Moister Cleurach took a long breath yet didn’t answer. "This way," he said. "There’s more to see."
They went out from Tadhg’s Hall and back to the corridor. Moister Cleurach stopped before another door, this one simple, thick wood. "Try to open it," he said.
Jenna glanced at him, but went to the bronze handle of the door and Pushed, then pulled. The door rattled in its frame but wouldn’t open. "It’s tacked," she said.
"Keep trying."
Moister," O’Deoradhain interjected, but Moister Cleurach raised his hand, ringer to lips.
"It's nothing you didn't try, Ennis. Let her."
Jenna looked at O'Deoradhain; he shrugged. Jenna pushed and pulled again at the door, then again. The third time, there was a snap and sudden pain like quick sharp knives ran up her arm. "Owl" she exclaimed, step ping back and shaking her hand, which still tingled.
Moister Cleurach’s expression was solemn, but she thought she saw amusement in his eyes. "Most acolytes try the door at one time or an-other," he said. "The truly persistent and curious are the ones who feel it is that not so, Ennis?"
"Aye, Moister," O'Deoradhain answered. "Tis."
Moister Cleurach placed his hand on the door. Jenna heard him start
to speak, then he stopped and removed his hand. "You know the word
don't you, Ennis?" %
O'Deoradhain took a step back, his eyes a bit wide. "No, Moister. How would I. .?"
Moister Cleurach snorted derisively. "Don't treat me like a fool, Ennis O'Deoradhain. I'm not as blind as some of you Brathairs might think."
With a glance at the old man, O'Deoradhain put his hand against the wooden planks and spoke a soft word that Jenna could not hear. A violet light glimmered around his fingers. The door swung silently open. "The ward was placed on the door by Tadhg himself," Moister Cleurach said. "And 'tis no less strong now than when I was shocked by it, many years ago." He nodded toward O'Deoradhain. "The opening word is at best an open secret. Only the Moister, the Librarian, and the Keeper are supposed to know it, but acolytes and Brathairs have sharp ears, and some elders aren't as careful as they might have been. Eh, Ennis?"
O'Deoradhain blushed and said nothing.
The room they entered was a library, Jenna realized, far bigger than the small chamber in the keep at Lar Bhaile, the interior airy with light from windows in the east and west walls, and filled with three rows of long tables. The smell of musty parchment filled the air, and scrolls sat in wooden notches along the south wall, while the north wall held leather-bound flat volumes. Also along the north wall was a large wooden cabinet. Its doors hung askew, torn from their hinges. An elderly Brathair sat at a desk at the front of the room, a parchment spread out in front of him. As they entered, he bowed to the Moister and left the room, his right leg dragging the floor as if he could not bend the knee or move the limb easily.
"This room is where the knowledge of the Order is written down and kept," Moister Cleurach told Jenna. He walked over to the ruined cabinet-Shoving aside the broken doors, he pulled out one of several trays. She could see that the tray was lined with black velvet and separated into several compartments, all of them empty. Jenna heard O'Deoradhain suck in a breath as the Moister displayed the tray to them. "And here. Here was where our clochs na thintri were stored: behind the locked and warded Library door, and the doors of this cabinet were warded with slow magics as well."
Moister Cleurach dropped the tray onto one of the tables. The sound was loud and startling. "Tadhg O'Coulghan's vision was a long one and correct," he continued. "We did acquire many of the Clochs Mor over the centuries, and we kept the knowledge and we held to his dream." His fist slammed against the table. "And it was all taken away. Stolen just before Tadhg's future came to fruition." He glanced at them, his voice bitter, his mouth twisted. "The same acolytes who betrayed us let the invaders into this room, knowing the word as you did, Ennis. Librarian Maher was badly injured resisting the gardai; you noticed that he still hasn't fully recovered. Keeper Scanlan died of his wounds that night. The acolytes and Brathairs resisted as well as they could with sword and slow magics, and twelve of them died in the hall outside. The raiders took the clochs, all of them. I suppose I should be grateful that they left the books and scrolls or that they didn't set fire to the library as they fled. But this. . this was enough. You've seen the consequences."
"I wondered," O'Deoradhain said. "I wondered why there seemed to be so many Clochs Mor with the tuatha. Now I know why. Tiarna Mac Ard and the Ri Gabair, or perhaps the Tanaise Rig-they must have planned this not long after the mage-lights appeared in Tuath Gabair."
"Aye," the Moister nodded. "The clochs are again in the hands of the Riocha, and again they are used for war."
Moister Cleurach shook himself from reverie,
standing again and rub-bing fingers through the fringe of unruly white hair. For the first time, the frown lifted from his face, though he did not smile.
"I will teach you, Jenna Aoire," he said. "I will teach you to be the cloudmage who holds Lamh Shabhala."
"You’d teach a woman?" she asked, remembering the acolytes she’d seen.
"In Tadhg’s time and Severii’s, when the clochs na thintri were still active, we had female acolytes here, and Siurs of the Order. Not many, true, but some of the Holders were women-for Lamh Shabhala as well as other clochs, as you must know. Aye, we would teach them. It was only after, when the mage-lights had stopped, that we also stopped accepting women into the Order. So few were sent us then and so few came here on their own. ." Moister Cleurach shrugged. "Eventually habit or circum-stance becomes the rule, and rule tradition. But tradition broken is also soon forgotten."
His hands seemed old and tired as he picked up the empty tray and slid it back into its place in the cabinet. He pushed the broken doors together. "At least they didn’t get Lamh Shabhala," he said. "Stay, and I will teach you what is in the books here. You will become a Siur of the Order."
"And Lamh Shabhala?" Jenna asked. "The cloch my great-da stole?"
"You’re its Holder and the cloch is yours," Moister Cleurach replied. "I would be pleased to have the First Holder also be a cloudmage of the Order." He gave her a rueful smile. "It seems you’ll be the only one."
Jenna looked at O’Deoradhain, knowing what she wanted to do and wondering if he knew as well. He nodded to her. "Not the only one," Jenna told the Moister. "Ennis. .?"
O’Deoradhain pulled his cloch from under his cloca. The ruby facets gleamed in the light streaming into the library from the windows facing west and the lowering sun. "This isn’t the cloch you sent me to find, Moister," he said. "But I hold the Cloch Mor that was once held by the Mac Ards of Tuath Gabair."
"And this. ." Jenna reached into the pouch at her belt, bringing out the sea-foam green jewel that
Tiarna Gairbith had once possessed. "This is another Cloch Mor, though I don’t know its long history. " She placed it on the table in front of Moister Cleurach. "1 give it to the Order to do with as you will. Consider it payment for my tuition, and a small compensation for what my great-da took."
Chapter 39: Training
IT was harder than Jenna imagined. "Moister Cleurach is an excellent mentor," O’Deoradhain told her the first day. "I/you can stand him." That wasn’t an exaggeration. The Moister had an encyclopedic knowledge of the lore of the clochs na thintri and was seemingly able to call up in his mind the pages of the entire library of the Order, but he was also sometimes impatient with Jenna, who be-came his only student. He was initially exasperated by the fact that Jenna could neither read nor write. At first he refused to go further until she learned her letters, then a few minutes later reversed himself after finding that Jenna’s memory was quick, facile, and reliable.