The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  “We don’t protect the Islands,” Wingmaster Taimenai said sharply.

  “We do,” snapped Lord Manasi, “and we must, as your precious dragons will do nothing more than keep us aloft—”

  “If you please.” Prince Imrei lifted his hands in a mollifying gesture. “Our height is our protection. Nor do we wish to offend the sky dragons who hold us above the waves by allowing any trace of their power to fall into the hands of Tolounnese artificers.”

  The wingmaster was as sternly expressionless as ever, but his crystalline kajurai eyes glinted with impatience. “Prince Imrei, the boy made the climb up to the heights of Kotipa. Do not mistake the situation. We do not decide which boys to accept into the novitiate. That is a judgment the dragons make. Unless you doubt the judgment of the dragons whose magic you so determinedly protect, Lord Manasi’s suspicion is untenable.”

  Novice-master Anerii said harshly, “A half-bred boy might be approached after his audition. When he finds himself divided in blood and heart and loyalty, who knows what choices such a boy will make?”

  “We are all acquainted with your opinion,” the wingmaster said. His tone was absolutely flat, yet somehow conveyed a profound rebuke. Novice-master Anerii crossed his arms over his chest and glowered, but he did not say anything else.

  “Trei is kajurai,” Ceirfei said to his cousin. “Who would know better than I?”

  Prince Imrei nodded thoughtfully, seeming to find his cousin’s opinion persuasive.

  The wingmaster added, taking adroit advantage of Ceirfei’s support, “And as this is so, and as you have now met the boy yourself, Prince Imrei, I will be grateful to see you put these suspicions to rest.”

  For a moment, he and Prince Imrei simply gazed at one another. Then Prince Imrei said to Trei, “You maintain no one approached you—not a Tolounnese mage, nor any Tolounnese official, nor anyone else. No one suggested you should audition on Kotipa.”

  “No,” Trei said faintly. He wanted to lean against the wall—he wanted to sit down on the floor, if he couldn’t sit in a chair—he locked his knees and tried not to sway.

  “And no one has approached you since your audition. No one has said anything to you about, say, loyalty to Tolounn, or suggested you return to your father’s people?”

  Trei shook his head.

  “Our novices stay in the novitiate,” Wingmaster Taimenai said shortly. “We keep them close; we keep them busy.”

  “But the boy left the novitiate for several days, I believe,” observed Lord Manasi.

  The wingmaster sighed sharply. He looked at Trei and asked, “Well, Trei, and did anyone approach you in such a manner while you were comforting your bereaved cousin after the tragic loss of your uncle and aunt?”

  “No,” Trei whispered.

  “I will check that this is true,” Lord Manasi declared.

  “I shall leave you to that,” Prince Imrei said to him, but added to Trei in a soothing tone, “Though I’m sure it’s true.” He gripped the arms of his chair, rose to his feet, and nodded to Ceirfei. “Cousin, thank you. Wingmaster Taimenai, I’m grateful for your assistance. I believe we’re satisfied. You have been most helpful.”

  The wingmaster inclined his head briefly and then glanced around the room, gathering all their attention. “Novices, you are dismissed. Return to the novitiate. Novice-master Anerii, if you will await me here? Prince Imrei, Lord Manasi, I hope you will permit me the honor of escorting you—” He stepped politely over to open the door and ushered his noble guests out and down the hall.

  Trei made it most of the way down the stairs before he began to shake.

  “Sit down,” Ceirfei urged him, and sank down himself on the stair above. “I’m sorry—I am sorry, Trei. I couldn’t warn you.”

  “No,” Trei managed to agree. He understood that. He tucked his face against his knees and said, muffled, “I—you were—thank you.”

  “You’ll be all right.” Ceirfei rested a hand briefly on Trei’s shoulder. “Manasi suspects everyone. Imrei doesn’t suspect anyone; it’s not his nature. That’s why my uncle sent them both. You understand we think Tolounn is preparing to invade? Do you see?”

  Trei shook his head blankly. “I know people think so. But how can they? And why should they?” He heard himself say “they” almost as though someone else were speaking, and wondered if his voice sounded as strained and artificial to Ceirfei as it did to himself.

  But Ceirfei only shrugged. “How? We have no idea. But why? If they think they can succeed, then why not?” Ceirfei’s tone had taken on an uncharacteristic bite. “They might invade us because they’ve always resented our independence and think we ought by rights to return to being a Tolounnese province. Or because they’re ambitious to add Cen Periven to the Empire, and the Islands are an important base for any such attempt. Or maybe just because it’ll make somebody’s political career to press a short, successful war.”

  Trei didn’t say anything. He could see that all of those reasons might be true at once, but any of them might be enough alone. If some Tolounnese general or provincar thought he had a way to successfully invade the Islands, it wouldn’t be hard to get public opinion in Tolounn to favor the attempt. The Islands were so small: it wouldn’t be a very expensive war. The Little Emperor would probably view an invasion almost as a game if he saw a way to invade at all: he would think the effort would be useful and valuable if it succeeded and might be entertaining even if it failed. And all of Tolounn would agree with him. Only the Islands would care passionately about the outcome, because only they had anything important to lose.

  It had never occurred to Trei to wonder how, say, Toipakom had felt about being conquered and made a part of the Tolounnese Empire. It was just the natural order of the world for small countries to fall before Tolounn’s strength. But even after so short a time in the Islands, he knew the Islanders didn’t feel that way at all.

  Ceirfei tapped his fingers impatiently on the worn stone of the steps and added, “If they have some way to get at us, well … we don’t really have any soldiers. Not real soldiers, not the kind that might stand against Tolounnese troops. And now, after that illness—”

  Trei interrupted him, “Do you think Yngul deliberately set the illness loose in the Islands? Rekei said no, but I—” He wanted it to be true, he discovered, because he wanted someone else to blame for the tension between Tolounn and the Islands. Someone he could loathe with a purity he couldn’t direct against Tolounn.

  “Some people think maybe Tolounn did, in such a way as to lay the blame on Yngul—”

  “Oh, no!” Trei was horrified. “No one in Tolounn would do anything so dishonorable—and that’s dishonorable twice, setting the illness and then blaming somebody else! Anyway, no one from Tolounn would think they had to! Why should any Tolounnese general or provincar care whether there’s been illness in Canpra? Your people couldn’t possibly fight Tolounnese soldiers—if the soldiers got up here at all.” He realized after the words were out that he’d said “your people,” and stopped, awkward and confused.

  “Besides,” Trei added after a moment, feeling, despite his confusion, obscurely responsible for defending Tolounn’s honor in the face of this unexpected slur, “besides, Ceirfei, if somebody did, and it got out, well, nobody would risk that, do you see? Think of what the public opprobrium would do to his reputation! That’s why I said maybe Yngul: the Yngulin Emperor might do something like that. Only I don’t know why he would.…”

  “Maybe it really was an accident. But, Trei, whatever happens, if it comes to war, the Islands will have to depend on the kajuraihi to throw more than rocks. But there aren’t many kajuraihi. A few hundred, not the thousands we might have mustered in my grandfather’s day.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that, but why?”

  “We don’t know. There might be fewer dragons, so then we’d have less dragon magic available to borrow. But then why would there be fewer dragons? Have they found a different island chain elsewhere to their liking, so tha
t their strongest winds no longer surround our Islands? Or maybe the dragons still ride the winds around and above our Islands, but they’ve simply become less willing to share their magic with men. We don’t really know why they ever chose to allow us to borrow their magic and ride their winds; if they ever choose otherwise, we might not understand that, either. But,” he added encouragingly, “they still do make some of us into kajuraihi.”

  Trei nodded. “The dragons themselves—they don’t actually fight, is that right?”

  “Never,” Ceirfei agreed. “They never fight men, they never have, not in all our common history. Maybe they can’t, maybe their nature isn’t suited to it; maybe they won’t lower themselves to do battle. Maybe they just don’t notice the quarrels of men. No one knows. But they keep the Islands high above the sea, and when we have to fight to defend the Islands, we do it from the heights. So we borrow their magic to defend the Islands for both ourselves and for them.” Ceirfei got slowly to his feet and offered Trei a hand up. “We should get back to the novitiate.”

  “Gods. Master Anerii—”

  “Taimenai will surely pin his wings back.” Ceirfei sounded uncharacteristically fierce, so that Trei stared at him in surprise.

  “Really, Trei. The master of novices, speaking out in open suspicion right in front of the very novices with whom he’s charged? Incredible. He should be removed from his position. If I were the wingmaster—well. Well. Can you stand?”

  Trei let Ceirfei pull him to his feet. The sick feeling was passing off at last, but he found himself suddenly, violently angry. With Lord Manasi, with himself, with the whole Tolounnese Empire? He hardly knew. He said, “Ceirfei, I am kajurai now.” But then he wasn’t sure. Divided in blood and heart and loyalty, Novice-master Anerii had said, and angry and uncomfortable as he was, Trei was aware that, despite Ceirfei’s quick defense of him, the novice-master might even be right. He shook his head, trying to dismiss both the anger and the crowding doubts. Said at last, “Anyway, Tolounn hasn’t any business invading the Islands. The Empire won’t even care whether it wins or loses—not much. But it matters to the Islands. If there is war, I’ll—I am kajurai—”

  Ceirfei didn’t seem to hear his hesitation. “I know you are. It’s all right.” He offered a reassuring little nod.

  Ceirfei’s confidence was heartening, and though he couldn’t actually share it, Trei found his confusion and anger easing.

  8

  Araenè slept through the night with the egg tucked up against her chest, a strange cool-hot presence in the bed; she’d been fearful of breaking it, but unable to rest without it next to her. She’d been afraid that, her first night in the hidden school, she would dream of … things, of her mother standing helplessly in the hall while Araenè stormed away to her room, of her father during that last horrible night before he died.

  Instead she dreamed all night of fire that rode through the sky on the back of the wind and crawled, molten, through the earth, locked under stone. She dreamed of blocky iron walls that loomed above her: black, but glowing red with contained fire. When she pressed her hands to an iron wall, the heat should have charred through her palms and burned her bones to ash. She felt the heat, yet she did not burn.

  These weren’t her dreams, she knew. They pressed against her mind from the dragonet right through shell and cool shield alike. She was grateful for those dreams, though, because they blocked her own nightmares. She was grateful even when she woke hot-eyed and headachy and wondering just how far from hatching the egg really was. Quicken my child. Yes, and Araenè thought that if she cast it into a hot enough fire, it was ready to quicken now. But she did not know where she could find any fire hot enough.… She had no idea how to find those great iron furnaces.…

  She found herself reluctant to let the egg out of her sight. But since she could hardly carry it around in her pocket, she hid it at the back of the deepest drawer in her room. Then she slipped into the kitchens, still very early, to help make the day’s bread and eat her breakfast with the kitchen staff: warm bread with sheep’s milk butter and figs. She almost forgot about the fire dragon’s egg hidden in her room until she found her way to Master Tnegun’s work-room. Then she suddenly found herself able to think of nothing else.

  But Master Tnegun did not seem to see the reflection of fire in her eyes. Or the reflection of the ten thousand rules she’d broken.

  His workroom was the big one in which Araenè had first met him, with its enormous, cluttered table and strangely dim light. Three granite spheres lay on the table near the master’s hand, and a thin copper plate held upright in a clamp, and a scattering of ravens’ feathers. The scent and flavor of cumin filled the room, but there was also something else.… Araenè tried to decipher the thin, bitter taste, which was a little like turmeric. She didn’t exactly like it, but it seemed … powerful. Not just powerful. Secretive, somehow. Or not exactly secretive, but … guarded, maybe.

  Araenè stood as Master Tnegun directed, by the table where she could look directly into the dim reflection cast back by the copper plate. The reflection looked alarmingly girlish. Her throat looked too long and smooth, her cheekbones too delicate; her eyes, wide now with nerves, did not look like the eyes of a boy.

  But Master Tnegun did not seem to notice anything amiss with Araenè’s reflection. “You have settled in well enough? Your apartment pleases you?” he asked. His deep voice seemed to come out of the far reaches of the room rather than from the place near at hand where he stood.

  Araenè nodded mutely.

  “Good.” The master gestured sternly toward a chair near the table. “Sit. We will see what sort of magery your mind and blood contain, young Arei, and discover how and in what form it is emerging. You may find the process disconcerting. Sit down.”

  Araenè supposed it was too late to declare that she really just wanted to be a chef. But she was frightened, and her fear made her angry. She straightened her shoulders and glared at the master. “What if I don’t want to?”

  Master Tnegun regarded her in silence for a moment. Long enough that Araenè began to be ashamed of her angry question, though she was still angry. Or frightened; it was hard to tell which.

  But he only said at last, with no trace of annoyance, “You will find it impossible to reach the heart of magic unless you permit a master to guide your journey. I am aware that I am asking you to take a long step into trust. I give you my word that I will not harm you, Arei. When you are ready, I must still ask you to sit.”

  Araenè sat slowly down in the chair Master Tnegun had indicated.

  “Good.” The master changed the angle of the copper plate by a degree or so and picked up a long black feather. He brushed the feather across the surface of the plate, and the complicated scents in the room were abruptly joined by something almost like crushed coriander, but sweeter. Master Tnegun touched the copper plate with the tips of two fingers, looked up to meet Araenè’s eyes, and sent his mind probing suddenly behind her eyes, into her mind and her heart.

  Araenè did something. She did not make or summon the mint-and-lemon shield that had protected her in the dragon’s furnace. This was something else, but … it was a little bit the same. It tasted of anise and lemon and pepper, and it stopped Master Tnegun instantly.

  The Yngulin master paused, thin eyebrows rising. Yet he looked thoughtful rather than displeased. “Has someone shown you how to do this? No, of course not. Hmm.” He sent his mind toward hers again, but his probing thought skidded once more away from her protected heart and mind, and he ceased, frowning.

  “I’m not doing it deliberately,” Araenè protested.

  “Certainly you are, child. If I were to teach you how to yield your mind to mine, would you do so? If I were to break your hard-held protection by force, would you be pleased?”

  It seemed impudent to say no, but Araenè certainly could not say yes.

  “Of course you would not.” The master sat down in an ornate high-backed chair that Araenè was almost certain hadn
’t been there a moment ago, steepled his hands, and regarded her over his fingertips for a long moment. “Unfortunately, a good deal of magery may only be taught directly. Whatever secret you so urgently conceal, young Arei, I assure you, you may trust it to me.”

  Araenè didn’t answer.

  Master Tnegun sighed. “So. We will begin with something less demanding.” Reaching out, he collected the smallest of the granite spheres. He tossed this to Araenè, who caught it and stared at him.

  “What is that?”

  Araenè felt herself growing angry again. “How could I possibly know?”

  “You might ask it what it is,” Master Tnegun suggested.

  Araenè blinked, puzzled. Bending her head, she gazed at the sphere. It was granite, heavy and rough-textured. It tasted of … something dark and heavy … molasses. Yes, black molasses. And ginger. And something else, something that balanced oddly against the ginger … pepper, but not exactly. The heat was sweeter on the tongue than pepper, but in a completely different way than cloves.

  “What might it do?”

  Though the master spoke softly, his question startled Araenè. She jerked her head up and blinked at him. “Um …” Molasses, bright ginger, and that strange hot sweetness. But she had no idea what it did. Maybe if she … She cautiously tried to bring out the unfamiliar hot flavor. The sphere trembled in her hands, sweet warmth rushed up from her toes right up to the roots of her hair, and she exclaimed wordlessly.

  “Well?” asked Master Tnegun.

  “I … Is it for holding light?” Araenè turned the sphere over in her hands. “But how do you get the light out?”

  “You almost released the light yourself just then. Releasing the light is not difficult. If you wish to learn how to hide light away in stone, however, that will require you to allow me to show you directly.” Master Tnegun made this last statement in a tone of pointed irony.

  Araenè clenched her teeth, refusing to be drawn.

  “Well. Granite, born in fire, is well suited to spellwork involving heat and light. You will learn this. Name me other stones born in fire, young Arei.”