Chapter 18
The leaves on the chestnut trees that ringed the training grounds were beginning to turn; in the mornings now, the pitch was stiff and white with frost when they first came out to training.
In that chilly first hour before the late autumn sun had time to burn off the frost, the Channellers practiced their flying.
They had leave to channel power to keep off the cold, surrounding themselves with their own personal pockets of warm air while the Keeper novices stood underneath them shivering.
Already drained from supplying Ionáin that morning, éadha stood at the edge of the playing field, her feet numb in her thin boots.
A little distance away from her stood Ailbhe, warmly wrapped in a wool coat, her face prettily flushed with the cold, shining hair peeping out from beneath her soft cap.
As well as being paired with her as his Keeper, Ionáin was spending more and more time with her outside training, joining her in the ref each morning for hot drinks to stave off the autumn chill or sitting beside her in the evenings when the Master Illusionist wove his tales above their heads.
éadha told herself it didn’t matter, to trust Ionáin.
That it was all just a game. But it was hard to remember as she watched them laughing together as Ionáin flew above her head, tossing a shining chestnut down from the top of the tree for Ailbhe to catch.
At what point did a game stop being a game and become its own reality?
She sensed the change before she heard anything, a thrill running through the icy air.
Master Irial felt it, too, turning to stare up the hill above First House.
Black-clad riders had appeared at the forest’s edge.
Sending an apprentice to fetch Master Dathin, Irial flew up to meet them as they emerged from the trees, pulling a large wagon made all of metal and reinforced with inner and outer rows of bars.
A dark shape lay on the wagon floor. As the riders neared the bottom of the hill, Masters began to appear from First House, pulling on their robes, clutching their yew staffs.
éadha recognized the white-blond hair of Lord Huath at the head of the riders at the same moment that Ionáin, still flying above them, cried out in a voice filled with fear and wonder, “Dragon!”
Their training canceled, the apprentices gathered in the ref. Ionáin, though, managed to wheedle his way into the Receiving Room to see his uncle. He appeared in the ref a little later, climbing onto a table to report the news as everyone clustered around him.
“It’s a young dragon. My uncle caught it four days ago.
It’s one of the spawn of the she-dragon we saw in the Blackstairs in spring.
He’s been hunting them on and off ever since.
He killed two, one escaped west he thinks, but this one, the smallest, he managed to capture alive.
Master Combat is beside himself with excitement.
It’s the first time Lambay has ever had a live dragon.
It’s too young to be a danger; it can’t breathe fire yet and it’s only the length of a man.
My uncle says even one of us could put it down. ”
Later that day, the apprentices were taken to see the captured dragon.
It lay in its iron cage a little distance away from the main House.
Little was known about the stages of growth of young dragons.
They were fiercely protected by the she-dragons, hidden away on the western isles or on the most impenetrable northern peaks until they were old enough to fly and breathe fire.
éadha knew the Masters were intensely wary of their captive.
A full-grown dragon could best even the most seasoned Channeller; the flame alone would kill anyone in its silent burning path, and the Masters had no way of knowing how far the young dragon was from coming into its power.
Master Irial and the Master Combat called them to a halt some way away from the cage where Huath and several of his guards already stood watching the creature.
The dragon lay inert on the floor, curled like a cat, its haunches pulled into its belly and wings folded flat along its ridged back.
Only the eyes gave any sign it was anything other than a creature channeled from stone.
They were great and golden, unblinkingly regarding the apprentices as they craned to see, straining against the barriers set in a wide circle around the cage.
éadha’s heart began to thump unbidden in her chest, her silver fish flickering into joyous life.
She closed her eyes, sending out her senses, and there it was in front of her, shining, a piece of the sun fallen to earth, blinding in its purity.
She gasped and stepped back, looking about her.
Couldn’t everyone see it, what they had lying there before them?
The Master Combat, apparently oblivious, had started explaining the dragon scales.
How, once fully grown, they’d cover the body in iridescent mail, hard as silver, flexible as skin, undulating sinuously when the dragon moved.
They were impervious to normal weapons, shattering arrows and swords unless they were powered by a Channeller.
Even then, he told them, it took the power of twenty threads just to pierce the underbelly where the scales were thinner.
In front of them the dragon lifted its head as though it scented something.
Lord Huath immediately stepped forward, raising his staff and sending a short burst of fire directly into its face.
The young dragon reared back, opening its mouth though nothing came out.
Huath’s eyes gleamed with vicious delight as he followed up by ramming his iron-shod staff through the bars.
It retreated farther until it was pressed against the bars behind it.
éadha’s power twisted in sudden, savage fury at Huath’s cruelty while behind her Ionáin placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You’re burning up,” he said quietly. The touch of that familiar hand pulled her back.
Huath, meanwhile, returned to stand with the two Masters.
éadha leaned briefly, almost imperceptibly into Ionáin’s touch then pulled away before it was seen by Ailbhe or any of her spies.
Ionáin moved, too, standing next to the twins, who were still staring, fascinated, at the dragon in its cage.
That night she couldn’t sleep. With no training that day, for once she had power to spare coursing restlessly through her.
With a grin and no one to see her, she spun a pocket of heat around her and flew down from the Keeper dorm through the quad tunnels and out into the night, with its vertiginous carpet of stars flung from one horizon to the other, the sea below her pacing like a caged beast to the shore’s edge and back.
Lifting one hand above her, she began to spin faster and faster until she was nothing but a blur of energy, then shot up into the sky, up, up, whirling until the stars became streaks of light she was outrunning.
Below her she saw the dragon, felt it quivering with longing in its iron cage.
Down she dived to land in front of the golden eyes, hands cupping a single were-light.
They regarded each other, the girl and the dragon.
“Mahera,” hissed the dragon, drawing its lips back, teeth already the size of éadha’s hand glinting in the light.
Closing her eyes, she pulsed her remaining power into the emptiness before her.
She felt the dragon’s hunger, felt a savage longing in that moment to let everything go, to disappear.
The dragon, though, nudged the side of the cage closest to her, bringing her back to herself, breaking the link between them.
Training remained erratic for the next few days, and éadha was able to get away to the Library, sneaking down each night after lights-out.
She flew up to the shelves beneath the dome, to the books forbidden to apprentices.
“Mahera,” the she-dragon had said to her in the stony mountains, and her child had repeated it here underneath the eastern stars.
If she could understand, if she could speak to it, then perhaps she could understand the intense connection she felt.
But the only stories she found were the ones she’d heard as a child.
The story of Kaanesien, the eldest dragon, how it burned Erisen’s keep to the ground and his Keeper, Bríd, died saving him.
She could make no link, though, between these stories of monsters and the beauty, the purity she’d seen in the young dragon.
The sense of connection she felt when she went near it.
At night she dreamed of the touch of dragon scales, of flying on dragon’s wings through soft flakes of tumbling snow.
She dreamed she stood on the training ground, keeping for Ionáin when he flew back to earth and bowed before her.
She looked down to see she’d been covered in a dragon’s iridescent skin; over her shoulders she felt the wingspan, light, tremendous, as she spread them wide and sprang into the darkening sky.
When she woke the next morning, she finally understood what Mahera meant.
They were brought to study the dragon again later that day.
Huath had left Lambay, and the dragon was growing fast, its head almost touching the roof of the cage.
Below the open space where they stood, a full-masted ship had put in at the east dock.
It was a rare sight, the ship almost too large for the jetty.
The white sails strained in winds blowing straight off the sea, drawing every eye.
Seeing their gaze, the Master Combat explained.
“This will transport the beast to Second Island in seven days’ time. It needs to be put down before it poses a serious risk. The kill will form the basis of the upcoming graduation trials on Second Island.”
éadha felt the words as a punch to her stomach.
All the time the young dragon had been on the island, she’d been tethered to it, walking around First House on an invisible leash that ran from her to the impossible creature chained to an iron floor at the island’s heart.
In a daze she returned to her dormitory to change.
The room was empty, a rare moment of solitude.
From underneath her bed she pulled Magret’s burned book, looking for something on the fire-eaten pages to make sense of what she felt.
At its charred heart was the picture she was looking for, of a man and a dragon entwined.
The man was holding his staff above his head, the dragon’s wings raised about him; the colors of each had run into the other in the fire’s heat.
She’d always assumed it was a representation of a battle between man and beast, but now that she had eyes to see, she finally understood.
She slipped away in the early dark, back down to where the creature lay still. It watched her intently. She called up a were-light in her hand. The dragon looked at it pleadingly.
“I know,” she said. “I understand. You want to do that too. Let me show you. Mahera. Sister.” The dragon placed its head against the bars.
“Mahera,” it hissed in reply. And so, quietly, patiently, éadha set about teaching the chained dragon to channel power from within itself.
Night after night she slipped out, pulling power up from inside her, showing the dragon how she created the were-light from the life force within.
And slowly, surely, the dragon began to respond.
It was very young still, ramming its head in frustration against the bars when it failed to produce flame.
The cage was too confined for it to extend its wings fully, but it flexed them as far as it could, bending its long neck down to the girl like some creature caught and frozen in mid-wingbeat, holding perfectly still as it bent all its attention to the hand cupped in front of it.
At last it caught the trick of pulling the thread of power from belly to heart to throat to produce a soft whoosh of flame, drawing its lips back in dragon laughter as she was forced to leap out of the way or be singed by a fiery bolt.
But it didn’t have the strength yet to burn its way out of the cage and escape while éadha, drained from supplying Ionáin each day, hadn’t enough power to be sure she could do it either.
On the day before the Masters were due to move the dragon off the island, éadha reported to the infirmary, pleading illness.
It wasn’t difficult; exhaustion had stalked her for weeks.
While darkness fell and the Masters and apprentices gathered for Vespers once more, she lay in a narrow white bed in the infirmary.
The room about her faded as she focused everything on the thread running to the cage now on the dock.
The dragon crouched, ready. And slowly, like someone unpicking a weave, she began to pour every atom of her being into the golden heart of the dragon.
On and on it pulsed, each heartbeat sending more and more of herself, until she felt she must disintegrate and reassemble once more in the belly of the beast, until finally, ah, the silent dragon roared.
Roared until the trees shook and the sleeping crows roused crying from their roosts.
Threw back its head and roared its pain and loneliness and thanks in a great, fiery breath, melting the bars holding it down so at last it stretched its wings to greet the sea winds and sprang soaring into the stormy sky.
And oh, how she wanted to stay with it, within it there in the sky, riding the night wind. Above the turret where she lay like one dead, the dragon circled once before opening its wings to be carried home on the east winds of the approaching winter.
And in her white bed éadha lay, unraveled and alone.