Holder of Lightning

had they stayed to play it out. But I don’t think they truly expected to defeat Lamh Shabhala. They would have taken that gift if it had happened, but I wonder if all along the real target wasn’t you, but Ennis."

"Why? Why would Aron want Ennis?"

"Do you love Ennis?"

The question made Jenna blink. "Aye," she answered, feeling the truth in the gaping wound inside her, one that no Healer could cure. "I do."

Moister Cleurach’s mouth tightened; his eyes narrowed. "And Aron O Dochartaigh loved his daughter," he said.

She knew he was right, knew it even as she shook her head in reflexive disagreement. The tiarna wanted to hurt Jenna as she had hurt him, and that realization was a sword blade in her gut, ripping and tearing at her soul. "No. ." she whispered, and the word was not so much a denial as a plea.

The light shifted in the room, a wavering brightness that dimmed for a moment the yellow glow of the candles. Outside, the mage-lights touched the sky, wrapping around the moon and calling to her. Jenna flung aside the covers.

"You can’t," Moister Cleurach said. He rose, as if to guide her back down. "You’re too weak and it will hurt too much. The lights will come again tomorrow or the next day."

Jenna pushed his hands away. "So might the next attack or the chance to help Ennis. I need Lamh Shabhala full. Lamh Shabhala wants to be full." Biting her lips to keep from crying out, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Moister Cleurach, without saying anything, brought a woolen shawl and draped it over her shoulders. He helped her up, held her as she walked across the room and pushed open the doors to the balcony. The cold night air bit into her and she shivered. The snage-lights crawled and sparked from horizon to horizon between the shreds of clouds. Everywhere, she knew, the cloudmages were lifting their clochs to sky. That’s what Aron would be doing, she was certain, and the other two who had been with him.

She took Lamh Shabhala in her right hand. The mage-lights curled and swayed above her in response. She lifted it to the tendrils of light snaking down from above, closing her eyes as the icy touch burned along her hand and wrist and arm and Lamh Shabhala greedily sucked in the power.

She had drained the cloch nearly dry. When it was full again, when the mage-lights reluctantly drew away from her, she would have fallen if Moister Cleurach had not been there to catch her. "Get the Holder a solution of kala bark for the pain," he snapped at the healer as they came back into the chamber. He helped her onto the bed and patted her forehead with a warm, wet towel. He took her cold right hand between his gnarled fingers and rubbed life back into it. "Come back with me to Inishfeirm, Jenna. There are still things I need to teach you. There's nothing you can do about Ennis now-it's out of your hands. You can help him most by being as strong as you can."

She shook her head.

"Why not? You can't be seriously thinking of doing what the Banrion has suggested. Jenna, you-" He stopped, and she saw suspicion widen his gray, sad eyes. "You intend to go to Thall Coill." He invoked the name as if it were a curse.

She grimaced as pain rippled through her arm, her hand tightening into a fist. "You said it best, Moister," she told him. "I can help Ennis most by being as strong as I can possibly be the Comhdail Comhairle, the Conference of the Comhairle, was as bois-terous and loud as Jenna had been led to believe it would be. Ri MacBradaigh sat in his chair at the head, his pallid face propped on a hand as he listened, his eyes so close-lidded that Jenna wondered if he wasn't dozing. The Comhairle was arrayed down either side of the massive oaken table, much scarred and discolored from years of use. There were six chairs down the right side, seven down the left. One chair on the left side-Aron

o Dochartaigh's chair-sat vacant. Jenna and Moister Cleurach were seated at the far end of the table, facing the Rl and the tiarna. This after-noon, the hall was also crowded with the minor tiarna and the ceil giallnai, standing behind Jenna.

Even though the sun shone beyond the great, tall stained glass win-dows behind the Rl, the keep still dripped, a sullen plop-plop-plop that could be heard whenever the Comhdail Comhairle lapsed into silence.

That was not often. It seemed that everyone