Holder of Lightning

THEY hammered her down. They took her cowering to her knees. Jenna shrilled her pain to the world, nearly losing her grip on Lamh Shabhala as she fell. Her own sight was gone now; there was only the terrible light and agony of the cloch-world, and she sank down inside Lamh Shabhala as she had with An Phionos at Bethiochnead, desperately seeking a place to hide from the assault. The voices of the Holders shrieked at her or laughed or shouted contradictory advice.

She burrowed deeper, seeking escape. The Clochs Mor followed her. She tumbled into a crystalline, twisting well. The faces of the ancient cloudmage Holders flashed past her: the Daoines, then the Bunus Muintir, then tribes and peoples for whom she had no names at all, falling deeper into the past. And there, at the bottom. .

Lamh Shabhala throbbed like a live thing, waves of colors pulsating around her. This was the place.she had glimpsed during the Scrudu, the place she’d not been able to reach. She went toward it as the Clochs Mor continued to pummel her, and again she was held back. "No…" a voice whispered. "You’re not allowed here. You have not passed the test."

"Then I’ll die!" she shouted back.

The voice sounded amused. "We thought that no longer mattered to you." The energy of the Clochs Mor crackled around Jenna, and she pushed back at them. She could feel the baby in her womb, frightened and in pain because Jenna was in pain, suffering because she suffered. The voice at the heart of Lamh Shabhala seemed amused. "So that’s why you fight, even though you still don’t understand. What have you brought me?"

Jenna could only shake her head in confusion and terror. "I don't know what you mean? The clock?"

"No. There, in your hand." Jenna could see blue light radiating from between the fingers of her left hand-the crystal that Terrain had pulled from itself. She held it out, felt the presence take it from her. The light danced away in darkness. "Ah, such a gift…" The voice seemed to sigh "So my children ask me to help you. How can one refuse one's own…" The voice faded, and Jenna thought it had gone. Then the feeling of nearness crawled over Jenna's skin again. "AH the hearts of my children connect to the mage-lights through you. You fight yourself when you fight them."

"What do you mean?"

"I will give you a gift for the sake of my children, though I don't know if you are capable of using it. This once, in this moment, you must accept what they give you," the voice answered. It was sounding fainter now, and Jenna felt herself being pushed away, rising through the levels of the cloch once more back to reality. "Accept it…" the voice said again, a whisper.

Jenna lay like a broken doll on the cold ground before the keep. The power of the Clochs Mor played around her, keeping away the Inish sol-diers who were trying to reach her and pull her free. The pile of stones that had been Terrain were at her right hand, and the mage-lights had appeared in the sky above. She could feel the threads connecting all the clochs na thintri: running through Lamh Shabhala and into the sky, creat-ing loops of energy, endless circles and spirals. .

"This once, in this moment, you must accept what they give you…" That's what the voice of Lamh Shabhala had said.

Jenna let the shields fall. The energy poured into her and through her. She marveled at the feel of it. She seemed to have been thrown entirely away from her body into some new reality where she was with all the clochs, and their energy filled her, but it no longer hurt, not with the mage-lights in the sky. Instead, she had become a vessel, and they filled her to overflowing. She held the power in her hand.

She rose. She found five of the Clochs Mor and took hold of them.

She thought.

The wind blew cold and salty. The mage-lights flared and vanished, but

their radiance seemed to remain, illuminating the cliffside and the weathered, ruined statue of Bethiochnead.,

Six people stood there, each with a cloch na thintri in his or her hand all of them battered and bruised and bloody, all but one of them with confusion on their faces.

"Where are we?" Banrion Aithne asked. She stood next to MacEagan and Moister Cleurach, both of whom stared up at the statue. "Holder, did you do this?"

"Aye, I did," Jenna answered. "I think I did. I’m not entirely certain." Power filled Lamh Shabhala as it never had before, so potent that her body seemed to vibrate with it. She felt like a piece of parchment trying to hold back a frothing torrent. Is this what it would have been like if I’d passed the Scrudu? she wondered. How can anyone handle this? The energy buzzed in her head, making her giddy and delirious. Her face burned with it so that she was surprised that she wasn’t literally glowing. Her voice seemed too loud and too fast. She wanted to laugh. "Banrion, Tiarna MacEagan, Moister Cleurach, this is Nevan