Chapter 11
The next morning, she was hauled awake an hour before dawn by the tolling of the temple bells, summoning all to the Matins ceremony as they would every day during their time on Lambay.
Groggily she pulled on the red Keeper robe laid out at the end of her bed.
About her, the other girls did the same.
As her head cleared, the dead thud of yesterday’s panic kicked in her stomach, but the night’s sleep had calmed her a little.
Fiachna had said yesterday the Keeper and Channeller apprentices would study together.
This surely meant she’d be near Ionáin during lessons at least, and after all, on the Steps Ionáin had talked about her being assigned as his Keeper. She just had to be patient.
The other girls were filing out of the room.
As she followed them, she bowed her head under her hood and built her thought-wall, swiftly creating a new display, her silver fish flickering restlessly in the depths as the last blocks slid into place.
She couldn’t stop her worry coloring her thought-wall, though, staining it with her anxiety.
With a final tug she pulled power up the thread, setting the thoughts circling in random patterns through the day.
When she reached the courtyard, the other girls were already forming a line, but when she tried to join them, they moved closer so there was no room. From her place at the front, Ailbhe glanced back, her face expressionless, and said, “Commoners go last.”
Her face burning, éadha began making her way to the end where the other commoner girls, Béibhín and Nuala, were already standing.
When she got there she saw Gry had arrived, and he stepped back to make a space for her.
As she took it, Ailbhe glanced over her shoulder then rolled her eyes at him.
Gry, though, just grinned back at her cheerfully until she turned away.
In silence they followed the Head Keeper’s swinging lantern through the cloisters, feet echoing on the bare stone.
In the predawn darkness, the temple was lit by torches set in braziers along the walls.
Bundles of fragrant pinewood burned in fire-wells at intervals up the center aisle, creating circles of heat in the frosty air.
Ahead, the Channeller apprentices filed into their plush red-cushioned seats in the center while the Keepers slipped into the high-fronted Keeper pews set sideways-on.
éadha could see Ionáin’s tawny head in the middle of his class, flanked by Senan and Coll.
The senior Keepers stood behind the pews, hoods raised so their faces couldn’t be seen, hands crossed and tucked into their sleeves, like living statues lining the temple wall.
As the bells stilled, four Masters paced slowly up the center aisle, swinging incense-laden thuribles on long silver chains until the smoke filled the temple, drifting over the Keeper pews.
éadha’s head began to swim as a potent blend of incense and another unfamiliar smell surrounded them, the smoke filling her lungs and dimming her eyes.
At the same time, a single drumbeat began thumping in rhythm with her heart.
Gradually, it was joined by other deeper, more complex rhythms that built and echoed with fierce intent.
The incense and the pounding of the drums were making her dizzy, forcing her to grip the pew in front to steady herself.
As she did, the Masters stood as one and began to chant.
In their song éadha heard the ferocity and joy of power, coursing through the heart, the body, the mind.
From nowhere a sudden wildness gripped her.
Urged her to rip down her thought-wall, to reach out and drain the life force from everyone around her until they collapsed in a pyre at her feet and she rose like an arrow, blazing out with all the power she was capable of, shattering through the dome above.
Her power surged up inside her, demanding to be unleashed.
She fought to hold it down, but as she did, the drums kept up their relentless beat, faster and faster still until they merged, collapsing to a single racing beat that arrowed into her mind and slammed into her worry-stained thought-wall.
For one frozen instant it held against the impact, and then it shattered into unbeing, her true thoughts fleeing all through her mind.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a hooded Keeper’s head shoot up, whipping this way and that like a blind creature trying to locate the source of a sound. And beside her, she sensed Gry’s head inching about, his eyes sliding sideways toward her.
éadha knew the power holding her thought-wall together had shone out in the moment it shattered.
That the Keepers’ grasping, spidery senses must be spooling outward now, searching for the source of that power flare.
The part of her that could still think through the drug haze and the drumbeats was screaming in terror, scrabbling to rebuild her thought-wall from the scattered images ricocheting through her mind.
But each time she managed to cobble her thoughts together, the drums pounded them apart once more.
And mutely, sullenly, deep inside her, something else was resisting too.
A part of her that’d stayed standing in the Channellers’ quad last night, staring in at Ionáin’s rich apartment, and whispered to her now that it was all too hard.
That maybe it was better like this. Better to be caught now and recognized for what she was, a Channeller born, and take her place like Linn in a turret with stained-glass windows, and sit on a red velvet seat, and be kept in out of the rain.
But as she struggled, the drumming finally stopped and the congregation rose and began to sing.
It was the refrain of thanks, the same song she’d sung with the choir at Ionáin’s Reckoning, and as the melody rose around her, from note to well-loved note, she climbed, pulling herself away from the seductive drumbeat of despair and desire.
She remembered the promise she’d made to protect Ionáin and built back a shining thought-wall of music and memory that deflected the searching Keepers’ creeping threads so they withdrew, thwarted.
A little later, as the apprentices shuffled out through the temple doors, a voice behind her said, “Are you all right?”
It was Gry. “You seemed a bit…wobbly back there.”
“The smoke and the singing, I don’t know, it affected me,” she replied, her head clearing quickly in the morning air. He fell into step alongside her. éadha felt a twinge of surprise and, underneath that, fear.
“I wouldn’t worry, that’s normal. They burn molash potions with the incense to heighten the rush from channeling.
You’ll get the hang of it. You should see how it affects the new Channeller apprentices.
Of course they’re far more sensitive than us lowly Keepers.
Some have even been known to lose it and start trying to channel right there on the spot. ”
She looked at him sharply, but Gry’s eyes were wide, full of nothing but a seemingly innocent concern. Still, though, this was far too dangerous a subject, and so she said abruptly, “How do you know so much about this place?”
Gry’s eyebrows twitched as if to say he’d registered the topic swerve before he said, “My cousin graduated a few months ago; he told me what to expect, and then my Family goes back a bit. So plenty of nursemaid’s tales for me and my sister since we could first sit on her knee.
I used to long for a story that didn’t involve battling dragons or raising palaces—possibly something involving cows,” he finished with a slight grimace.
“So what happens now?”
“Well, breakfast in the ref now. After that, the real work begins.”
éadha’s anxiety began to churn once more. Her thought-wall was back up, but she wasn’t any closer to reaching Ionáin unseen in time for his lessons.
The refectory was in the main House, its east-facing windows lit by the rising sun as the apprentices trickled in, some as dazed-looking as éadha.
The same buffet was laid out as yesterday—mounds of fresh fruit, warm bread, and steaming hot chocolate.
In front of her, two Keeper girls were chatting as they inspected a glistening pile of strawberries in a porcelain bowl, carefully selecting the ripest, roundest berries.
“They’re very good, much better than our crops this winter,” said one.
“Mother always says Master Cathal could channel pomegranates from a teaspoon of soil in a snowstorm,” the other replied.
“But look out for the tomatoes; they’re the hardest to get right. Best avoided for the first term, at least until the new Channellers get the hang of them.”
Standing behind the two girls, éadha wondered if she was the only person on Lambay who didn’t already know everything there was to know about First House, from the hazards of tomatoes and drugged incense to the Masters and their talents.
She felt like someone playing a high-stakes game of blindman’s bluff, flailing as she tried to feel out the obstacles and pitfalls ahead while all around her the smugly sighted looked on, sniggering.
How had she thought she could outwit the Masters when she didn’t know the first thing about this place?
A group of black-robed Channeller students burst in, talking loudly, pushing and shoving each other in high spirits.
Ionáin was in the middle, laughing and ducking to avoid a cuff from Senan.
They were followed more slowly by Ailbhe and the other girls from éadha’s dorm.
All sat down at a long table, though not before the Keeper girls bowed to the Channeller apprentices.
Seeing éadha, Ionáin jumped back to his feet, waving to her to come over.
Awkwardly she did so, Gry strolling alongside her, for all the world as if they were old friends rather than two people who’d barely met.
And éadha had the sense of a decision having been reached by the tall, dark-haired young man beside her. One she had no say in at all.
“éadha, there you are,” said Ionáin. “You know Coll and Linn and Senan from yesterday. Everyone, this is éadha, from home. She’s the one I told you about, who faced the dragon in the Blackstairs on our way here.”
éadha smiled self-consciously.
“Yes,” snorted Senan. “The word faced is doing a lot of work there. Anyway, I heard Huath chased off the bitch but not before its spawn had hatched, so they’re hunting for them now.”
“It was so lucky your uncle Huath was there,” said Ailbhe, leaning in to the conversation, gazing wide-eyed at Ionáin. “Though I’m sure you’ll be as strong a slayer as he is.”
The talk turned to the different Channellers, with Ionáin loyally backing his uncle against younger Channellers recently returned from the western front with tales of new techniques, new slayings.
But when Gry made some small remark about his cousin, Senan’s head whipped about like a snake.
“Ah, the boy Keeper. How are you doing in your Keeper dorm? I heard your aunt Hera canceled the midwinter festival at House Críoch rather than face the pitying looks from her sisters. I think I’d prefer no power at all than to be a Keeper.
So very mediocre, don’t you think? At least being powerless has that whiff of notoriety, eh, Ionáin?
What girl in their right mind would have you now? ”
Gry had flushed at Senan’s onslaught, but his voice was calm as he replied, “At least my parents didn’t have to ask the Reckoner to keep going for—what was it?—a whole ten minutes before you finally managed to pass because we already have a Channeller in the Family.”
“That’s a lie and you know it!” Senan sprang from his chair and had to be held back by Ionáin. “You’re lucky there’s a power ban, or I’d show you what a real Channeller looks like.”
Gry sat unmoving, other than to pop a strawberry in his mouth, and after a moment Senan subsided into his chair once more. There was a short pause, then the chatter rose around them again. éadha, though, was more interested in what Senan had said.
“What did he mean by a power ban?” she said to Coll beside her.
In between mouthfuls of food, he explained, “Well, as Master Irial will no doubt lecture us about later, it’s all about the Stages. Purifying our bodies and minds into worthy vessels. So, basically, no flying, fighting, or anything else fun for the first while.”
It was a reprieve, she thought. An unexpected gift of time. Time to find the way to reach Ionáin with her power unseen, to keep her promise after all. And the relief of this realization was so strong éadha swayed slightly in her seat.
She straightened up then, looking around the sunlit ref with a new sense of possibility. Ionáin glanced her way, and she grinned impulsively across at him. He smiled widely in response, blue eyes shining with their old shared laughter, before turning toward a knowing kick from Coll.
From the darting looks of Ailbhe and the other Keeper girls around her, éadha knew that in that one moment, with that one shared smile with Ionáin, she’d managed to make an enemy of Ailbhe after all, but just then, just there, she didn’t care.