Chapter 4
éadha stayed standing for a little while.
She was on one of the grassy mounds that ringed the ice-bound lake.
Above her the Sídhe still shone bright in the full-starred sky of winter.
In that cold and starry stillness, everything seemed hyper-real, etched in silver and filled with meaning.
The branches of the oak tree dipped in black, the white glimmering of the lake, the Keep’s ancient towers rising behind her.
She was gifted. She was going to be a Channeller.
She stared down at her hands. Her body felt strange, fizzing and restless, but it took her a beat to understand why: the remains of the power she’d drawn earlier to throw Magret out of her mind.
Churning now still, inside her, unused. Was this how Channellers felt, she thought, rising up on the balls of her feet and spreading her fingers out wide, filled with this sense of possibility.
And underneath it, too, something else. Something new stirring deep inside her, a silver fish that darted out of sight as soon as she tried to look at it.
How was she going to keep this a secret, she thought, when she could barely hold still, barely hold it in?
Her eyes went automatically to the East Tower and Ionáin’s window, but it was dark.
No doubt he was downstairs in the Great Hall, welcoming Magret.
Restlessness surged inside her; she needed to do something.
She’d promised not to draw power again, but what was she to do with this power she already had?
Behind the East Tower, stark against the moonlight, she glimpsed the outline of the Lady’s Well.
There, she thought. Smoothly, effortlessly, she broke into a run across the grassy mounds, barely noticing how fast she was moving, and moments later she was slipping through the stone archway into the Lady’s Well, a marble cloister open to the sky.
In years gone by, it was where the ladies of the Keep sat while the old Lord Ailm, Ionáin’s grandfather, wove them illusions from the great dragon battles.
Its tiled floor was covered with mosaics while a stream sang down its center before beginning its quick fall toward the lake.
And its marble walls rose high above éadha as she stood there now, hiding her from any curious eyes.
Standing in the center of the Well, she tried to remember the stories Ionáin used to tell her about Channellers and their gifts back when they were smaller, before Dara died and everything got too serious for stories.
How they could create were-lights and fireballs, draw crops and buildings from the earth, fight back the dragons in aerial combat over the sea beyond Westport. How they could fly.
Taking a deep breath, she concentrated on the power she could still sense inside her.
On an out breath, she pushed it down, and down again, right through her, until it was pushing against the ground beneath her feet.
For a moment nothing happened, and then slowly, impossibly, her body began to rise up into the air.
It was as if she was suddenly weightless, the power pushing her off the ground and holding her, cushioning her on the air.
Seeing the ground dropping away beneath her, a sudden panic gripped her: What was she doing?
She wobbled, her arms starting to flail.
But she could still feel it, the power, pulsing through her, and after a moment she steadied herself, concentrating on keeping it flowing smoothly, like breathing.
As she did, her body went still, and then she was just…
there. Floating in the air, about six feet off the ground.
She let out a small cry—of disbelief, of wonder. She could fly.
Focusing again, very gingerly she pushed herself higher, gradually getting the feel of it, how to turn, how to move, like a swimmer diving through the air.
Soon she was circling the Well, round and round, first slowly, then, as her confidence grew, faster and faster, until she was racing.
With a sudden flick she lifted her hand above her head and shot upward, up and up, right until she was level with the top of the Well, almost back out into the moonlight again, the ground fifty feet below her.
She knew she couldn’t risk flying out into the open air.
Instead, with her hand still raised above her head, she began to spin, her hair flying, her cloak whipping, until she was going so fast the stars above became white streaks and she the center of a vortex of power and of life that was going to set the world on fire.
The power went out almost as suddenly as it had filled her, spent.
She began to fall from the air. Human again and tumbling down past the marble walls toward the mosaic floor.
She only just managed, with the last dregs of power inside her, to slow her fall enough that it didn’t kill her, though she still landed with a bone-crunching thud on the stone floor, every last bit of breath knocked out of her.
She lay there for a little while, her cloak crumpled around her, her head on the ground inches away from the stream, listening to its quiet babble as her breath eventually returned and her heart slowed to normal.
Everything hurt. Inside and out. The best she could do was to drag herself over to a corner of the cloister where there was a small pile of broken tiles.
Resting her aching head on the tiles, she pulled her cloak over her for warmth and slipped into the relief of unconsciousness.
“éadha!”
Someone was calling her.
She tried to ignore them, but they wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t they see she needed not to be awake right now? When awake meant bruises and every bone in her body stiff and aching?
“éadha, wake up.”
Ionáin. It was Ionáin. How was it Ionáin?
Finally her brain started into life, and it was like the flickering of lightning, the scattered racing of images across her mind.
Rescuing the yearling. Magret’s hands gripping her head.
Drawing on the silver thread. Flying in the Lady’s Well. Falling. And Ionáin. Kissing Ionáin.
Her eyes flew open.
Ionáin’s face was only inches away as he crouched down toward her, his eyes a midnight blue in the morning-shadowed cloister.
“What’re you doing here?” he said.
She pushed herself up, suddenly desperately conscious of what an odd, bedraggled sight she must make, her curls limp and beaded with dew, all of her coated in dust and damp from lying on the cloister floor all night.
“I…I was restless last night,” she stammered, scrabbling to get her thoughts straight, to remember what she could and couldn’t say. “After I got the sheep back, the moon was so bright—I went for a walk. I must’ve fallen asleep.” She sat up further, only taking in now how different Ionáin looked.
His eyes were looking straight into hers with no trace of his normal grin.
Almost as if they were two strangers meeting for the first time.
Instead of his normal worn tunic, he was dressed in a fine navy jacket and wool trews.
It made him look older, more intent, and the unfamiliarity only heightened that sense of meeting a stranger.
Someone, she realized, she was almost painfully conscious of now.
His tanned skin against the dark collar, the fall of his hair, the way his eyes seemed almost blue-black.
The fullness of his lips. A shiver went through her at the memory of how they’d felt, brushing against hers high on the fell yesterday, and she realized she wasn’t ready for him to be this close to her when she still didn’t fully understand what’d happened between them.
As the silence began to stretch, she saw Ionáin was studying her face too.
It reminded her of the look he’d get when they were younger and Jarlath would let them pore over the maps of the dragon archipelago where his grandfather had fought.
Now he was studying her with that same intensity, as if she’d become some kind of new terrain, a land unknown.
His expression was unreadable while he took in the dust on her cheeks and coating her lashes, the upturned tilt of her lips.
She’d never been stared at so intently before, and a flush began stealing across her cheeks.
As it did, she could’ve sworn his eyes darkened until finally his questing gaze dropped to her hands, still on the floor, catching sight of the little pile of broken tiles next to them.
And it was like a spell breaking when he cleared his throat and said, with a hint of his normal smile, “Do you remember those, the last time we were here?”
The familiar memory steadied her, reminded her that this intent, handsome almost-stranger was still the tousle-haired boy she’d grown up with, the one who walked with her through almost every memory.
“They were our drums,” she said with a small, rueful smile. “That’s how Béithe caught us that day. I was battering them with a stick when you decided to sing along at the top of your voice. Stealth was never your strong point.”
Ionáin laughed, his face lighting up. How had she never seen that before? The way he lit up a room when he smiled like this, with his whole self. How much of her joy was already in this boy.
“That’s how the ‘Dragon Song’ is meant to be sung.
” He grinned. “At the top of your voice as you ride west across the stony barrens to Westport to fight dragons because you’re terrified you’re going to be burned to death by some angry dragon mother and singing is the only thing you’ve got to keep you going. ”
Straightening up, Ionáin threw his head back.
“Westward the dragon flies and so must I
Naught but a yew staff by my side
My one heart’s wish that you are there to keep for me
When I ride to Westport’s shore, but it cannot be”