Jenna glanced wildly about her and An Phionos snorted. "Your friend can’t help you. Look. ." The air shimmered, and for a moment Jenna caught a glimpse of Seancoim, his mouth open in a shout, trying to push forward toward her as the mage-lights threw him back. Then he was gone again. "He doesn’t see what you see. He sees only your struggle, not me." An Phionos’ front paws kneaded the earth, tearing at the limestone. His voice was Ennis’ again, and now Ennis’ eyes gazed down at her from An Phionos’ face, a single tear rising and sliding down a scaled cheek to splash on the rocks. "I don’t want you to die, my love. Don’t do this."
"Stop.’" Jenna screamed again. She raised the cloch, pulling the chain from around her neck and lifting it high. Her fist tightened around it. "Here! Here’s your answer."
An Phionos bared its teeth. The wings spread wide; the claws gouged new furrows in the stone. Mage-lights snapped and shattered around it. Then we begin," it said. It drew in a great breath, pulling in the mage-lights as if they were smoke. Its neck arced, the head reared back and it exhaled in a roar, blinding light rushing from its mouth. Jenna reflexively interposed a wall with Lamh Shabhala; the mage-lights crashed upon it like a furious tidal wave. Jenna stumbled back against the assault, the Pressure of it driving her to her knees as An Phionos vomited forth an lending stream of raw power. Jenna’s hand tightened around Lamh Shabhala, wrenching the cloch fully open. She imagined the wall growing, expanding, pushing back: slowly, she stood. She thought of the wall as a Mirror-smooth lake, reflecting back what came to it as the Banrion’s cloch had done. The wall shifted with the thought and she found herself wielding a weapon as the shield gathered in the energy thrown at her hurled it back at An Phionos. The beast staggered back at the first impact, roaring in wordless pain.
Then it nodded to her, as if in satisfaction. "So it won’t be simple. Good. You would have disappointed me if it had, Holder. After so many years, to be awakened only for a moment. ."
It was pacing now, the scale-armored body striding back and forth before the hoary, vine-laden oaks: fifty feet long without the enormous barbed tail, half again as high to the crown of the head, the wings folded against its back. Then the wings
opened, and a hurricane wind lashed Jenna as it took to the air, rising high above. The mage-lights encircled it like arms, burning like a second sun so that An Phionos was silhouetted against the glare.
Jenna waited for the inevitable attack: fireballs; thunderbolts of bright power; burning thickets of spears and swords; blasts of winds; demons or giants or a flight of angry dragons. None of it came.
The silver bands holding Lamh Shabhala dug into her palm. The land-scape shifted around her again: she floated in a featureless void with An Phionos. The forest, the cliff, the sound of the seas, even the mage-lights-all of them were gone, though she could feel their energy support-ing her. An Phionos swept its wings leisurely, circling slowly around her, and she waved her arms to follow its movement as if swimming in the emptiness.
"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