Holder of Lightning

"It's just the two of us, Jenna," it said, still circling. "That's all it's ever been. The shape of the energy doesn't matter. Each cloch na thintri bonds to its Holder in a different manner, in the form that a long sequence of Holders has worn into it like grooves in a road. Most Holders follow that same path because it's easiest to see and hold to, and that's why the clochs na thintri tend to be used in the same way each time a new cloudmage uses them. Very few have the strength to shape the power of their cloch na thintri in a new way, to give it a new form that might suit them better. It's no different with Lamh Shabhala."

"Are you intending to talk me to death?" Jenna asked.

An Phionos laughed. It stopped, hovering in front of her with slow beats of its leathery wings. "Perhaps. Do you die that easily?"

"No," Jenna answered. "I don't plan on dying at all."

The teeth bared again. "No? Even to be with him?"

Now Ennis stood before her. He smiled, almost shyly, holding out hand. "Jenna," he said. "I wish.

There was so much I wanted to you, just to say one last time that I loved you. ."

She wanted to take that hand, wanted desperately to take him in her arms, to bruise her lips with his kisses. She started to lift her left hand, then forced

it back to her side. She looked at An Phionos, not Ennis. "You can’t seduce me with false images," she told it.

The huge, scaled head lifted. "Not false," it said. "That is Ennis, or the spirit that was once him. I brought him here. He awaits you, Jenna, on the other side of death."

"It didn’t hurt," Ennis said to her, his familiar voice awakening a deep longing in her. "You should know that. I felt the knife move and the heat of my blood pouring out, then… I don’t know. It was as if I were outside myself. There was no pain, just a slow fading and a feeling of regret, and

I was gone. I watched you cry over the body, Jenna, and I tried to touch you and comfort you. I tried to tell you that I was still with you, but I

couldn’t. I am with you, Jenna, each day. And we’ll be together again."

She listened to him, shaking her head in denial and disbelief, and Ennis glanced over at An Phionos. "Death doesn’t hurt, Jenna. All you have to do is accept it."

"I will make it easy and quick," An Phionos told her. A forepaw lifted, the scythes of its claws scissoring in the air. "One stroke. One quick flash… "

"Ennis. ." The word was a sigh, a plea. Jenna closed her eyes, letting Lamh Shabhala’s force flow out to him. Where it touched the body, she felt strings leading back to An Phionos. She could feel An Phionos trying to push her away with its own power, but she concentrated, letting more power flow from the cloch. She formed the energy into hands and ripped away the strands of connection even as An Phionos tried to stop her. Ennis wailed, his body went pinwheeling away like a rag in a storm, finally vanishing in a point of white light that made Jenna squint and throw her hand in front of her face. A wave of intense cold flew past her.

"It’s just us," Jenna told An Phionos. "No ghosts. No lies. No tricks."

"There’s no trick in what I said," it told her. "I can make this painless and fast for you. You simply have to allow it."

"No."

She could hear the shrug in its voice. "Then it will be the other way." Muscles bunched and wings flexed. An Phionos stooped like a hawk about to swoop down on a helpless field mouse. The wings folded in and the apparition fell in a rush, plummeting toward her. Jenna raised her cloch, concentrating its force on the onrushing creature, pushing back at

II Jenna grunted with the impact as An Phionos seemed to dissolve, slipping through the web of force like water through a sieve. Jenna searched for it with the eyes of the cloch: there! She hurled lightning at the m glow that was An Phionos, but it swept the bolts aside.

Frantically, she created a creature like An Phionos, molding it from mage-stuff and launching it at the creature. They collided in a snarl f talons and wings and teeth, and Jenna felt the concussion as if it were her own body that smashed into her opponent. She was flung backward, her eyes rolling back in her head, a red-shot blackness threat-ening to drown her-and she fought to hold onto consciousness. Her own fingers curled and slashed as she gouged at An Phionos, and for a mo-ment, the creature retreated. Jenna breathed, gulping and tasting blood

"This is good," it said. "Usually the Daoine are so weak." An Phionos looked at her, and it seemed to Jenna that its eyes saw past the surface of her skin and deep into her being. "But you're not just Daoine, are you? Part of you is also Saimhoir, and much farther back, there is also Bunus Muintir. Ah, that surprises you, does it? You're a mongrel, and mongrels are often the strongest."