Chapter 33
It was hard to think with the pain, or rather, all she could think about was the pain and how to make it stop.
There were other things on her mind, she knew, but she couldn’t hear them over the ringing of the pain.
Slowly, very slowly, she picked herself up from the floor of the Hall of Illusions.
She had time to see the streaks of blood on the polished wooden floor and think how strangely sticky blood was, before Master Dathin struck once more.
This time his power just flattened her against the wall, halfway up toward the dome.
A fall from this height would break most of the bones in her body.
She was pinned and helpless, unable to move a finger.
The pain from the first slamming hit of body against stone began to subside a little, enough that she wasn’t fighting to stay conscious and could focus on the familiar figure in front of her.
He’d always been bearlike. Now, power coursing through him, he seemed twice the size of a normal man, his black cloak and shining yew staff barely containing the might within.
He spoke calmly, the deep voice carrying easily in the silvery acoustics of the Hall of Illusions.
“I’m intrigued. Just what were you planning to do?
There’s no way for you off this island. Even if you stole a boat, there’s no way you could outrun us or reach the mainland with your pathetic little candle of power, held oh-so piously to your chest. Virtue may keep you warm at night, but it won’t protect you against a real Channeller.
You might’ve ambushed Lord Senan alone on a bare rock but here, standing above the greatest Fodder pool on all of Domhain, do you really think you have any chance? ”
éadha hung there, legs dangling, arms stretched out cruciform. Her tongue was thick, and she tasted blood as she forced out the words. “Ionáin, he knew nothing.”
“I don’t doubt it. I sent him to wait for me outside. I came in at the end of your little heart-to-heart. You seem to have quite let him down. He was your only friend since Lord Gry was sent to the holds, so you are rather alone now, aren’t you?”
“What’ll happen to me?”
“Same as happens to all your kind. You’ll be locked away, tested, and when we’re done, channeled as Fodder.”
éadha looked at him in shock.
“You didn’t think you were the first, now did you?” said the Master.
“I know Leah was the first true Channeller before your kind warped her gift into your perversion.”
“Oho, strong words for someone who can’t move a muscle.
Yes, a few of your kind are born every generation.
Most never know the power they have. Either they’re sent to be Fodder, or they’re told at their Reckoning they’re nothing but Keepers.
Those few like you who stumble on your true gift we can easily deal with.
That’s the useful thing about being in power for several hundred years.
Very little happens that hasn’t happened before.
You and your kind are an evolutionary dead end, entirely pointless and easily defeated.
Not that I need to tell you, given your current situation. ”
“If I’m such a dead end, why don’t you just let me go? You’re right—I can’t defeat you, I’m not a threat,” she panted, breath constricting as he steadily tightened the power that enveloped her and pressed her into the wall.
“Really, that’s all you’ve got? ‘Please let me go, and I’ll be good’?
” Dathin mocked. “I’m disappointed. You don’t rule an entire culture for generations by taking anything for granted.
The Three Brothers were right when they brought Leah here to end her days.
She might’ve been unable to beat them, but they understood her very existence could cause unnecessary disquiet.
“The people of Domhain accept the Channeller system because they believe this is how it has to be. They accept lives of quiet hell being drained as Fodder because they believe this is the only way.
“But your gift, where you draw on yourself to give to others—that’s the very essence of weakness.
It would turn us into their servants, not Masters.
” He tightened his grip even further, watching with detached interest as she began to gasp, unable to speak, barely able to breathe.
“Power, as you can see in your own case, is control. So no, we won’t be letting you go.
You will quietly, invisibly disappear, and when you die, your secret will die as it has been born—unspoken and unknown again and again every century since the First Sister came out here to end her days.
But I didn’t come here to chat to a Fodder-loving ingrate.
No doubt you’ve been gathering your strength, hoping to make a break for freedom. So this ends now.”
He raised his yew staff to send a bolt of power toward her, enough to knock her senseless.
But he was right—she had been reaching down into herself.
As she felt his bolt leave the staff, she lifted her shield, shimmering and silver, so the shot reflected back toward him.
His grip that had her pinioned shifted as he instinctively moved his staff to block the power rocketing back at him.
In that instant, she was free. She shot up into the air directly above him.
Master Dathin fell into a fighting stance and began firing rapid bolts of power at her.
It was the classic move for a ground-based Channeller, and she’d spent months watching the Channeller apprentices learn the sequence.
She avoided each shot with ease, diving and rising like a swimmer through the patterns.
She wasn’t a large target like the dragons these tactics had been devised for, and she could avoid him all day, though he had sense enough to stay near the door so she couldn’t escape.
After some minutes he realized he wasn’t going to catch her and began weaving a net of power.
Without other Channellers, it took time to set the points, but he was in no hurry.
She could see what he was doing; once the net was in place, he could pull it tight around her, and then she really would be trapped until other Masters arrived and took her down.
She began to shoot her own bolts down at him—not as powerful as his but precise, burning hot.
He was less mobile than she, his large frame slow to move out of the way, and she hit him square in the chest so he staggered back.
On one swoop she came in too close, and with ferocious speed he whipped his staff around and hit her with a fiery bolt right on the shoulder.
It sent her crashing to the ground, and he was almost upon her before she recovered enough to fly up again.
Across the room, she saw a slight movement.
It was Ionáin, standing quietly by the entrance behind Master Dathin.
He gestured to her to fly down behind the viewing gallery at the center of the hall, along the west wall.
It would give her some shelter from Master Dathin, though he could quickly blast it aside.
She dived down, avoiding two bolts as she flew and landed with a rolling tumble behind the wooden seats.
Coming up, nursing her shoulder, she saw herself staring back at her.
For an instant she thought there was a mirror behind the stands.
But then she realized it was an illusion.
From the last dregs of the power still in him Ionáin had created a replica of her.
More beautiful than she’d ever be in real life, a dream image of her he carried in his head, but recognizably her.
As éadha stared, the illusion sprinted out from behind the stands and flew up into the air. Master Dathin immediately sent bolts after it.
This was her chance. Staying low behind the stands and then racing across the open space, she made it to the door, where Ionáin grabbed her hand and pulled her out.
The cloisters outside were as peaceful and as sunny as they’d been when she’d come to find Ionáin. The fountain played in the center, and it was so quiet she could hear birdsong as she panted, trying to catch her breath and examining her shoulder to see how badly burned it was.
She looked up at Ionáin standing watch by the doorway. “You saved me,” she said between breaths.
He turned to face her. “There’s no time, you have to go. He’ll destroy the illusion any moment now.”
“Come with me, we can go together.”
He took her face is his hands, looked straight at her with those blue eyes that could see all the way to the very heart of her, and she’d never seen such sadness, such a sense of ending.
“éadha, I just found out that everything I thought about myself, who I am, who you are, is a lie. You have to see I can’t go with you. ”
Sorrow roared up inside her then until she thought she must choke with it. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be losing him. But he was leaving her even as he stood there holding her. He was leaving, and she was alone. For the first time in her life, she was truly alone.
“Ionáin, no…”
His head lifted as they both heard the roar from the Hall of Illusions. The windows were lit by flashes of power from within.
“Run,” Ionáin said, taking her by the shoulders and turning her toward the colonnades.
“Ionáin, I…”
“éadha, RUN!”