Chapter 17
I still remember my first lesson in channeling almost twenty years ago. I know you, too, will remember today for the rest of your lives as the day you truly came into your power. Let the channeling begin!”
The assembled Channeller apprentices cheered loudly as Master Irial finished with a broad smile. Fiachna, meanwhile, was as dry and as stern as ever.
“Keepers, today some of you will be paired with individual Channellers to keep for them. When I call the name of your assigned Channeller, take up position behind them.”
“Keeper Gry: Lord Coll of the Family Manon.”
“Keeper éadha: Lord Senan of the Family De Lane.”
“Keeper Ailbhe: Lord Ionáin of the Family Ailm.”
Standing at the back of the group, éadha saw the quick pats on the back from Ailbhe’s friends.
Ailbhe said nothing, but her eyes shone as she stood up.
éadha remembered the night in the Blackstairs when she sat by the campfire with Ionáin and he’d talked about her becoming his Keeper.
How she’d assumed the Masters would actually want to put two such old friends together. How stupid she’d been.
At least, she thought as she watched Ailbhe take up her position, she’d worked out how to send Ionáin power without needing to be next to him.
But Ionáin being paired with Ailbhe had thwarted her original plan to fully supply him with her own life force so he wouldn’t be drawing on Fodder.
With Ailbhe as his Keeper, she needed Ionáin to draw at least some Fodder strength through her; otherwise Ailbhe might start to wonder what was going on.
éadha tried to push down her unease. It’d be all right, she told herself.
She’d still give him most of the life force he needed; he’d only draw a little through Ailbhe.
And after all, what choice did she have?
The alternative, exposing Ionáin as ungifted, was no real alternative at all.
It hadn’t been since they’d arrived on Lambay.
The unease, though, didn’t go away.
Fiachna was signaling to the Keepers to begin.
“Paired Keepers. Identify and hold a thread for your Channeller from those available. When you feel the pull of your Channeller’s call, allow the thread’s strength to flow through you to your Channeller.”
éadha easily found a thread and held it loosely in her mind. Most of her, though, was focused on Ionáin.
She’d sent him her power as they stood in line outside Matins earlier, feeling a quick rush of relief as her mirror sheath held and her gift flowed invisibly into him.
But now was the first real test of whether he’d be able to use it.
Standing a little distance away, Ionáin’s face was tense as he listened to Master Irial’s instructions.
“We begin today with the summoning of were-lights. Using the power you’ve taken from your Keeper, bend your focus toward the palm of your right hand. There you picture the creation of a small light, about the size of an apple; the more clearly you can…”
He was interrupted by a small scream from Ailbhe and shouts of laughter from the Channeller apprentices near Ionáin.
A fireball the size of a large pumpkin had popped into existence in his arms. Even from where she stood behind Senan, éadha could feel its scorching heat.
Ailbhe, Coll, and Linn, who’d all been standing beside him, backed away quickly, Coll convulsing with laughter at the expression on Ionáin’s face over the top of the rotating fireball while it sent out sparks in every direction.
“Ionáin. While I commend your progress, might I suggest we leave the conjuring of larger fireballs until we’re outside and less likely to set First House on fire, hmm?
” said Irial, before flicking open a window and sending the fireball bulleting onto the training ground outside.
It exploded harmlessly in a hail of fiery sparks to the cheers of the entire class.
éadha ducked her head to hide her grin and made a mental note to send Ionáin a little less power tomorrow.
So, at last, channeling proper began.
At first, Irial concentrated on the lighter uses of power—summoning were-lights, powering up fiery arrows for battle.
The new Channellers gloried in their powers, setting the tiny were-lights dancing in excited patterns about the classroom and sending them crashing into each other to create miniature explosions.
Soon they were learning to fly. Even the most disdainful apprentices, like Senan, couldn’t help but whoop the first time they lifted themselves up off the ground and into the sky above Master Irial’s head, wobbling unsteadily before taking off in flying circuits of the training ground, the more daring shooting on out over the sea with Irial shouting after them to come back for fear they’d run out of power and go tumbling into the water.
Games like handball took on a whole other dimension now that they could fly up after the ball, somersaulting through the air and pushing off the alley walls.
Out on the sea they powered small boats called coracles in furious races around the bay, weaving in and out between the marker buoys, doing their best to tip each other into the waves.
While the Channeller apprentices flew above their heads, though, éadha and the other Keeper novices remained firmly earthbound, standing on the edges of playing fields or on windswept shores as Fiachna drilled them relentlessly in the mechanics of keeping.
It was a bright summer morning not long after they’d started channeling.
The Channeller apprentices were shooting fireballs through narrow rings Irial had set in the air above the foreshore, target practice for their later lessons in dragon combat.
éadha and the other Keepers stood on the sandy beach near the water’s edge, working on their thread control as they kept for their Channellers.
They wore simple fitted training tunics, having shed their cloaks so their hands would be more free to work the threads.
Watching the apprentices beside her, their fingers shaping awkwardly around even a single thread, éadha remembered seeing Huath’s Keeper, Treasa, in action in Ailm’s Keep, her fingers flashing through multiple threads, so sure and so fast.
“Watch it!” Fiachna shouted at Síofra. “You’ve let that thread get too weak. You should’ve switched away minutes ago.” Síofra flushed, her fingers shaking as she fumbled the switch away from one worn, pale thread to another stronger one.
“Too slow,” said Fiachna, marching over and gripping her hand. “Every second you leave your Channeller on a fading thread they’re in danger, especially when they’re in midair.” Turning to the rest of the group, she raised her voice.
“All of you, it’s imperative you assess the quality of each thread, anticipate when it’s likely to weaken, and switch before they fade to the point that there’s a risk of them snapping.”
“Yes, Head Keeper,” the group responded.
It was, éadha realized, the closest they’d come yet to the reality of Fodder, at least for the Keepers.
Though she noticed how careful Fiachna was only to talk about the threads themselves.
Never the people they led to, who were still hidden away out of sight.
How she always used abstract terms like “quality” and “strengths,” making it easier to hold away the reality at the other end.
She wondered how much all the other Keepers understood by now about where the threads came from.
But it wasn’t something any of them ever talked about, at least not in front of her, and she already knew they weren’t going to.
So much of the Masters’ world was this, she thought.
Gradually coming to understand the unspoken things and realizing in the same moment you couldn’t ever talk openly about them.
Above them, meanwhile, Senan shot past with Eoghan, a Channeller apprentice from south Domhain and one of Senan’s main allies.
They were pelting fireballs at the target.
Pulling up in the air directly overhead, Senan fired a few more at the ground by Gry’s feet, where they sparked wildly in all directions until he’d kicked enough sand over them to put them out.
Watching Senan shoot away, hooting with laughter, éadha thought the contrast couldn’t be more complete between the Channellers carelessly soaring far above them and the Keepers stuck on the ground below.
Worrying about the threads keeping the Channellers in the air, making sure to keep up their power supply.
“For what it’s worth, I do think it’s deliberate.”
It was Gry, sitting beside her on a rock just above the tide line later the same day.
They were perched a little distance away from the other Keepers during the all-too-short break Fiachna allowed for food. Shielding her eyes against the sun, éadha looked at him questioningly.
“Your face earlier,” said Gry, “when Senan was being a moron. I think it’s deliberate, the way they use us Keepers as a buffer between the Channellers and the Fodder.
” In the afternoon light, Gry’s face looked drawn, with dark circles under his eyes.
From the first, Senan’s mockery of him had been relentless, and now he’d come into his full powers as a Channeller, it was escalating all the time.
“Another Stage?” said éadha.
“Yeah. That’s what my aunt Hera says. They’re less bothered about Keepers; they know we’re completely dependent on them for what little status we get.
But the Channellers are more precious—and more risky because they’ve real power—so they get the kid-glove treatment.
Start them out with the good stuff—flying, racing, fireballs.
Get them properly hooked on the magic until they can’t imagine life without it.
All the while keeping that pesky Fodder reality at a distance, a kind of glorified administrative job for their Keepers to look after. ”