Chapter 21
Apprentice Keeper éadha. You’ve been accused of knowingly withholding power from your assigned Channeller.
You understand how serious this allegation is.
The first rule of keeping is to obey your Channeller.
Without question. While we discourage them from drawing directly on their Keepers other than in an emergency, it’s their choice to make.
Master Irial, what’s your view? Did she deliberately withhold? ”
Master Dathin was standing by the lectern in the Library, Master Irial and the Master Librarian sitting behind him, their expressions stern. éadha stood, head bowed, in front of them.
“The reasons this Keeper is assigned to Lord Senan are well understood,” said Irial.
“While she’s had a recent health issue, the arrangement has broadly worked.
However, we’ve also all noted her efforts to remain close to Lord Ionáin.
In my view, therefore, it’s likely Senan wasn’t able to draw on her as she’s still weak from her recent illness, and, in the moment, she was also distracted by what appeared to be a serious injury for Ionáin. ”
“Master Librarian?”
Barely glancing at éadha, the Librarian responded dismissively. “She’s too close to Ionáin, given her lack of breeding and the availability of other more suitable partners. This morning’s incident simply proves the inadvisability of excessive closeness.”
Standing in front of the Masters with her head bowed, éadha was angry. Angry because she’d moved faster than any of the Masters to shield Ionáin and they couldn’t even see it. Angry because these old men were talking about her like she was no more than a piece of meat.
She knew if she looked up now the anger would show in her eyes.
Some sense of self-preservation kept her staring at the floor while Master Dathin came to stand in front of her, placing his hands on either side of her head for an Inquisition.
His was an implacable force, filling her head, dominating every thought as he sifted through her mind.
She was exhausted from sending her strength into Ionáin and still shaken by Senan’s screaming fit, but her rage sustained her, and in her rage she welcomed the intruder.
He might be immensely strong, but he wouldn’t break through her thought-wall if she didn’t will it.
She’d defeat him on his own ground, and he wouldn’t even know he’d been beaten.
After a few moments he dropped his hands and nodded to the other two Masters.
“I see exhaustion and distraction but nothing intentional.” Addressing éadha directly, he went on, “Apprentice Keeper, you’re barred from attending the trials celebration tonight.
When you arrive at Second Island, you’ll also attend remedial Keeper training in the Fodder Holds.
Perhaps that’ll teach you the advisability of staying focused on your own Channeller’s needs.
Now, gentlemen, let’s return to our guests. ”
That night éadha lay alone in her empty dorm, listening to the distant music from the party.
It was their last night on First Island.
The next day, they’d sail to Second Island, where the Channeller–Keeper pairings became formalized.
It meant that for the girls in her dorm, tonight was important, a last chance to convince the Masters of this or that pairing.
Sure enough, when Muir, Síofra, Cara, and Ailbhe burst into the moonlit room in the early hours full of chatter, this was all they talked about—Cara excitedly congratulating Síofra for finally pairing with Cormac after he’d taken the whole term to choose between her and Sibéal, Muir breathlessly telling Ailbhe what a stunning couple she and Ionáin had made when they stepped out on the dance floor for the first time, he so fair and she so dark.
They finally fell asleep just before dawn, and éadha could uncurl from where she’d been lying, wide awake and facing the wall, desperate not to let them see how much they were hurting her.
Slipping past their sleeping forms, she headed out of the Keepers’ quad and down to the dock.
Her chest hurt with the same pain that’d been lodged there like a stone ever since the day Ailbhe had burned her book and she’d understood just how implacable they were—Ailbhe, the Families, the Masters.
How much they thought they owned the world. Owned her and Ionáin.
She passed the spot where the dragon had been caged, but all traces of the melted and twisted metal had been cleared away.
Sitting on the jetty, legs dangling over the edge as the seawater slapped at the struts beneath her, she stared up at the lightening sky and thought of the young dragon, finally able to stretch its wings wide on the wind.
She knew it most likely had flown into the west, away from Channeller strongholds.
Yet she still felt connected to it, to the power she’d given it that lay now in the dragon’s fiery heart.
There was a comfort in that, she thought, despite everything.
To know there was a world beyond this closed universe of Channellers and Families, that the dragon was flying far above them all on the world’s winds with a power beyond the Masters’ understanding. Beyond their control.
To her left she could just make out a scorch line, almost overgrown now, as though the dragon had burned a line in the ground as it broke free.
Curious, she climbed to her feet and followed the line to a copse of new birch trees.
The dragon must’ve burned down the trees here, all the way back to the walls of First House.
While the Master Grower had clearly been at work, it was still possible to see where the new growth began at a heavy oak door set in the wall.
As she peered toward the door, she heard Gry’s voice and turned in time to see him step out from beneath the trees.
He was talking to a tall woman with a weathered face and bright eyes, and he was still dressed in his formal clothes from the party earlier, a dark blue tunic open at the throat and slim-fitting black pants.
Seeing éadha, his eyes widened, and he moved swiftly toward her.
“You got through it then?” he said as he reached her. “Dathin’s Inquisition?”
It was the first time she’d been close to him since that day in the infirmary; deep inside she felt her power kick in recognition.
She wondered if it always would now whenever she came close to him.
In response to his question, though, she nodded with a half smile.
“Our great Masters concluded I was far too silly to have done anything on purpose. Generalized feebleness and emotionality was the verdict.”
“Well done,” said the woman beside him. “Dathin is a powerful Inquisitor. Your wall must have been very strong.” Her eyes were keen as she looked at éadha, and éadha found herself thinking she wouldn’t ever want to be on her wrong side.
“This is my aunt, Lady Hera,” Gry said, and éadha saw the pride in his eyes as he said it.
“It’s good to finally meet you. Gry has told me of your brave decision. Your courage does you credit,” said Hera, at the same time reaching out a hand to help éadha off the mound of soil she was standing on, adding, “You might, though, want to come down from there.”
éadha looked at her in confusion, then glanced down and realized with a start of horror she was standing on a freshly dug grave.
She recoiled, stumbling off the mound while Hera said, “Yes, most unfortunate. Master Dathin told me last night that they spared no effort in hunting that young dragon. When emotions run high, the cost in lives mounts quickly. I’d say four Fodder at least were just buried here. ”
éadha stared, appalled, as Gry put his hand on her shoulder.
“You weren’t to know.”
“Is this where they bring them out?”
“Yes, normally the door and the burial ground are well hidden by trees, but the dragon’s fire burned away the cover.
I wanted to show Aunt while she was here.
These graves—and the ones over there.” Gry gestured toward where older burial mounds shouldered out of the ground.
These weren’t the graves of Masters, éadha thought—those were entombed in marble in the crypt beneath the temple.
The farthest grave was set on a rise against the wall of First House.
Once it would’ve looked east to Second Island, before the trees grew up, before it was hidden from view.
Unlike the others, it was marked by a headstone, clearly ancient, its edges worn and pockmarked, with lichen growing up its front.
Sister was the one word pressed into its granite, etched too deep to ever be worn away, even by centuries of weathering.
“So much we must forget in order to make our choices bearable,” said Hera, who’d come to stand beside éadha.
Gry stood on her other side, and Hera reached out one hand to grip her nephew’s arm, her voice filling with emotion.
“In my time here, there were rumors her grave existed, but I could never find it. I am glad to have seen it this once.” Turning to éadha, she continued.
“Leah. Sister to the Three Brothers, eldest and most gifted of them all. She lived out her days alone over there, on the farthermost east island of Domhain in a fortress raised by her brothers just to hold her. Too far from land to use her power to escape.”
She gestured across the sea toward Second House, black on the paling skyline, her expression bleak.
éadha stared at her, stunned. All summer long she’d watched the Masters weave illusions from the Annals, the founding tales of how channeling first came into the world.
She’d been hearing stories of the Three Brothers her whole life.
Finally she found her voice to stutter out, “But the Annals—they don’t mention a sister? ”
Hera grimaced as she turned away from the graves. “Come. I’ll be late for the landbridge if I don’t go now.” She made her way back to the stable yard, the two apprentices alongside her. The landbridge was being raised for departing guests, and her horse was already saddled and waiting.
“No one outside our Family speaks of Leah anymore,” she said to éadha as she reached her mount and swung herself up.
“Our ancestor Shem was the only one of the brothers to leave First Island, horrified at what his brothers had done to his sister, moving out west to found our House. He passed on some memory of his older sister to his descendants, but you’ll find no word of her here on Lambay. ”
Gry turned toward éadha. “That was the part of the story that always frightened me most when I was little. Not the battles, but how it’s possible to make someone disappear so completely. As if they never existed, even a member of the Founding Family.”
“Her power didn’t fit with the world her brothers were building. The world we live in now, of Fodder and Holds and Families,” said his aunt. “As long as there’ve been Channellers, it’s always been their way. To snuff out a challenge before it even knows itself to be a threat, Sister save us.”
A memory stirred in éadha, of Béithe comforting the maidservant in the kitchen of Ailm’s Keep with those same quiet words. “Sister save us.”
“She must’ve scared them very much,” said her nephew.
Lady Hera looked down at the two young people. “But the dragons remember. Let us hold to that.” And, raising her hand behind her in farewell, she rode away, leaving the two of them standing in the stableyard in the pale light of morning.