Chapter 5
She slept badly that night, her head filled with nightmares about the people in the Fodder Wing.
Dreams where she knelt pouring energy into the first man to try to revive him, only for a woman lying beside him to begin screaming in pain.
She’d turn then to pour power into her until the man began to scream.
On and on it went, endlessly round and round as she kept draining one to try to save the other, her ears filled with the sound of their screams.
The next morning, at choir, all the talk was of Huath sensing power in Ionáin. éadha stood silent in the middle of the chatter, her arms wrapped tightly around her, earning a scolding from Béithe.
“Have you nothing to say? To be gifted is all that boy’s wanted since the day he was born. Put out he’ll be leaving you behind once he passes his Reckoning, are you? But that was always the way of it.”
éadha said nothing but felt a warning twinge of worry. It’d been her power that Huath sensed yesterday. Magret only said it was Ionáin to deflect Huath before he caught her. But now that lie seemed to be taking on a life of its own.
After rehearsal, éadha followed Magret once more, and together they headed deep into the forest beyond the Keep, far from any prying eyes.
It was a long, chilly walk up to where the trees began to thin at the start of the Steps.
They stopped at an open space at the very edge of the tree line, éadha eyeing Magret warily, half expecting more anger.
Instead, to her surprise, Magret took her hand. “I’m sorry for yesterday. It’s a hard thing to hear, and I delayed longer than I should have.”
éadha thought of the beauty of the little were-lights darting about her room, of flying in the Lady’s Well, and knew in her heart she wasn’t sorry she’d had that brief chance to know her gift.
She said nothing, though, and after a short pause Magret went on.
“Tell me how you created your barrier yesterday.” When éadha explained about the ice sheet, Magret was impressed.
“You did well. A Channeller as strong as Huath would expect to identify anyone using the gift in a heartbeat. You must’ve shut yourself down very fast.”
“The ice was about to crack when you spoke up.”
“Back in the Channeller wars, it was a prized skill to be able to slip close to an enemy Channeller without being detected. Less so now, with all the Channellers supposedly united through Lambay. It’s why these skills aren’t taught on Lambay, because to the Masters, any kind of concealment goes against the whole idea of a united Channeller elite.
But not all Families approve of the Masters’ version of channeling, with its Fodder Holds and its Inquisitions, its brutality and control.
And given the Masters’ absolute intolerance of dissent, they have a need to be able to conceal their true opinions from Inquisitors.
So this knowledge has been preserved in a few places. ”
Magret produced a yellowed book from beneath her cloak.
“This text has survived from the time of the Channeller wars. It has some skills in it I daresay even Lord Huath is not familiar with. Things like face-shifts, using illusions to disguise your features, and thought-walls to hide your true gifts.”
éadha opened pages stiff with age and dried ink. Images glowed up from the paper, pictures of tiny figures swimming across the page, of wolves poised to spring, and, on one page, a fish leaping from the water as it swam upstream.
“These notes were written by Channellers over generations. Power is a difficult thing to convey because every Channeller experiences it differently; some will talk of colors or lights, of swimming through water, while others talk of animals, birds, fish.”
Looking closer, éadha saw how even the words contained pictures, lovingly drawn in fantastical detail: an eagle whose wings formed the shape of an m, a fox peeping between the legs of an n.
And everywhere the silver threads, radiating out from figure to figure, hands raised toward each other.
There was so much joy, so much love and pride in the gift that even in her sadness it made her smile.
“In hiding your gift, the trick is to create an illusion of transparency. If you simply build a wall in your mind, your Reckoner will see you’re hiding something and use his strength to break it down.
You must give the impression he’s seeing all of you while hiding your power as deep inside yourself as there are depths. ”
Magret pointed her toward an illustration in the book of a man standing above another man, gripping his head. Inside the seated man was drawn a tapestry, itself woven from even smaller images: hands, faces, trees. From behind the weave a light glowed.
“He’s created a wall made of thoughts. Think of the things that fill your mind on a normal day.
Family, or chores, then use them to weave a thought-wall, a set of images woven together and placed across the space where your power resides.
It needs to be smooth so the Reckoner can’t see the join between your actual thoughts and those you’re using to hide your power.
You use your power to fire the thought-wall into life so they move and change the way true thoughts flit through our minds. ”
“All right,” said éadha, closing her eyes. “Here goes nothing.”
In her mind’s eye she wove together images of herself out herding, Béithe catching her swiping apples from the pantry. But every time she felt she’d created a reasonable imitation of her mind’s normal flow, Magret stepped into her head and shattered it.
As éadha groaned out loud after yet another failed attempt, Magret said calmly, “This is a deeply demanding art. The Masters teach us power can only be taken from another because it suits their purposes. But go back a few hundred years when channeling was new in the world, and it was well understood a Channeller could draw small amounts of power from their own life source. Only a spark, for sure, but enough for minor acts like firing a thought-wall. Then again, it’s always easier to reach out and snatch fruit growing in another’s orchard than it is to grow it in your own. ”
She pointed again at the illustration. “Nothing in these images is without meaning. See how the thoughts in his wall reflect the images around him. He’s taken thoughts that are meaningful to him.
This opens his heart so the power can flow from it.
This is where you must find the power. In your heart, in your belly. ”
Bowing her head, éadha tried again, this time using memories closer to her heart.
Drawing the map of Domhain in lessons; Ionáin climbing up the fell on her birthday.
Now it was stronger. Magret was right. These thoughts sparked something deep inside her, a pulse of electricity that shot up into her mind to fire her wall. But still Magret was able to break it.
“That’s better,” she said, stepping back.
éadha, though, wanted to scream in frustration. “How are you able to break it, then?”
This time the look in Magret’s eyes was sympathetic. “The thoughts you’ve chosen, they’re precious, but they’re stained with worry. All I have to do is press it. If you’re going to use them, you need to find a way to keep the insecurity out.”
The sun was setting when éadha returned to the cottage, her head aching from a long afternoon of failed thought-walls and the knowledge she’d have to do it all again tomorrow.
But when she stepped into the cottage, Ionáin was sitting at the table with her uncle.
Grinning widely, he sprang to his feet and hustled her upstairs to her loft, where he flung himself onto her bed.
She sat beside him gingerly, and Ionáin shifted around so he was looking at her.
“My parents haven’t stopped talking since Uncle arrived.
He told them if the flare of power he felt was anything to go by, I could be a really gifted Channeller like him, and my Reckoning should just be a formality now. ”
He stood again, unable to hold himself still, his eyes shining in the dim light that came up into the loft from below. “All this time I’ve been so worried about failing, I’ve never let myself think what it’d be like to actually pass.”
“How does your uncle think it happened yesterday, the flare?” asked éadha, and though her voice was steady, inside she was fighting down a growing sense of panic.
“Nobody knows, really. I was just watching the choir, worrying about my Reckoning. Huath said sometimes power comes to the surface in moments of stress.”
Listening to Ionáin talk, éadha felt sick as it sank in just how much she’d accidentally raised the stakes for him.
Magret had only pointed Huath toward Ionáin to cover for her reckless channeling from the other singers in the choir.
Now that his hopes had been raised, his devastation would be even worse if it turned out he’d no gift.
And if he did fail, he was on his own because with her promise to Magret she’d abandoned him.
Because she’d promised to do…nothing. Even if he failed.
Her fantasy of saving the day, of using her power to fight off the Masters if they tried to take Ionáin away to Westport—all nothing now.
Ionáin was still talking. “They’re inviting even more guests now that they think it’ll go well. They want to make a bigger show of it all.”
éadha wrapped her arms around her legs, overwhelmed with guilt, but even as she did, Ionáin sat back down beside her.
“I know I said wait until my Reckoning.” He paused, his eyes going to her face, to her mouth, the expression in them darkening as he stared at the curve of her lips, their fullness.
éadha’s heart thudded to see the open hunger in those blue eyes now, and an answering longing surged up inside her.
Any moment now, he was going to reach out toward her, and it was all she wanted, had wanted since that moment on the fell.
For him to come to her, for it to be real.
But then she froze as it hit her that she couldn’t.
She couldn’t let their first real kiss be based on a lie, and so she leaned back out of his reach, her shoulders digging into the wall behind her.
Ionáin stiffened. “Hey, what is it? What’s wrong?
” He slid off the bed and crouched in front of her, trying to make her look at him.
Still she avoided his eyes. “Is it your own Reckoning? I’m sorry, I’ve been so focused on mine I keep forgetting you’re worrying too.
” He rubbed her arm. “Honestly, though, all we need is for my Reckoning to go as we all hope now. I’ll be Lord of the Keep, and I’ll be more free to choose who… ” He flushed bright red.
A sob rose in éadha’s throat. She couldn’t let him start making promises to her, not when it was her fault his hopes had been raised like this.
When he’d only ever been completely honest with her.
Leaning forward, she flung her arms around his neck, forcing him back onto his heels so he had to grab for the bed frame to stop them both toppling backward onto the floor.
Just so she wouldn’t have to keep looking into those trusting eyes while all the time the words she couldn’t say pounded through her mind.
I picked Magret and her secrets over you. I picked hiding my power, over you. And if you fail your Reckoning now, I can’t use my power to fight for you because I’ve sworn not to channel anymore.
Even as she thought this, her mind felt as though her promise to Magret no longer made sense. How could it be wrong to want to use her power to fight to protect Ionáin? How could hiding and helplessness be the right answer?
Standing up, she pulled him over to the stairs and back down to where her uncle sat at the kitchen table.
There she launched into empty, half-hysterical small talk with the two of them while Ionáin stared, baffled by the change in her.
All just to stop him saying something else kind.
Something only he’d ever think of saying to her.
Because if he did, her fragile promise to Magret would shatter into a million pieces like her failed thought-walls in the woods, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to make another one.