"This is what war is like…" The voices came from within Lamh Shabhala.
". . we warned you… "
". . it’s pain and blood and loss and death…"
". . it’s only in the songs and myths that war is glorious and brave and only the enemy is hurt…"
Jenna felt despair and hopelessness wash over her. We’re going to lose. We need to call the retreat now, before it’s too late.
But there were sea-green points of magic-imbued light, moving out in the water. One of them was very familiar. "Thraisha!" The blue seals moved among the ships of the Tuatha. Through the confusion of the battle, Jenna heard the sudden shouts of alarm aboard the boats and the splintering of wood. In the cloch-vision, Thraisha's brilliance flared, and Jenna saw, out in the Inner Harbor, a ship suddenly heel over as if a giant hand had pushed it; at the same time, one of the cloch-lights winked out, extinguished.
The Tuathian Mages now seemed to realize that they were being at-tacked from the sea and Jenna felt many of them turn away to deal with this new threat. Limping and slow, Jenna made her way toward the water. She felt the ground underneath move from stone flags to hard-packed earth to wooden planks as she reached the quays. She passed bodies, both Inishlander and Tuathian; she passed wounded who looked up at her beseechingly, moaning or calling out to her-she ignored them, lost in the cloch-vision.
Mac Ard was still there, searching for her, and Aron O Dochartaigh also. She was near enough now that she could see the ships on which they stood, Mac Ard out near Little Head, and O Dochartaigh a few hundred yards out and to the south of her, his ship rowing in. "Strike before they find you…" She heard the whispered advice, and plunged her being into Lamh Shabhala, gathering up as much of the cloch's power as she could hold, keeping the shields around her as she prepared, then drop-ping them as she threw the wild energy toward O Dochartaigh. Too late, he saw the attack and sent pulses of blue toward it, but the white-hot force was hardly blunted. Jenna followed the lines back, imagining that she handled lightning with her bare hands and shoved it, pushing it back at O Dochartaigh. She saw his face in her cloch-vision, glimpsed his ha-tred as he realized that Jenna was there. "This is for Ennis!" she shouted at him, not knowing if he could see or hear her, not sure if it was truly his face or simply a shadow of it glimpsed in the cloch-vision. His lips shaped words, but she held the lightings and thrust them directly into that mouth. Lamh Shabhala tore at him, shredding flesh from bone, his hair aflame, his eyes bulging. .
And he was gone. The cloch-light went dark, and she felt him, finally, die.
She had no time to savor her revenge, no time to feel any emotions at all. Lamh Shabhala was revealed again, and Mac Ard and the other cloch wielders saw her. Red violence streaked toward her; she thrust it aside and the piers to either side of her erupted in splinters and flame, the heat of Mac Ard’s attack rushing over her. The net-thrower was at her again, tossing its webbing about her. She could feel the attention of other clochs turning to her now. A giant wolf howled, leaping from nowhere toward her, mouth open and slavering. She speared it with Lamh Shabhala, toss-ing it into the water as somewhere a Mage howled in concert. Another wolf followed, and another. . She dropped the pier from underneath one, then hurled the other into the fire of the docks Mac Ard had de-stroyed. The netting pulled tight around her as her attention wandered, tendrils closing around her throat, the ends writhing and pushing at her mouth. Her arms were trapped, and she felt herself being pulled toward the water, her feet lifting from the ground.
Jenna was deep into the reservoirs of Lamh Shabhala now. She forced herself to concentrate, to find the power to pull away the cloch-bonds around her. .
. . she felt them loosen, and at the same time, aqua light blossomed near her. "I’m here, sister-kin, as I promised," a familiar voice boomed in her head, and she saw Thraisha lash out at the person holding Jenna while-through her eyes-she saw Thraisha clambering out of the water onto the broken pilings of the quay. In the cloch-vision, Thraisha was a darting, sleek blue presence, liquid and graceful, severing the threads surrounding Jenna and sending them recoiling backward. "There… "
Freed, Jenna staggered backward. A sinister, double boom reverberated in her head and red flares came streaking toward her: Mac Ard. She reached into Lamh Shabhala, imagining a wall, but Thraisha’s presence interposed itself before she could use the energy. Blue inundated red each pushing against the other. Mental sparks flew, like a grinding wheel sharpening a blade, energy flowing from both of them toward the point of impact. Thraisha moaned, and Jenna heard pain and weariness in the call. The net-weaver had returned, and strands were coiling around Thraisha.
Jenna sent her mind into Lamh Shabhala, and in her anger, she knew that this was the moment. She would smash Mac Ard now, overwhelm him and end this. End it forever. Thraisha’s vision had been false
… a noise. . not heard with the senses of Lamh Shabhala, but with her own ears. .
… a hammer blow between her shoulder blades, sending her crum-pling to the pavement. .
. . the shock of the blow loosening her grip on the cloch, so that it rolled free of senseless, stiff fingers.
. . scuffed boots in front of her face, and laughter. Jenna looked up to see the face of a Tuathian soldier
. . the pain coursing through her as she groped for Lamh Shabhala, a loss as intense as the moment she saw Ennis fall. She cried aloud, moaning and trying to reach the cloch, knowing that Thraisha was now alone against Mac Ard and the others, that Thraisha couldn't stand against them all…
. . The soldier's hand, grimy and broken-nailed, reaching for Lamh Shabhala as well. .
". . When you jell, the clochs turned to me, and I could not swim against that current…"
Jenna saw Thraisha's glimmering blue-and-black body skewered by scarlet lightning. The bolts ripped through the seal, nearly tearing her body in half. Her dying eyes seemed to stare at Jenna as the force of the strike from Mac Ard's cloch toppled her back into the water. Blood spewed from the riven corpse and stained the waves, and a silvery form wriggled away from Thraisha's open, silent mouth.
". . Their magic drowned me, and Bradan an Chumhacht swam from my mouth. So if it's destiny, then it's not only your death…"
Jenna wondered if death could hurt more than the pain of losing Lamh Shabhala.
"SO you're the Mad Holder. . and this must be Lamh Shabhala."
Jenna looked up from the ground to see the soldier holding the cloch, and the sight of it caused her mouth to open and release a wailing cry that sounded more animal than human. She shuddered, reaching use-lessly for the cloch, and the man kicked her scarred arm aside. He grinned down at her: a red-bearded face stained with black gore, a long cut down his left cheek and through one side of his mouth dripping blood. The deep gash through his lips widened sickeningly as he grinned at her. He was missing teeth, and his voice was slurred with his injuries. " Tis mine now, 'tis."
Jenna blinked, peering up through the acrid smoke that wrapped the harbor. The man didn't see the movement behind him. There was a flash of steel and the Tuathian's head was suddenly separated from its shoul-ders, rolling away. The body stood for a moment, fountaining blood from the stump of the neck before it collapsed, nearly falling on top of Jenna.
"Sometimes," she heard someone say, "it's just more satisfying to use a sword."
A hand was reaching for her-"Let's go, Jenna. ."-but she slapped it away, scrambling over to the body, tearing at the fist holding Lamh Shabhala’s chain and ripping the cloch away from lifeless fingers. "Mine!" she proclaimed, closing her right fist around it.
"Jenna!"
She whirled around at the shout, snarling. Lights flared wildly, confusingly, in the sudden cloch-vision. She started to tear Lamh Shabhala open, to send its power hurtling blindly at the person in front of her, but she could not hold the power; it burned her so that she screamed, her right arm in agony. Hands caught her as she fell.