is stronger.
He glanced down at the shield on his left arm and comprehended its true purpose. His fingers found a lever on the underside. When he twisted it, the shield sprang to life. It hummed on his arm, and its interlocking rings began to spin, some clockwise, some counterclockwise, in a dizzying array.
The Young Dread fired the disruptor. John turned the shield, and the sparks streamed into it, buzzing and crackling. And then the sound changed. The rings of the shield were spinning faster, and the crackle of electricity became louder. The shield strained against his arm, moving with gyroscopic force. The disruptor’s sparks were thrown from the shield like fireworks from a Catherine wheel, spraying back at the Young Dread. She dove for the ice and rolled as the swarm flew over her. John felt a glow of satisfaction—for once he had surprised Maud, not the other way around.
The cave was close enough now to see it in detail, despite the sun’s glare. When the Young Dread had gracefully regained her feet, John tossed her the shield. It was a fascinating device, but it too was a crutch.
She caught the shield with one hand and fired the disruptor at him again with the other. She wasn’t going to be easy with him just because he’d decided to give up his protection.
Without focal or shield, John was completely exposed as the sparks rushed toward him. He let the fear come, without changing his concentration. He leapt onto a mound of broken ice and jumped from slab to slab, carrying himself upward. The sparks hit well below his feet, dispersing harmlessly against the ice. Then he leapt down and sprinted for the cave.
He reached it before the Young Dread, the first time he’d ever beaten her in a footrace. He stood in the frozen interior, waiting for her and feeling a small sense of triumph. When she arrived a few moments later, there was something different in her presence. Maud did not smile at him, or pat him on the back or make any move out of the ordinary. But when she spoke, it was as though he were receiving the highest praise one person could offer another.
“John,” she said, “that was very good.”
The frozen cave was like something from a fairy story, a place Maud’s nurse would have described to her at bedtime, back in the long-ago past, when the Young Dread had still been an ordinary child. The cavern had a high roof of rock, with seams of ice branching through it, and from these seams hung vast, intricate icicles like handblown chandeliers or tiny enchanted cities. At the back of the cave was a smaller tunnel leading deeper into the mountain, but the sun had already set, and exploration would have to wait for morning.
There was no wood here, but the Young Dread built them a fire with the charcoal from John’s pack. It was John’s duty to make their fires and cook their food, but she was content tonight to let him wander the cavern in the twilight for a few more minutes.
Maud felt an upwelling of satisfaction as she watched him staring at the hanging icicles. When she’d first begun his training, she gauged his progress by the intensity of her own irritation—if she’d felt slightly less vexed after a training session, she’d counted that as success. But pride was an entirely new sensation. John’s run across the ice field had been impressive, and the Young Dread could see the elation of that run still surrounding him like an airy mantle.
When he came to sit by the fire, however, his manner had entirely changed and the elation had all bled away. By then, the fire was burning red, and John stared into it pensively as he began to heat the dried strips of rabbit that would be their dinner.
“Have you been here before?” he asked her at last. His quiet voice echoed in the enormous space.
“Yes,” Maud replied. “I came once, when the Seekers from the house of the boar held a ceremony welcoming two new children to their family. That was a very long time ago, when these caves were still in use.”
John nodded, but he didn’t appear to be listening very attentively. His mind was elsewhere as he handed her the food.
They ate, and guessing at the source of his current mood, the Young Dread told him, “I taunt you when we train, John. I try to break your focus. But I don’t believe