Jenna cried out in mingled] pain and relief as the power of the mage-lights poured into Lamh Shabhala. She didn't know how long the connection lasted: forever, or a stripe of the candle, or only a few breaths. She could see the force or the magic, brilliant as it surged into the niches within the cloch, as it filled the well inside the stone nearly to overflowing.
Once more. . Jenna realized. The next time the mage-lights come, Lamh Shabhala will be able to hold no more. .
But Jenna could hold no more herself. The primordial cold of the mage-lights burned her, and she could no longer bear it. She cried out, as the mage-lights danced above and waves of tints and hues fluttered in the sky. She pulled her hand away from the grasp of the lights, and there was a pulse of fury and thunder.
As Jenna fell away into darkness, she thought she
Chapter 29: Awakening
SOMEONE’S head swam in her vision, and she could smell a scent of spices. Jenna blinked, squinting to make the features come into focus. She seemed to be in a cave. Torches guttered against the walls, and she lay on a bed of straw matting.
The air was warm and fragrant with the smell of a peat fire. If O’Deoradhain was there, she couldn’t see him. "Seancoim," she whispered. "Is that you?"
"Aye," a familiar voice answered. "I’m here."
"Lamh Shabhala," Jenna said, suddenly panicked. She remembered holding it, her fingers opening. .
"It’s around your neck," Seancoim answered. She felt his fingers take her left hand and guide it to her throat. She felt the familiar shape of the cloch in its silver cage. The relief lasted only a moment.
"Anduilleaf," she croaked. "I need… the leaf potion. You must have some. Give it to me."
"No," he answered, his voice gentle yet firm.
’Please. ." She was crying now: from the pain, from the refusal. Seancoim, it hurts. . You don’t know how it hurts. ."
His blind eyes seemed to stare at her. Callused fingers brushed her cheek. On his shoulder, she could see Denmark, the bird’s black eyes giving back twin, tiny reflections of her face. "Jenna, what’s hurting you most right now is the lack of the anduilleaf and not the sky-magic. should never have given the herb to you in the first place. Some people
I can t stop once they take it, and eventually the craving becomes so intense that it drives you mad. You will have to get through this without it."
"I can’t," she wept. She huddled in a fetal position, cradling her right arm against herself, but nothing would warm its cold flesh. Nothing would ever make it normal again. The chill seemed to have crept all the way to her shoulder, and she shivered. She couldn’t see Seancoim any-more; her vision was
narrowing again, as it had in the keep, all her periph-eral vision gone until there was nothing there but what was directly in front of her. The headache raged in her skull, and she was afraid that if she moved, her head would burst. "Seancoim. ." she wailed.
"I'm here," his voice answered, and she heard his staff clattering against stone as he moved. "I'll stay with you. Here, drink this."
He pressed a bowl to her lips. She sipped the warm liquid, hoping irrationally that despite his words it was anduilleaf. It was not: sweet mint tea, with a hint of something else. She swallowed, more eagerly than she expected, for the taste made her realize how hungry and thirsty she was. He gently laid her head back again. "Seancoim, just this once. The mage-lights… it hurts…"
"I know it does," he told her. "But you can bear it."
"I can't" she answered, but the words were hard to speak. She was sleepy; she could feel the weariness spreading through her, radiating out from her belly. "Where's O'Deoradhain?" she asked.
"He'll tell you what's happened…"
"He's here. Just outside." Seancoim's face was receding, as if she were falling away from him. "And he's told me everything."
"It hurts," Jenna said again.
"I know," he answered, but his face was so tiny and his voice so soft and it was easier to close her eyes and give in to the urge to sleep.
"Seancoim?"
A hand brushed lank hair away from her face.
"No, it's Ennis," O'Deoradhain's voice answered. "Seancoim's gone for a bit. Should I go look for him?"
Her head felt huge and heavy, and the headache still pounded. Her right arm was a log of ice cradled against her stomach. She tried to lift it and couldn't. She couldn't feel her fingers at all. Her body was trembling and despite the chill air, she could feel sweat breaking out on her fore-head. A soft cloth brushed it away. Jenna licked dry, cracked lips. "Thank you," she husked.
"Feeling better?"
Her left hand felt for the cloch around her neck. When she felt the she clasped it with a sigh. "Worse,
I think. I'm not sure." "Here then. He left this; said to have you drink it when you woke up." The bowl touched her lips again and she drank the sweet brew. Afterward, she lay back. O'Deoradhain looked down at her worriedly. There was a across his forehead: a line of dried blood with black thread sewn through it to hold the gaping edges shut, and both his eyes were swollen nearly closed and blackened.
"What happened to you?" Jenna asked. "Did the Ri's gardai. .?" O'Deoradhain shook his head. He touched the wound, his mouth twisting ruefully.
"No. After you took in the mage-lights, you collapsed, and this crow came flying past me and an ancient Bunus Muintir appeared right behind me. I thought he was about to attack or cast a spell. I drew my dagger, and all of a sudden the old bastard cracked me on the head with his damned staff, a lot faster and harder than an old blind man had any right to move. ."
Despite the pain, Jenna found herself chuckling at the image of Seancoim rapping O'Deoradhain over the head with his staff. O'Deoradhain frowned at first, then finally smiled back at her. "I'm glad you find that funny. I assure you I didn't at the time."
"If you wouldn't go pointing your weapon at people, it wouldn't have happened at all,"
Seancoim's voice answered from behind O'Deoradhain. A moment later, Denmark fluttered past O'Deoradhain to land at Jenna's left side. She lifted her hand to stroke the glossy black feathers, and the crow cawed back at her. "He was rather insistent about protecting you," Seancoim told her. "Even when he'd been knocked on the skull. Doesn't listen well, either. I had to hit him twice more. I nearly left him there, but I decided that if he brought you this far, he deserved better." Seancoim shooed O'Deoradhain aside. He crouched down next to Jenna's pallet. His gray-bearded, flat face was solemn. The cataract-whitened eyes gleamed in a nest of wrinkled brown flesh. "It's time to get up," he told her. Jenna shook her head. "No. Let me lie here. I couldn't. ." His gnarled, thick-knuckled hand reached down and took her arm. His grip surprised her with its strength as he pulled her up to a sitting position. Her head whirled with the movement, and for a moment she thought she would be sick. "Breathe," he told her. "Slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. That’s it."
She could feel his hand on one side, O’Deoradhain’s on the other, lifting and she shook her head again.
"It hurts. I don’t want to. ."
"You will," Seancoim answered. "You are stronger than you think. And there is something you must see." Suddenly she was standing on weak, wobbly legs. The room, she saw for the first time, was less a cave than deep, sheltered hollow below an overhanging limestone cliff. Ahead of her down a grassy embankment was a creek, and beyond that the dark tangle of oaks and brush of the forest.
They helped her walk down the embankment and out past the vine-fringed cliff wall into sunshine. Jenna squinted, but the heat on her shoulders felt good. The day was warm for the season; she could not even see her breath before her. "Sit here," Seancoim said, and Jenna was happy to do so, sinking down into the blanket of grass. "Look. . Straight across the stream, near the tallest oak."