The tuatha were fighting among themselves, and the clochs na thintri were among their implements of war.
Eventually, Jenna knew, someone would come searching for Lamh Shabhala, someone with an army or a few of the Clochs Mor or both at their backs, and they would stop at nothing to find her. Jenna had learned much about handling the cloch in the last months, but she didn't want to see Doire Coill at the center of a battle, even a victorious one.
And Seancoim was right. She was tired of hiding.
"When do you go?" Seancoim asked, his voice bringing her out of reverie. She shivered, then smiled at him.
"Tomorrow."
"Then 1 will enjoy tonight." Seancoim turned
solemn, twirling a finger in his beard before he spoke. "You must realize that I’m not the only one who can guess which way Lamh Shabhala would travel."
"I know that. We’ll be careful."
"Careful may not be enough."
She smiled at him and kissed his forehead. "Then come with us. I’d like that. Have you ever seen the Westering Sea, Seancoim? O’Deoradhain says that you look out, and see nothing but water and sky, all the way to the end of the world."
He shook his head sadly. "No. But this is where my destiny and my home are. I’m an old man, and I have my apprentice to train."
"Apprentice? Since when do you have an apprentice?" You’ve not met her. She stays on her own most of the time inside the forest. She’s learned most of what I have to teach her but not all. No, Jenna, thanks for your offer, but I’ll stay here and make certain that you have a place to which you can return one day."
They were standing at the northern edge of Doire Coill, near where Mac Ard, her mam, and she had first entered the forest-less than a year ago, though it seemed that everything had changed in that time. The High Road was less than a quarter mile away, turning here in a great sweeping curve to the north, where a day’s walk away waited Knobtop and Ballintubber. Jenna wondered about her home, wondered what they said about her and her mam when they gathered in Tara ’s Tavern of an evening. Perhaps there were already tales of the Mad Holder, and One Hand Bailey or Chamis Redface regaled anyone who would listen with fanciful tales of Jenna as a child.
"Even back then it was obvious that she was fey and dangerous. Why, once Matron Kelly scolded her, and Jenna made a motion like this, and Matron Kelly’s cows gave no milk for an entire week. Tom Mullin once caught her stealing apples from his orchard and chased her off his land, and the very next day as he rode to Aldwoman Pearce’s house, may the Mother-Creator rest her soul, his horse threw him for no reason at all and he broke his leg. He’s walked with a limp since that day. I tell you, we were all careful what we said and did around the Aoires… "
"You don't get to choose how you're remembered," Seancoim said, as if he sensed what she were thinking. "That's up to those who are left behind." He touched her right arm. "Come with me," he said.
He turned and walked back into the forest, Denmark flapping heavily ahead of them. He turned away from the faint path they'd followed, slip-ping into the darkness under the trees. "I can't see," Jenna said, hesitating.
"Then take my arm. ."
Holding onto the elbow of a blind man, she moved into the night landscape of the forest. They walked for nearly a stripe, it seemed, Jenna stumbling and occasionally pushing away a stray branch, while Seancoim was sure-footed and easy with Dunmharu’s guidance.
They skirted a fen, and Jenna realized that the sound of the forest had changed at some point. She could no longer hear the animals: the grunt of the deer, the occasional howl of a wolf, the rustlings and chirps of the night birds. Here, there were other sounds: leafy rustlings, the groan of shifting wood, the sibilant breath of leaves that sounded almost like words. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and she could see that she and Seancoim were surrounded by gigantic old oaks with gnarled, twisted branches and great trunks that it would take three men to encircle. They loomed over the two, and Denmark stayed on Seancoim's shoulder rather than roosting in any of these branches.
The trees spoke to each other. Jenna could hear them, could feel them. They were aware; they knew she was there. Branches moved and swayed though there was no wind, one limb sweeping down to wrap about Jenna's right arm. She resisted the temptation to brush away the woody fin-gers, the leafy touch, and a few moments later it uncurled and swept away. "Can you talk to them, Seancoim?" she asked, her voice a hushed whisper. It seemed sacrilegious to speak loudly here.
"No," he answered, his voice as quiet as hers. "They're the Seanoir, the Eldest, and their language is older than even the Bunus Muintir, nor do they experience life as we do. But this place is one of the many hearts of Doire Coill. These trees were planted by the Seed-Daughter herself when she gave life to the land, and they have been here since
the beginning, thousands and thousands of years. Here, feel. ." Seancoim took Jenna’s hand and placed it on the veined, craggy surface of the nearest trunk. She felt nothing for a moment, then there was a throb like the pulsing of blood; a few breaths later, another followed. "That’s the heartbeat of the land itself," Seancoim said. "Slow and mighty and eternal, moving through their limbs."
Jenna kept her hand there, feeling the long, unhurried beats, her own breath slowing and calming with the touch. "Seancoim, I never. ." She wanted to stay here forever, feeling this. There was a sorcery to the trees, an insistent lethargy, and she remembered. "When I was here before. ."
"Aye, it was their call you heard," Seancoim told her. "And if the Old Ones here wished it, you would remain snared in their spell until your body died of thirst and hunger. Look around you, Jenna. Look around you with your eyes open."
"My eyes are open…" she started to say, then blinked. For the first time, she noticed that there were gleams of moonlit white in the grassy earth of the grove. She bent down to look and straightened with a stifled cry: a skull leered back at her, stalks of grass climbing through vacant eye sockets, the jaw detached and nearly lost alongside. There were dozens of skeletons in and around the tree trunks, she saw now: some human, some animal.
"The sun feeds their leaves, the rain slakes their thirst, and those who come here and are trapped by their songs nourish the earth in which their roots dig," Seancoim said. "This is where, when it’s time, I’ll come, too, on my own and by my own choice." Jenna continued to stare. She could smell the death now: the ripe pungency of rotting flesh. Some of the bodies were new, and the clothes they wore were dyed green and brown.
She should have been horrified. But she felt the throbbing of the trees and the earth and realized that this was as it should be, that the Seanoir fed on life in the same way Jenna fed on life. She ate the meat of animals that had once been alive, and soaked up their juices with bread from the wheat that had waved in fields under the sun a month before. This was simply another part of the greater cycle in which they were all caught There was no horror here. No malevolence, no evil. The trees simply did as their nature demanded. If they killed,
it was not out of hatred, but because their view of the world was far longer and broader than that of the races whose lives were impossibly fleeting.
A branch came down; it lifted the cloch at Jenna's neck and let it drop again. "They know Lamh Shabhala," Seancoim said. "It is nearly as old as they are. They know it lives again." He went up to the largest of the trees and lifted his hand. A branch above wriggled, and a large acorn dropped into his palm. "Here," he told Jenna. He folded the nut in her left hand, closing her fingers around the acorn and putting his own leathery hands over hers. "For the Seanoir, the mage-lights signal a time of growing. Even the seasons themselves are too fast for them. The lights are the manifesta-tion of a burgeoning centuries-long spring and summer for them, and this is their seed. Take this with you when you go, and plant this where you find your new home. Then you will always have part of Doire Coill with you. Make a new place for them."