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  Holder of Lightning

  ( The Cloudmages - 1 )

  S L Farrell Неизвестный Автор

  HOLDER OF LIGHTNING

  THE CLOUDMAGES #1 S. L. FARRELL

  Contents

  PART ONE: The Sky’s Stone

  (Map: Talamh an Ghlas)

  (Map: Ballintubber)

  Chapter 1: A Fire in the Sky Chapter 2: A Visitor Chapter 3: A Song at the Inn Chapter 4: The Fire Returns Chapter 5: Attack on the Village Chapter 6: Bog And Forest Chapter 7: Seancoim’s Cavern Chapter 8: The Cairn of Riata Chapter 9: Through the Forest Chapter 10: The Taisteal Chapter 11: Two Encounters Chapter 12: The Lady of the Falls Chapter 13: Smoke and Ruin Chapter 14: Ath Iseal Chapter 15: Niall’s Tale PART TWO: Filleadh (Map: Lar Bhaile)

  Chapter 16: Lar Bhaile Chapter 17: The Ri’s Supper Chapter 18: Secrets Chapter 19: An Assassin’s Fate Chapter 20: Love and Weapons Chapter 21: A Familiar Face

  Chapter 22: Proposals

  Chapter 23: Answers

  Chapter 24: The Traitor Chapter 25: Preparations Chapter 26: A World Changed Chapter 27: Bridges Burned Chapter 28: A Return Chapter 29: Awakening Chapter 30: Release PART THREE: The Mad Holder (Map: Inish Thuaidh)

  Chapter 31: Taking Leave Chapter 32: Ballintubber Changed Chapter 33: A Battle of Stones Chapter 34: The Gifting Chapter 35: O'Deoradhain's Tale Chapter 36: Ambush and Offer Chapter 37: The White Keep Chapter 38: The Vision of Tadhg Chapter 39: Training Chapter 40: The Ri's Request Chapter 41: Cloch Storm Chapter 42: Dun Kiil Chapter 43: The Dream of Thall Coill Chapter 44: Juggling Possibilities Chapter 45: Torn Apart PART FOUR: The Shadow R1 (Map: Dun Kiil)

  Chapter 46: Decisions Chapter 47: Voices

  Chapter 48: Glenn Aill

  Chapter 49: Leave-taking

  Chapter 50: Roads Taken

  Chapter 51: The Tale of All-Heart

  Chapter 52: The Protector

  Chapter 53: Bethiochnead

  Chapter 54: Fire and Water

  Chapter 55: A Return

  Chapter 56: Covenant

  Chapter 57: The Battle of Dun Kill

  Chapter 58: Retreat

  Chapter 59: Death on the Field

  Chapter 60: The Gift of Death

  PART FIVE: Reunion

  Chapter 61: The Banrion

  APPENDICES

  Characters

  Places

  Terms

  Saimhoir Terms The Daoine Calendar History

  The Holders of Lamh Shabala

  The Known Clochs Mor, Their Current Manifestations & Holders

  COPYRIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This one'sfor Devon who made me write a "real" fantasy

  And for Denise, who is part of all that I do.

  PART ONE: The Sky's Stone

  (Map: Talamh an Ghlas) (Map: Ballintubber)

  Chapter 1: A Fire in the Sky

  THE stone was a gift of the glowing sky. Jenna wasn't certain exactly when the first shifting curtain of green and gold shimmered into existence among the stars, for her attention wasn't on the vista above her. She shouldn't have been out this late in the first place-she should have been bringing the sheep into their pen even as the last light of the sun touched the hills. But Old Stubborn, their ancient and cantankerous ram, had insisted on getting himself stuck on a rocky ledge on Knobtop's high pasture, and Jenna had spent far too long pushing and prodding him down while trying to avoid being butted by his curled horns. As she shoved the ram's wooly bottom back down toward the winter scrub grass where the rest of the flock was grazing, her dog Kesh barking and growling to keep Old Stubborn moving, Jenna noticed that the silver light of the stars and crescent moon had shifted, that the landscape around her had been brushed by gold.

  She looked up, and saw the sky alight with cold fire.

  Jenna gaped, her mouth half open and her breath steaming, staring in wonder at the glowing dance: great sheets and folds of light swaying gracefully above like her mother's dress when she danced with Halden at the Corn Feast last month. The lights throbbed in a strange silence, filling the sky high above her and seeming to wrap around Knobtop.

  Jenna thought there should have been sound: wailing pipes, or a crackling bon-fire roar. There was power there; she could feel it, filling the air around her as if a thunderstorm were about to break.

  And it did break. The light above flared suddenly, a gold-shattered flash that dazzled her eyes, snatching away her breath and sending her stagger-ing backward with her hands before her face. Her heel caught a rock. She went down hard, the air going out of her in a rush and a cry, her arms flailing out on either side in a vain attempt to break her fall. The rocky, half-frozen ground slammed against her. For a moment, she closed her eyes in pain and surprise. When she opened them again, the sky above her was dark once more, dusted with stars. The strange lights were gone, and Kesh was whining alongside her, prodding her with his black-and-white muzzle. "I'm all right, boy," she told him. "At least I think so."

  Jenna sat up cautiously, grimacing. Kesh bounded away, reassured. One of the rocks had bruised her left hip through her woolen coat and skirts, and her neck was stiff. She'd be limping back down to Ballintubber, and Mam would be scolding her not only for getting the sheep back so late, but also for getting her clothes so dirty. "It's your fault, you stupid hard-head," she told Old Stubborn, whose black eyes were gazing at her placidly from a few strides away.

  She pushed angrily at the rock that had bruised her. It rolled an arm's length downhill. In the black earth alongside where it had lain, something shone. Jenna scraped at the dirt with a curious forefinger, then sat back, stunned.

  Even in the moonlight she could see a gleam: as pure a green as the summer grass in the fields below Knobtop; as bright as if the glowing sky had been captured in a stone. Jenna pulled the pebble free. It was no larger than two joints of her finger, rounded and smooth. She rubbed it between fingers and thumb, scrubbing away the dirt and holding it up to the moonlight. With the touch, for just that second, another vision over-laid the landscape: she saw a man with long red hair, stooped over and peering at the ground, as if searching for something he'd lost. The man halted and looked toward her-he was no one she recognized, and yet. . She felt as if she should know him.

  But even as she stared and the man seemed to be about to speak, the vision faded as did the glow from the pebble. Maybe, she thought, none of it had ever been there at all; the vision and the brilliance had simply been the afterimage of the lights in the sky and her fall. Now, in her hand, the stone seemed almost ordinary, dull and small, with no glow or spark at all, though it was difficult to tell under the dim moon. Jenna shrugged, thinking that she would look more closely at the rock later, in the morn-ing. She put the pebble in the pocket of her coat and whistled to Kesh.

  "Let’s get ’em home, boy," she said. Kesh yipped once and circled the flock, nipping at their heels to get them moving. The sheep protested, kicking at Kesh and baaing in irritation, then started to move, following Old Stubborn down Knobtop toward the scent of peat and home.

  By the time they came down the slope and crossed the ridge between the bogs and saw the thatched roofs of Ballintubber, Jenna had forgotten about the stone entirely, though the dancing, glowing draperies of light remained bright in her mind.

  The expected scolding didn’t come. Her mam, Maeve, rushed out from the cottage when she heard the dull clunking of the tin bells around Old Stubborn’s neck. Kesh went running to her, barking and racing a great circle around all of them.

  "Jenna!" Maeve said, her voice full of relief. She brushed black hair away from her forehead.

  "Thanks the gods! I was worried, you were so late getting back. Did you see the li
ghts?"

  Jenna nodded, her eyes wide with the remembrance. "Aye, I did. Great and beautiful, and so bright. What were they, Mam?"

  Maeve didn’t answer right away. Instead, she threw her shawl over her shoulders and shivered. "Get the sheep in, then clean yourself up while I feed Kesh, and we’ll go up to Tara’s. Everyone’s there, I’m sure. Go on, now!"

  A while later, with the flock settled, her clothing changed and the worst of the mud brushed away from her coat and from her hands, and Kesh (and herself) fed, they walked down the lane to the High Road, then north a bit to Tara’s, the dirt cold enough to crunch under their boots, the moon frosted silver above. The tavern’s windows were beckoning rec-tangles of yellow, and the air inside was warm with the fire and the heat of bodies. On any given night, Tara's was busy, with Tara herself, gray-haired and large, behind the bar and pulling the taps for stout and ale. Often enough, Coelin would be there, playing his fiddle or giotar and singing, and maybe another musician or two would join him and later someone would start dancing, or everyone would sing along and the sound would echo down the single lane of the village and out into the night air.

  Jenna liked to listen to Coelin, who was three years older. Coelin had apprenticed under Songmaster Curragh, dead of a bloody cough during the bad winter three years ago. Jenna thought Coelin handsome, with his shock of unruly brown hair, his easy smile that touched every muscle in his face, and those large hands that spidered easily over his instrument land which, aye, she sometimes imagined running over her body). She thought Coelin liked her, as well. His green eyes often found her when he was singing, and he would smile.

  "You're too young for him," Mam had said one night when she noticed Jenna smiling back. "The boy's twenty. Look at the young women around him, girl, smiling and preening and laughing. Half of them have already lifted their skirts for him, I'll wager, and one day soon one of them will miss her bleeding and pop up big and there'll be a wedding. You'd be a piece of blackberry pie to him, Jenna, sweet and luscious, devoured in one sitting and as quickly forgotten. Look if you want, and dream, but that's all you should do."

  Tonight, Coelin wasn't playing, though Jenna thought that half of Ballintubber must be pressed inside the tavern. Coelin sat in his usual corner, his instruments still in their cases. Aldwoman Pearce stood up alongside the huge fireplace across from the bar, a mug of brown stout close at hand, and everyone staring at her furrowed, apple-shaped face."… in the Before, the sky would be alive with mage-lights, four nights out of the seven," she was saying in her trembling voice that always reminded Jenna of the sound of a rasp against wood. When Jenna and Maeve walked in, she stopped, watching them as they sidled along the back of the crowd. Cataract-whitened eyes glittered under overhanging, gray-hedged brows, and she took a long sip of the stout's brown foam. Aldwoman Pearce was Ald-the Eldest-in Ballintubber, over nine double-hands of years old. "I've buried everyone born before me and many after," she often said. "And I’ll bury more before I go. I’m too old and mean and tough for the black haunts to eat my soul." Aldwoman Pearce knew all the tales, and if she changed them from time to time as suited the occasion, no one dared to contradict her.

  Aldwoman Pearce set the glass down on the mantel again with a sharp clack that made half the people jump up, startled. The noise also narrowed Tara’s eyes where she stood behind the bar-mugs were expensive and chipped ones were already too common. Aldwoman Pearce didn’t notice Tara’s unspoken admonition; her gaze was still on Maeve and Jenna.

  "In the Before, when the bones of the land were still alive, mage-lights often filled the sky," Aldwoman Pearce declared, looking back at the oth-ers. "They were brighter and more colorful than those we saw tonight, and the cloudmages would call down the power in them and use it to war against each other. In the Before, magic lived in the sky, and when the sky became dark again, as it has stayed ever since for hands upon hands of generations, the cloudmages all died and their arts were lost."

  "We’ve all heard that story a thousand times before," someone called out. The voice sounded like Thomas the Miller, who lived at the north end of the village, but Jenna, craning her head to see over the crowd, couldn’t be sure. "Then what was that we saw tonight? I saw my shadow, near as sharp as in the sun. I could have read a book by it."

  "Aye, that you could, if you owned a book and if you could read at all," One Hand Bailey called out, and everyone laughed. Jenna’s mam had a book, a fine old thing with thick pages of yellow paper and gray-black printing that looked more perfect than any hand could have written. Thomas claimed he could read and Jenna’s mam had shown him their book once, but he claimed it must have been written in some other lan-guage, because he couldn’t read it all. Sometimes Thomas read stories from the book bound in green leather that Erin the Healer owned, but Jenna wasn’t alone in wondering whether Thomas simply made up the things he supposedly read.

  "Tonight we saw the signs of the Filleadh," Aldwoman Pearce declared. "The first whisper that the bones of the land have stirred and will walk

  again, that what was Before will be Now. A hint, perhaps-" She stopped and glanced at Jenna's mam again; a few of the others craning their necks to look back as well. "-that things that were hidden will be found again."

  Some of the people muttered and nodded, but Thomas guffawed. "That's nonsense, Aldwoman.

  The Before is Before, and the bones of the land are dead forever."

  "The things I know aren't written in any of your books, Thomas Miller," the Ald sneered, tearing her hard gaze away from Maeve. "I know because my great-mam and great-da told me, and their parents told them, and so on back to the Before. I know because I hold history in my gray head, and because I listened. I know because my old bones feel it, and if you had a lick of sense in your head, you'd know it, too."

  Thomas snorted, but said nothing. Aldwoman Pearce looked around the room, turning slowly, and again she fixed on Maeve. "What do you say, Maeve Aoire?"

  Jenna felt more than saw her mam shrug. "I'm sure I don't know," she answered.

  The Ald sniffed. "This is a portent, I tell you," she said ominously. "And if they saw the lights all the way in Dun Laoghaire, the Riocha will be like a nest of hornets hit with a stick, and will be buzzing all around the whole of Talamh an Ghlas. The R1 Gabair will be sending his emissaries here soon, because we all saw that the lights were close and within his lands." With that, Aldwoman Pearce drained her stout in one long swallow and called for more, and everyone began talking at once.

  By the time Tara's clock-candle had burned down another stripe, Jenna was certain that no one in the tavern really knew what the lights had been at all, though it certainly made for a profitable evening for Tara-talking is thirsty work, as the old saying goes, and everyone wanted to give their impression of what they'd seen. Jenna slipped outside to escape the heat and the increasingly wild speculation, though Maeve was listening in-tently. Jenna shook her head as the closing door softened the din of a dozen conversations. She leaned against the drystone wall of the tavern, looking up at the crescent moon and the stars, gleaming and twinkling as if their stately transit of the sky had never been disturbed.

  She smelled the odor of the pipe a moment before she heard the voice and saw the glowing red circle at the corner of the tavern. "They’ll be going for another stripe, at least."

  "Aye," Jenna answered, "and they’ll all be complaining of it in the morning."

  Laughter followed that remark, and Coelin stepped out from the side of the tavern, his form outlined in the glow from the tavern’s window. He took a puff on the pipe, exhaling a cloud of fragrant smoke. "You saw it, too?"

  She nodded. "I was up on Knobtop, still, when the lights came. With our sheep."

  "Then you saw it well, since it looked as if the lights were flaring all around old Knobtop. So what do you think it was?"

  "I think it was a gift from the Mother to allow Tara to sell more ale," Jenna answered, and Coelin laughed again, with a full and rich amuse-ment as musical as his si
nging voice. "Whatever it was, I also think that there’s nothing I can do about it."

  "That," he said, "is the only intelligent answer I’ve heard tonight." He tapped the pipe out against the heel of his boot, and sparks fell and ex-pired on the ground. Coelin blew through the stem and tapped it again, then stuffed the pipe in the pocket of his coat. "They’ll be calling for me to play soon, wanting to hear all the old songs tonight, not the new ones."

  "I like the old songs," Jenna said. "It’s like hearing the voices of my ancestors. I close my eyes and imagine I’m one of them: Maghera, maybe, or even that sad spirit on Sliabh Collain, always calling for her lover killed by the cloudmage."

  "You have a fine imagination, then," Coelin laughed.

  "Your voice has a magic, that’s all," Jenna said, then felt herself blush-ing. She could imagine her mam listening, and telling her: You sound just like one of them. . Jenna was grateful for the dark.

  She looked away, to where Knobtop loomed above the trees, a blackness in the sky where no stars shone.

  "Ah, ’tis you who has the magic, Jenna," Coelin said. "When you're there listening, I find myself always looking at you."

  Jenna felt her cheeks cool, and she stopped the laugh that wanted to escape. "Is that the kind of sweet lie you tell all of them, so they'll come sneaking out to you afterward, Coelin Singer? It won't work with me."

  His eyes glittered in the light from the window, and the smile remained. "'Tis the truth, even if you won't believe it. And you can tell your mam that the rumors about me are greatly exaggerated. I've not slept with all the young women hereabouts."

  "But with some?"

  He might have shrugged, but the grin widened. "Rumors are like songs," he said. He took a step toward her. "There always has to be a bit of truth in them, or they won't have any power."

  "You should make up a song about tonight. About the lights."

  "I might do that," he answered. "About the lights, and a beautiful young woman they illuminated-"

  The door to the tavern opened, throwing light over Jenna and Coelin and silhouetting the figure of Ellia, one of Tara's daughters and Coelin's current favorite. "Coelin! Put out that pipe of yours and…" A sudden frost chilled Ellia's voice. "Oh," she said. "I didn't expect to see you out here, Jenna. Coelin, Mam says to get your arse inside; they want music." The door shut again, more vehemently than necessary.