"On the road to Dun Kill?"
A nod.
"I'm staying here tonight," Jenna said. Moister Cleurach groaned au-dibly.
"I don't care to sleep another night with rocks digging into my back, he said. "I'm an old man and I've been too many days away."
"Then go on," Jenna told him. "Leave me here.
I'm going no farther today."
Moister Cleurach looked at the Banrion. "Rocks," he said. "In her head,
too."
"If we stay out here, anyone can see our fire from the hills around us," the Banrion said to Jenna. "I know those with my brother will have eyes out there, reporting to him where we are. I doubt he would dare attack after the last time, but I don't know that for certain. He'd be less likely to do so if we're in a village, where others might be more inclined to side with the Ri in Dun Kill."
Jenna said nothing, sitting on her horse and staring down to where the High Road led off through the heather. She felt more than heard the Banrion's sigh.
"We'll stay here," Aithne told the attendants. "Make the camp ready."
The mage-lights that night were faint and weak, soft filaments that glowed fitfully and vanished. Jenna watched them while sitting between the bar-rows, away from the encampment and the fire, a blanket around her shoulders. Both the Banrion and Moister Cleurach had come to her ear-lier-Moister Cleurach demanding and gruff, Aithne soothing and under-standing, but both attempting to convince her to return to Dun Kiil. To both of them she gave the same reply: "I'll decide by morning."
She didn't know what she expected to happen during the night to ease the conflict within herself. The thoughts chased themselves, ephemeral and changing, impossible to hold or examine. She felt the conflict deep in her soul; when she tried to muddle through the choices in front of her, Ennis' face rose before her and the grief welled up again, overcoming her.
Once, she opened Lamh Shabhala, but there was only more confusion and contradiction in the voices of the old Holders and she closed it again quickly, returning to the near-silence of the night.
In the darkness there was the rustling of dark wings. A form appeared on the barrow to her left, a particle of night with black eyes that stared at her. A yellow beak opened. The creature cawed once.
"Denmark?" At the name, the crow cawed again and spread wide wings, gliding down to land in the grass in front of her. Its head cocked inquiringly at her. "Denmark, is that really you?"
The crow cawed once more as she reached out toward it. It didn’t move, but let her touch the soft, black feathers of its head and back. She glanced about her. "Seancoim, is he here, too?"
Denmark hopped backward, then flapped away again to the barrow, alighting there and cawing again. When Jenna got to her feet, the crow flew up again and landed just past the end of the grave, moving away from the fire and the encampment. Another caw. Jenna glanced back to where the Banrion and Moister Cleurach were sleeping, then followed after the bird. Fly several feet and wait; fly several feet and wait. The pattern went on for some time, until Jenna was well away from the camp moving steadily down and east into a wooded valley. Denmark led her along the bed of a stream tinkling merrily as it descended the slopes until it finally merged with a river wending southward through a stand of sycamores. Denmark cawed again, loudly this time, and flew off with a great flapping of wings, circling high and disappearing into the leaves of the trees.
"Jenna!"
The call was soft in the darkness, the voice familiar. She saw a flickering gleam of white beard in the shadows, and Seancoim stepped out toward her, leaning on his staff of oak.
"Seancoim!" She rushed to him, enveloping him in her arms and taking in the familiar smell of spices and herbs that exuded from his body and clothing.
"I can’t believe you’re here. How did you know, how did you get here. .?"
The old Bunus Muintir seemed to gaze past her with his cataract-white eyes, his hand holding hers. Denmark came flapping down from the branches above to land on his shoulder in a flurry. "You still overlook the slow magics," he told her. "It was always the fault with most of you Daoine. You’ll likely ignore them entirely now, with the power you
wield with the clochs na thintri." He took a long, slow breath and let it out again. "I saw, I heard," he said. "Once this was Bunus Muintir land, and some of us still live here, hidden." His blind eyes looked aside, but Denmark regarded her with steady, bright eyes. "I came as quickly as I could. But it seems I've come late. I saw the pyre two nights ago, and I felt your anguish. I'm sorry, Jenna. I knew that there was to be love between the two of you. Even when you denied it back in Doire Coill, I knew.
I m sorry."
The tears came again then, sudden and hot, pushing from deep within her. She'd thought that she cried away all the pain, but it returned now, redoubled, and she realized how much she'd been holding away, hiding it from Aithne and Moister Cleurach and herself.
"You'll always feel this pain," Seancoim murmured in her ear as he held her. "It will always be with you. You'll hear a sound or smell something, and it will remind you of him and you'll feel the loss all over again. But 1 will stop hurting you so much. You'll get used to carrying the grief, as you're starting to carry the pain of Lamh Shabhala without thinking about it."
"I was there. I saw them kill him and I couldn't do anything to stop it."
"I know. And that's not your fault. You need to mourn, but you also need to move past the grief. You're still here, Jenna, and while you are, you can't forget this world. If you're going to Thall Coill, I knew I should be with you."
"Thall Coill. ." She repeated the name, sniffing and wiping at her eyes. "That's what some of the Holders told me. Riata. ."
"I know. I saw his spirit, wandering restless from his grave and looking north. Come with me; we have a long way to travel and night is the best time." He hugged her again, then started to move away into the trees. Jenna began to follow, then glanced back up into the hills, where the campfire glimmered like a yellow-orange star. "You can choose only one path, Jenna," Seancoim said.
"How do I know which is the right one?" Jenna asked him.
"You don't," he answered. "And you never will
know. Not until the Seed-Daughter calls your soul back to Her and whispers the tale of your life in your ear. But you need to choose now. Go with them, or with me."
"I’ll go with you," Jenna answered, and with the words she could feel the doubt dissolve within her. She gave a final glance back at the campfire, wondering whether the Banrion or Moister Cleurach realized yet that she was gone. Soon they would, but Jenna felt certain that she knew what the Banrion’s decision would be: We can’t waste time searching for the Holder. She’s made me a promise, and she’ll keep it if she can. We return to Dim Kiil. .
Jenna turned to Seancoim, and followed his shuffling steps into the deep shadows of the sycamores, Denmark flitting ahead above them.
As Seancoim had indicated, they moved by night and rested by day, slip-ping through the landscape while the people in the villages and farms slept.
They met other Bunus Muintir: they crossed the River Teann in a currach oared by a Bunus they met on the shore, apparently waiting for them. Seancoim and the other man spoke in their own language briefly, the Bunus occasionally glancing at Jenna, but he either didn’t speak the Daoine language or had nothing he wanted to say to her. When she thanked him for his help, he merely grunted and pushed his boat away from the shore, paddling back the way they’d come. Jenna remembered the maps she’d seen in Inishfeirm and Dun Kiil.
Though she couldn’t read the markings on them, both Ennis and Moister Cleurach had pointed out to her the townlands and geography of Inish Thuaidh. Ingean na nUan, through which they walked now, was a lush land of rolling hills, punctuated here and there by the wide, checkered expanse of farmed lands, with small villages that reminded Jenna achingly of Ballintubber, tied together with the narrow ribbons of rutted dirt roads They avoided the settled areas, keeping to the forest that wound in and around the farmland. As the nights passed, they moved steadily eastward and the land started to rise again. With each dawn, as they settled in to rest, Jenna could see the mountains ahead of them less blue with distance, looming higher until their path started to lift toward them and they were walking in green, narrow valleys where rills and brooks rushed frantically down steep slopes toward them, half-hidden in bracken and thickets. They turned northward now, and when they were forced to climb up to one of the ridgelines, Jenna could glimpse off to the east the shore of Lough Athas; then, a few days later, to the north, the endless expanse of the Westering Sea, its waves touched with the milk of moonlight. Jenna wondered if, somewhere out there, Thraisha or her kind swam. But they never came close enough to the shore for Jenna to call for the Saimhoir with the cloch. Seancoim now turned north and east, roughly following the coastline but staying with the spine of mountains, steep hills, and drumlins bulwarking the island from the winds and storms that the sea often flung at it, and passing into the townland of An Ceann Ramhar.