Chapter 3
As soon as the sheep were safely back in their pens for the night, éadha was away, heading down the tree-shadowed avenue toward the Keep.
The moon had risen enough to light her way, reflecting on puddles already freezing over in the mud churned up by the day’s traffic.
She’d started shivering uncontrollably, her body aching as if she was running a fever.
All she wanted to do was get to her cot bed and pull the covers over her head until this pain left her.
But as she forced her shaking legs on down the lane, she heard feet coming up behind her, moving far more surely and swiftly than her own.
Turning, half-fearful of what else this strange night might have in store, she made out the features of the singer Magret.
Béithe’s cousin Magret was a short, vigorous woman with a weathered face framed by cropped white hair.
A renowned singer and musician, she could easily have found a permanent berth with any Family.
Instead, she chose a nomadic existence, traveling from Family to Family throughout Domhain, there to mark their Reckonings and betrothals, births and deaths.
She’d sung at Dara’s funeral when he’d died two years ago, and now she was on her way to Ailm’s Keep to take charge of the music for Ionáin’s Reckoning ceremony.
As she drew closer, éadha saw Magret was bleeding from a deep cut on her temple and her face looked drawn.
Peering at éadha in the moonlight, Magret asked, “Child, what has you out at this hour?”
“I was herding on the fell, but I’d a bit of trouble with a yearling,” éadha replied, her heart sinking as Magret fell into step beside her. The calm she’d felt after rescuing the yearling was wearing off, replaced by a growing bewilderment. She just wanted to get away to her room.
Magret, though, gave her a sharp glance. “What do you mean?”
“It slid down the shale side and onto a ledge over the quarry.” As she said this, the two of them had almost reached the main Keep courtyard. Magret tugged her hood down as if to hide her temple, where the blood from her cut showed black in the moonlight.
“Are you all right?” said éadha. “That looks deep.”
“I’ll be fine. Do I look a sight though?
” said Magret, then, without waiting for éadha to answer, she sat down on a stone bench in the shadow of the courtyard wall, facing out toward the Keep gardens.
Taking up the corner of her cloak, she spat on it and rubbed at the dried blood until all that was left was the cut itself, just under the hairline. “Now?”
éadha nodded. “You’d hardly see it. Did you fall?”
“Such a stupid thing. I stopped off at the quarry to look for some quartz and I must’ve tripped. One minute, I’m climbing over some rocks, and the next I’m face down with this cut on my temple.”
Magret paused and stared directly at éadha, an intent look coming into her eyes. “You must’ve been right up above me when I fell. Rescuing that yearling. How did that happen, did you say?”
éadha shrugged, at the same time feeling a twinge of unease.
There was something in the way Magret was staring at her, almost like a hunger.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, fumbling for words to describe something she didn’t understand herself.
“The sheep was stuck. I felt bad; I didn’t want to let everybody down.
I jumped down and then, all of a sudden, I could lift it…
” Her voice trailed away as she realized how bizarre that sounded.
“Can you come sit here?” said Magret. éadha didn’t want to, but neither could she see how to say no, and so she went and perched uneasily on the edge of the bench.
As she did, Magret swiveled and caught éadha’s head between her hands, holding it in an unbreakable grip.
“This may hurt a little, but it’ll only last a moment. ”
The next second éadha felt icy hands reach inside her skull.
She gasped with the shock of it. A presence had entered her mind as if it were just another room to be walked into.
Squirming and pulling as hard as she could, she tried to break free, but Magret’s hands were like bands of iron clamped on either side of her head, immovable.
Desperate, she turned inward, instinctively trying to push out the invader inside her mind, but nothing happened.
She could still feel the calm presence moving about in her head.
It wasn’t painful after the initial shock, but it was utterly alien, the fundamental wall between her mind and the world outside ripped down, her every thought naked and exposed.
An iron sense of refusal rose up inside her then.
Closing her eyes, she reached out with her awareness as she’d done up on the fell, and immediately she could sense it.
A silver thread of power shining out there, much closer this time.
Without needing to think, she pulled on the thread as hard as she could and felt the shining strength pour into her again.
With a flick she sent that strength powering up from the depths of her, shooting through into the surface of her mind to drive out the invader, a giant wave exploding out from the silvery heart of her.
Magret had no chance against this tsunami of éadha’s violated rage; she was driven out of éadha’s mind on the thump of a heartbeat, her grip broken and her body flung backward off the bench and onto the ground.
éadha’s only thought, meanwhile, was to get away.
She staggered up from the bench and stumbled out of the courtyard onto the grassy mounds of the Keep gardens beyond.
From behind, Magret’s voice called after her. “éadha, éadha, don’t go. I’m sorry, éadha, that was a Reckoning, that’s all. Just let me explain.”
éadha stopped short. She was due her Reckoning right after Ionáin’s Reckoning day.
Was Magret a Reckoner then, sent from Lambay?
It made no sense. Looking back from where she stood in the shadows, she saw Magret pull herself back up onto the bench and hunch over, resting her forearms on her thighs and bowing her head.
“éadha, I know you’re out there. I need you to listen. You have the Channeller’s gift. From what I can tell, a rare gift, strong and sure. I guessed when you told me about the yearling. How else do you think you were able to climb up carrying such a weight? I just needed to be sure.”
éadha reeled where she stood. Not since she’d been a very young girl playing games of make-believe with Ionáin had she ever imagined she might be a Channeller.
Even in those games Ionáin would always argue she couldn’t play the Channeller because girls hardly ever were.
No more than one or two in a generation and always Family daughters.
Not girls like éadha with no name, no history of the gift.
The realizations began to multiply, bursting silently one by one in her mind like a shower of stars shooting across a winter sky.
This changed everything. She could be the Keep’s Channeller.
Grow the crops, guard the animals, heal the Keep itself, protect against dragon raids.
And Ionáin. His Reckoning didn’t matter anymore.
He didn’t need to be a Channeller to save the Keep anymore. She could do it for him.
She covered her face with her hands, breathing hard; it was too much to take in. As she did, Magret reached her and stretched an arm gingerly across her shoulders. “There now, it’s a lot to hear, I know.”
But when éadha lifted her head to look at Magret, her eyes were blazing with the intensity of her realization of what all this could mean for her, for Ionáin, for the whole Keep.
“Are you a Reckoner? Were you sent by the Masters? How can you be sure?”
Magret gave a short laugh. “The Masters aren’t the only ones with the ability to search for the gift.
But no, this wasn’t your official Reckoning.
I’d wager my life, though, that you’re a Channeller born.
The way you channeled power just now to throw me out of your mind is the purest proof there is. ”
At this, éadha pulled herself out of Magret’s grasp.
She had to get to the Keep, find Ionáin, say the words to break the curse that’d held him for so long.
In her mind she was already there. He was already hugging her so hard she could hardly breathe and—her throat tightened in sudden longing—then he’d lean in and he’d kiss her, only this time he wouldn’t stop.
Because what this gift meant was she was going to be someone.
To actually belong in Ionáin’s world of Families and Masters, power and magic.
“éadha, I need you to listen to me now.”
Magret’s sober tone jolted éadha back to the frost and the starlight, the bare branches of the oak tree along the Keep wall and the ice-covered lake in front of them.
“A gift like this isn’t something to be taken lightly, a toy.
There’s so much you don’t know because there’s been no channeling here in the Keep in your lifetime.
You’ve no idea—how could you?—what it’s like everywhere else.
What this power means.” She paused and stared at éadha.
“I’m sorry. This is a lot to take in. I want to stay, but there isn’t time.
I’m already late, and they’ll be out looking for me any minute.
But I need you to promise me one thing. Until we speak again, swear to me you’ll tell nobody what happened this evening, and you won’t use this power again. ”
éadha stared at Magret in disbelief. How could she ask her not to tell anyone? Not to tell Ionáin? But Magret gripped éadha by the shoulders, her hard fingers digging into the bone.
“I mean it. Surely you at least know the Masters control all channeling on Domhain?”
éadha nodded.
“Channeling without first winning your staff on Lambay is utterly forbidden. It’s the Masters’ strictest rule.
So you absolutely can’t tell anyone what you did this evening.
Lord Huath arrives any day now for his nephew’s Reckoning, and he’s the most brutal Channeller on all of Domhain, with every reason to want the gift to die out completely in Ailm’s Keep.
You’ve no Family, no name, no one to protect you from him.
You cannot give him an excuse to hurt you; do you understand? ”
éadha stared at the slight singer, unblinking, as her heart rate slowed and she took in what Magret was saying. Finally, she nodded again.
“Good,” said Magret, looking relieved. Behind her there was the sound of the Keep’s massive oak doors opening.
A shaft of light arced across the courtyard.
“I have to go,” she said. “But we’ll talk very soon, I promise.
” And with that she hurried into the courtyard, where voices called out in welcome.
éadha was left standing alone in the shadowed gardens, trying to take in the fact that after this night, nothing in her life would ever be the same again.