"It’s my fault," Jenna said.
O’Deoradhain nudged his horse alongside Jenna’s, though he didn’t touch her. "No," he said firmly, though quietly. "This isn’t your fault. This is the fault of greed and callousness and stupidity. You didn’t force any of the Rithe into conflict; they were just waiting for the opportunity, and Lamh Shabhala provided a convenient excuse."
The corpse leered up at her, a mockery in the bright spring grass. "All these people dead. ."
"Aye," O’Deoradhain said, "and yet more will die. That I can guarantee. But their souls won’t come wailing to you when they cry out for justice."
She still stared down, realizing that beyond this body another one lay, and another and another…
"I can hear them now," she told him. "They already call to me…" She was trembling, unable to stop the movement of her hands.
"Jenna, you’ve seen a dead body before." His mouth snapped shut, and she could imagine the rest of what he might have said: You were responsible for their deaths, too.
She looked at O’Deoradhain, her head shaking violently from side to side. "Not this many," she said. "Not like this, just. ." She had to stop ’or a moment, her breath gone. Her heart was pounding in her chest…. just scattered everywhere. Torn apart, half-eaten, discarded and unmourned " She tasted vomit at the back of her throat again, and swal-lowed hard. This is your legacy. This is your fate, too. Some day it will be you sprawled lifelessly there. . The land was starting to whirl around her, at the center the grotesque face of the dead soldier.
Jenna." O’Deoradhain brought her back as she was about to fall. Harsh and unsympathetic, his voice struck like a slap. She took a breath, and the world settled again. "This isn’t the last you’ll see of this. You’ll see more and worse, because you’ll be part of it. You don’t have a choice, not unless you want to give up Lamh Shabhala."
"Lamh Shabhala is mine," Jenna answered heatedly. Her hand went to the cloch, closing around it.
"Then look around you and get used to the sight, because you’ll need to have a clear head and mind
when a battle's raging around you, or someone will be taking Lamh Shabhala from your corpse." Then his voice softened; he started to reach for her, then let his hand drop back to his side. "The dead can't hurt you, Jenna. Only the living can do that. We can't stay here, and we can't go back. The war will follow us-my bet is that the Ri Ard is already stepping in to end these battles between the tuatha. They'll unite to find Lamh Shabhala; we can only hope to stay ahead of them, and maybe, maybe on Inish Thuaidh we can leave them behind. But we have to go now, before someone finds us. And before night falls, because this place will be haunted." He tilted his head toward her inquiringly. "Holder? Are you listening to me?"
"I thought you said that the dead couldn't hurt you." His grin was sheepish. "They can't. That doesn't mean they won't try." She said nothing to that. Instead, she flicked the reins of her horse and touched her heels to the mare's sides, urging the horse forward-not around the field of battle, but through it. She would not look down, but she saw the bodies as they passed, and each of them seemed to call to her accusingly.
O'Deoradhain slept under his blankets on the other side of the fire. The flickering yellow light illuminated the undersides of the leaves above them and plucked the white trunks of the sycamores from the night in a circle about them. She could hear him snoring softly, the loudest sound in the stillness.
Jenna reached into her pack and laid the relics out in front of her: the wooden seal her da had carved; the ring of Eilis MacGairbhith, the Lady of the Falls; the golden torc of Sinna Mac Ard. Of Riata she had nothing; the ghost of the ancient Holder had made it clear to her that he did not want to be awakened again unless she returned to Doire Coill and the valley of cairns.
She stared at them, a fingertip brushing each and feeling the spark within. Da? But he had never held the active Lamh Shabhala, and the times she had called him up, he had seemed more frightened and con-fused than she was, and she had ended by comforting him. Eilis? Jenna had called the Lady of the Falls only one other time after that day in her burial chamber behind the Doan’s waters, and the ghost had been as angry and fey as during their first encounter; though Jenna knew that the ghost couldn't touch or harm her, she would call that Holder forth only in great need.
Jenna picked up Sinna’s torc. She started to place it around her neck..
"You’ll just have to explain to her again who you are because she won’t remember you. She’s not your friend. She doesn’t care about you-to her, you’re as much a ghost as she is to you."
Across the fire, O’Deoradhain was watching from his blankets, up on one elbow. "Her time wasn’t like our time, and she isn’t like you. At all. You need to find your own path, not tread along someone else’s," he finished.
"Which is the path you want me to take, no doubt." She hated the disdain in her voice. She thought of offering an apology-He’s done noth-ing but help you, and yet you keep pushing him away-but then it seemed that she’d waited too long. The muscles along his jaw clenched, and he blinked. She pretended to look away from him, to be absorbed in the torc.
"I’m not forcing you to go anywhere, Holder," he said. "Remember when I said earlier today that the dead can’t hurt you? Well, they also can’t help you."
’"Only the living can do that.’ Is that how that ends? Meaning I’m supposed to trust you?"
O’Deoradhain took a long breath. His eyes held hers, and she saw the hurt in them. "You do what you think you need to do, Holder, and believe what you must." He lay back down and snapped the blankets around him, turning his back to the fire and her.
Jenna held the torc in her hands for several minutes, watching the fire shimmering in its burnished surface. Finally, she placed it back in her pack. "I’m sorry," she whispered to the night, not sure to whom she was speaking.
The spring sun beat down on the bright carpet of silverweed, primrose, and heather in which Lough Crithlaigh rested; the sky was cloudless and deep. Yellow siskins, song thrushes, and warblers darted among the wild-flowers. Mountains lifted gorse-feathered heads to the west beyond the hills, and they could see deer grazing near a foaming rill winding toward the lough. The day was pastoral; even their horses seemed affected, neigh-ing and lowering their heads as if they wanted to linger here forever.
"Those are storm deer, not the normal red," O'Deoradhain commented then glanced back at Jenna. "You're frowning."
Jenna turned in her saddle. She tried to give the man a smile and failed. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's just. ." She stopped; he lifted an eyebrow."… a feeling."
O'Deoradhain pulled back the reins of his mount, his gaze searching the terrain.
They'd debated whether they should go through this expansive but open valley, or take the much longer and difficult path through the hills. She wondered now if they'd made a mistake. She touched the cloch, let-ting tendrils of energy spread outward. In that invisible cloud, there was a twin disturbance. She could sense it in the pattern of Lamh Shabhala’s sphere, like a wave disturbed by the presence of unseen rocks just below the surface. "There are two other clochs na thintri close By," Jenna said. She could feel a cold apprehension spreading out from her stomach. "Powerful ones: Clochs Mor. I can feel them."
O'Deoradhain rose up in his saddle again.
"Where?" he asked. "In what direction?"
"I'm not certain," Jenna said. "To the south, I think. They're trying to keep themselves hidden, but one of the Holders isn't particularly good at keeping his wall up and so I can sense them both."