Chapter 15
Out the servants’ entrance éadha ran, then back toward the Keepers’ quad, taking the stairs to her dorm two at a time.
Ever since they’d arrived on Lambay, she’d been trying to get close to Ionáin to send power to him unseen.
But his words about mirroring had changed everything.
They’d spent weeks watching the Master Illusionist weave the most fantastical illusions: dragons, castles, battles.
But what if she created something far simpler?
Something that’d hide her power? A mirror.
If she could hide her thread behind a mirror illusion so a Channeller couldn’t see its telltale silver, then she wouldn’t need to be beside Ionáin at all.
She could send it to him over any distance without anyone seeing.
An unfamiliar quiet hung over her dormitory, broken only by the hiss of a dying hearth fire.
The other girls must’ve already left for Vespers.
She pulled Magret’s book out from where she’d hidden it under her clothes.
The pages glowed like a shout in the silent room with its dark wooden floorboards, its white walls and even whiter busts of bygone Keepers.
She began turning the pages, searching for a half-remembered drawing of a Channeller weaving a mirror illusion to reflect the beautiful face of his lover.
She was concentrating so hard that the first she knew of someone else entering the room was when a hand, too quick for her to catch, snatched Magret’s book from her grasp, swinging it above her head out of reach, a child’s game played with deadly intent. She whipped around to see Ailbhe.
“Now, now. Think carefully before you do anything rash.” Ailbhe’s face was calm yet powerfully pleased.
“Please, give it back.”
Stepping back out of reach, Ailbhe glanced down at the page.
“It looks quite like instructions on the use of power. How would someone like you come by something like this? Stolen, perhaps, on your special little visit to Ionáin’s rooms?
” She smiled at éadha, but her mouth was stretched like a snarl.
éadha’s stomach twisted with fear. How did Ailbhe know where she’d been? Was she watching her the whole time?
“This needs to be reported to Fiachna.” Ailbhe turned on her heel, sauntering toward the door, tapping the book against her thigh.
“I drew them,” éadha blurted out. “The images. I dreamed them and painted them. I was thinking of bringing them to the Head Keeper myself. My gift, it’s strong, I think, my lady.”
Ailbhe paused with her back to éadha for a moment before turning and walking over to the fireplace.
She propped the book on the mantel then picked up a poker and stoked the fire, tossing on a log as the flames stirred back to life.
Crouching there, her shining hair a halo of reflected firelight, she turned to look up at éadha.
“What would you know of gifts? Or strength? What are you, after all? Some wild child raised hundreds of miles from the nearest Channeller. What could you possibly know of our power, our legacy?” She stood and pointed to a marble bust behind éadha’s head. “Do you know who that is?”
Bewildered by the abrupt change of direction, éadha shook her head mutely, her eyes locked on Ailbhe’s.
Even in her terror she could feel the pent-up power radiating from Ailbhe.
A question half formed in her mind—how could this girl only be a Keeper, with that much power inside her?
But there was no time for such thoughts. Ailbhe was still talking.
“My great-grandmother. First-ranked Keeper of her year, a hundred years ago. And over there, by your bed, my great-aunt. Head Keeper on Second Island for twenty years. But you? What are you? A freak, a gamble no one is willing to take. A Fodder-wagon Keeper riding west to an early death in a dragon’s breath. ”
As the elegant girl with her elegant words like knives sliced away at her, in her deep heart’s core, éadha’s own power, so long buried, uncoiled now, stung to angry life. Filling her so she had to rise up on the balls of her feet, flexing her fingers to hold it in.
Ailbhe turned back to the mantel. “So, little freak. It’s not enough for you to be allowed here on this sacred island.
You think you can be the next Lady of Ailm’s Keep?
You know, I almost envy you your mediocrity.
The freedom of it. Do you know how long I’ve been perfect?
Since I knew there was a perfect to be, I’ve been perfect.
The perfect hair, the perfect manners, the perfect smile.
” And just for a second Ailbhe’s voice wavered before she checked herself and went on, her voice hardening again.
“Can you even begin to understand what it means? To have the bar set so high that now for all my life anything less than perfection will be accounted as failure?” Reaching out a hand, she took Magret’s little bound book down from where she’d propped it on the mantlepiece, tapped its cover once, twice, as if still thinking.
Then, turning to stare straight at éadha, she tossed it onto the flames.
“No!” screamed éadha in horror.
Ailbhe looked at her, her face expressionless. “Consider it a warning. You do not get to take what is mine. Understand? Now do hurry, or you’ll be late for Vespers.”
In a moment she was gone. éadha skidded over to the fire where the book’s pages were melting and twisting as the flames climbed around them.
From inside her, power flowed down into her hands, and she reached in and lifted out the charred remains.
With a flick she killed the flames, and the room filled with the acrid stink of smoke, melted ink, and burned paper.
The front and back of the book had burned away, the pages inside eaten by the fire, so the once-glowing colors were run and charred to brown and black, the pages buckled and jagged.
Cradling it in her hands, she huddled over the small burned thing, grief and rage fighting within her.
Grief for the desecration of that perfect, joyous thing, for the loss of her one link to a world beyond this place that had no place for her.
Rage at the girl who thought she could order her away from the person she loved most in all the world.
It was no contest. Her anger, after all, had been building since the day she’d arrived on Lambay and they’d sent her to sit on a wooden bench.
Stoked by all the petty humiliations, the nicknames, the bowing, the denial of herself.
Her power, her gift, her dignity. Rage won, a blackness rising through her until it blinded her to everything but the pretty dark-haired girl hurrying across the lawn to Vespers.
Rising to her feet, she ran to the open window, her power surging inside her as she did.
Without breaking her stride she leaped out through it and landed lightly on the ground two stories below.
Ailbhe was just disappearing through the entrance to the cloisters at the far end of the Keepers’ quad.
Her own power wasn’t enough to reach Ailbhe from here; she needed more.
Without thinking she reached out as she’d seen the Masters reach out, day after day, the silver thread of her power snaking out instinctively to find and draw into her the life force of the Fodder hidden far beneath her feet.
She’d show Ailbhe who was mediocre, who was nothing.
Around her the world whited out as a tsunami of Fodder life force poured into her.
This was more like it. She’d show them all.
She took a deep breath, concentrating her power around her hands, feeling them begin to glow as she called up a fiery bolt the way she’d watched the Master Combat do.
She only had seconds before Ailbhe disappeared into the temple, but that was all she needed.
She drew her arm back, ready to send her power bulleting through the air after the disappearing girl.
But the next second she went crashing to the ground as someone caught her around the waist and knocked her over.
She went sprawling, the bolt scorching through the grass, spending itself harmlessly.
Now she was pinned, whoever it was using their weight to hold her.
Twisting her head, she found herself glaring up at Gry, his face only inches away from her own, his eyes intent as he stared back at her.
She could feel his strength in the way he held her, his body pressing the length of hers, trapping her.
He was bracing, she realized, to see if she was going to fight him, blast him the way she’d been planning to hit Ailbhe.
But the rage that’d driven her was already dying.
She felt hollow, as if a chasm had opened up inside her and she was standing on its edge, staring down at what she’d almost unleashed.
She closed her eyes, then shook her head up at Gry from where she lay beneath him. “It’s all right,” she said.
Her stared at her for a moment more, those gray-green eyes so close she could see the gold flecks in them, then pushed off with his hands on either side of her and rose smoothly to his feet.
The evening air swept over her as Gry’s weight lifted off her, and it seemed for a moment as if she could still feel the outline of his body across hers.
“Come on,” he said, reaching down with his hand to pull her upright. “There’s something I think you need to see.”