud your mind more?"

A shrug. "Right now, I need something to lean on. To help. This is what I have."

"You have me."

Jenna started to speak. Blood pounded at her temples. She took a breath. "Ennis. ."

His hand closed around hers on the mug, so tightly that she gasped. "If you need this, then fine. I trust your decision and won’t stop you. But I’ll be here, too. I’ll give you what I can, whatever you want to take from me. I’ll stand with you in whatever decision you make. I’ll. ." He stopped. He was very close, his green eyes not letting her look away.

"Let go of the mug, Ennis," she told him. For a moment, he continued to stare. Then he took a step back, letting go of her hand.

She looked down at the milky brew inside the cup, at the promise it held. Very softly, she set the mug down again. She walked over to Ennis, put her left hand around his neck and pulled his head down.

She pressed her mouth to his. He tasted sweet, and she opened her mouth to him, an urgency and need rising in her. His arms went around her,

drawing her close, his hands tangling in her hair.

Her lips clung to his, moist and soft, as he lifted his head.

"Jenna. .?" he husked.

"Aye," she whispered back to his question. "This is what my heart says. And for right now, anyway, this is what I want."

Chapter 43: The Dream of Thall Coill

SHE was there, in the upheaval and the blood. .

Sliabh Mlchinniuint, the Mountain of Ill Fate, burned as if it were an ancient, slumbering volcano come to vile life, spewing rivers of molten lava down on its blackened and broken slopes, the earth steaming with gray-white mists under the assault. Only this was no natural fury; this was the terror of a battle of cloudmages. Beneath black clouds the armies clashed, and she was one of them: an Inish clanswoman roaring her defi-ance at the armored troops of Rl Mael Armagh, shouting her hatred of the banners of green and gold gathered in a writhing island of steel and flesh in the valley below. She rushed down on them from the slopes among the hundreds of her fellow clansmen, her throat raw with the battle cry they called "caointeoireacht na cogadh," the massed sound of it like the thou-sand-throated scream of an angry god. Overhead, the cloudmages called down lightning and fire as great explosions clawed at the mountainside with shrieking hurricane winds and twisting black funnels. She and her fellow clansfolk slammed into the Infochla troops with an audible clash of iron on iron, bronze on bronze, the impact stunning. Her first slash hewed off the sword arm of a young Infochla soldier. The soldier-no doubt a pressman boy of no more than fourteen, his face still pimpled- screamed a thin shriek of terror and shock, the arm pinwheeling to the ground still clutching the sword, blood spraying wildly over both of them. A blow struck her from the side, the bronze shoulder plates of her leathers dimpling under the impact. She went down on her knees, crying out as she swung her own weapon, blinking away the blood and seeing the edge of her sword slice through the thin mail of her attacker and cut deep in his abdomen. She struggled to her feet, knowing she was screaming feeling the sound ripping her throat but hearing none of it in the ferocious din of the battle. There was blood everywhere and no way to know if n was hers or her enemy’s. She saw a flash of green and gold; she slashed at it blindly. All around her, Infochla soldiers fell, and still the Inishlanders pushed forward, trampling the dead into the mud underfoot. Above and around them, the clochs raged, illuminating the battlefield with their bright, awful lightnings. Something struck the ground near her with a deafening ka-RUMPH: she saw searing, yellow light and a dozen and more soldiers, Infochla and Inishlander alike, screamed as the fire consumed them in an awful moment, leaving behind nothing but blackened skele-tons that stood in an eerie imitation of their last poses for a few seconds before dropping to the ground like broken dolls.

This was chaos. This was slaughter.

"This was how it was, Holder. This is how it would be. ." The voice seemed familiar, one of those who spoke to her when she used the cloch. "Severii?" she asked, knowing that he’d been there at the battle, but she was now somewhere else, standing at the edge of a high cliff in a small open space surrounded by the dark, brooding presence of ancient oak trees. Nearby there seemed to be a presence, but she could not see it. It was as if there was a blank spot in her vision where the presence lurked, so that it vanished whenever she tried to look directly at it. Is this Doire Coill? she wondered, and someone answered as if she’d spoken aloud, a woman’s voice this time.