Bone, Fog, Ash & Star

by Catherine Egan

  Contents

  Title Page

  Book & Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Maps

  BONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  FOG

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  ASH

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  STAR

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  www.coteaubooks.com

  © Catherine Egan, 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll-free to 1-800-893-5777.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Edited by Laura Peetoom

  Designed by Jamie Olson

  Typesetting by Susan Buck

  Maps by Jonathan Service

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Egan, Catherine, 1976-, author

  Bone, fog, ash & star / Catherine Egan.

  (Last days of Tian Di ; book 3)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55050-593-1 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-55050-594-8 (pdf).--

  ISBN 978-1-55050-779-9 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-55050-784-3 (mobi)

  I. Title. II. Title: Bone, fog, ash and star. III. Series: Egan,

  Catherine, 1976- . Last days of Tian Di ; bk. 3.

  PS8609.G34B65 2014 jC813'.6 C2014-903752-X

  C2014-903753-8

  Library of Congress Control Number 2014938365

  Available in Canada from: Coteau Books, 2517 Victoria Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada S4P 0T2 www.coteaubooks.com

  Coteau Books gratefully acknowledges the financial support of its publishing program by: the Saskatchewan Arts Board, The Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the City of Regina, and the Government of Saskatchewan through Creative Saskatchewan.

  for

  James and Kieran,

  with all my love

  Map of Di Shang

  Map of Tian Xia

  BONE

  Chapter

  ~1~

  She clung to his broad, furred shoulders with her knees, her hands deep in the feathers of his neck. She clung to him while overhead the blue sky spun and beneath them the rolling, golden dunes flashed by. She thought the joy of it would burst her chest open. The world was only sand and sky and speed, his shoulders between her knees, his feathers in her hands.

  And then she let go.

  She fell, plunging from the sky toward the ground. The wind roared in her ears. She stretched out her limbs, she closed her eyes, she thought of the dark wings, she thought of flight. The ground rushed closer. She opened her eyes and her heart nearly stalled. Just before she hit the ground his bony talons closed around her and she was borne up again, back into the blinding blue of the sky.

  This was the third time and she’d had enough. She climbed up his legs and pulled herself expertly onto his back. She wrapped her arms around his feathered neck and shouted, “Let’s go back.”

  He swooped round in a great semi-circle. Over a mountain of sand stood fifty or more peaked, brightly coloured tents: the Sorma camp. They landed by a trio of disgruntled camels.

  The gryphon became a boy, tall and lean, with lively dark eyes and a laugh tugging at the corners of his mouth. As always, when she looked at him these days, she felt an odd pain she couldn’t give a name to, a longing that made it hard to speak for a moment.

  “Nay our most successful flight, Cap’n,” he said.

  She drew a breath. The air was bone dry.

  “If you keep calling me that I’ll turn you into a toad. Permanently.”

  She pulled her dark, corkscrewing hair back from her face and looked away from him at the ugly camels.

  “Still no sign of them,” he said, scanning the sky. “You’re sure they’re coming?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I could have gone to get her. I dinnay see why Foss has to go out of his way.”

  “I dinnay know either, Charlie. It was her idea.”

  The corners of his mouth turned down suddenly, changing his face. His eyebrows came together and he gave a sullen shrug.

  “Lah, they’d better be here. It’s your birthday.”

  She nodded and gave a half-hearted laugh. She wanted to stroke the frown away, ask him what was the matter, but he wouldn’t tell her – she knew that much.

  “I’m parched, aye. Let’s see if they’ll ration me extra water on my birthday!”

  ~~~

  Charlie had been dropping Eliza from the sky for weeks now. They wanted to see if she would turn into a raven. Every time they failed she felt rather embarrassed by the whole endeavour. After all, how absurd it was to think she might suddenly become a bird! And yet she dreamed of flying every night, and when she woke there were long dark feathers in her bed.

  She had wanted to spend her sixteenth birthday in Holburg. With her best friend Nell at school in the capital and her parents in the desert with the Sorma, she hardly ever went back to the island. It was the closest thing to home she’d ever had and she missed it terribly. She came close to asking her father if they could all go back for her birthday but she knew it was impractical and, in the end, she held her tongue. Her mother was far too weak to make the journey. It would be selfish and unfair to ask her to do so. And so Eliza’s birthday party was held in the middle of the Great Sand Sea. The Sorma were midway on their journey from one oasis to another and there was not a speck of green to be seen for hundreds of miles around. There was nothing to see at all but the undulating sand dunes, changing colour with the light. Eliza felt uneasy and restless out here without trees or water or anything alive but her father’s resolute tribe. Still, it didn’t matter really. The main thing was that everybody she cared for would be here, all together in one place for once.

  Eliza’s birthday was in the spring. It was more than a year since she had made the decision to leave the Mancer Citadel forever, and it had not been an easy year. In her chest, next to her heart, she bore the Urkleis, which the Sorceress Nia had Made. In taking possession of it, Eliza had been able to defeat Nia, who remained frozen in the Hall of the Ancients in Tian Xia. But Eliza felt in her chest, every minute, the limitless depth of Nia’s rage. It was a strain that showed in her face, thinner now, with hollows under her eyes.

  She had continued her study of Magic with Foss, the Mancer Spellmaster and Emmisarius of Water – and the only Mancer she trusted. He came to her in the desert with books and gossip from the Citadel. He was the Mancers’ only link left to the Shang Sorceress. Eliza knew they hoped he would bring her back eventually. She knew even that the idea of bringing her back by force had been discussed and each ti
me rejected. They needed her to be willing, but she would not budge. She wanted no part in the business of the Mancers, with their carefully guarded secrets, their desire to control her and make use of her power. Above all she swore she would not return so long as Kyreth, once the Supreme Mancer, was given asylum in spite of his crimes.

  ~~~

  “Perhaps they’ve been held up.”

  Eliza was lying in the shade outside her tent when her father, Rom Tok, came and sat down next to her. He ran a hand over her unruly hair and smiled down at her. The sun was getting lower. In an hour or two it would be nightfall.

  “Maybe,” Eliza said lazily.

  “Why don’t we begin the party without them?” he suggested.

  “No,” said Eliza. There was a flutter of dark wings somewhere within her and she sat up, breaking into a grin. “They’re coming,” she said.

  A moment later they all saw the bright speck of gold on the horizon. As it drew nearer, it became recognizably one of the Mancer dragons.

  The camels edged away, uneasy, as the huge, shimmering dragon landed close to the camp. Foss came towards Eliza with open arms, his fair hair and white robe billowing in the afternoon breeze, his eyes as dazzling as the sun itself. Before he reached Eliza, Nell had raced past him and hurled herself onto her best friend.

  “Happy birthday!” she cried.

  Eliza laughed and hugged her, then pulled herself out of the embrace to greet Foss. Now all was well. Everybody was here. It didn’t matter that they were in the middle of the desert instead of on Holburg. This was as much as she could hope for.

  ~~~

  They ate figs and olives as the sun went down and the moon rose. The surrounding dunes went from deep gold to fiery red to ghostly white. The Sorma played music and they all danced around a fire on the cooling sand. Eliza’s mother Rea sat on a blanket and clapped her hands while the others danced, her red hair bright by the firelight. Rom danced circles around her and she laughed up at him.

  When they were tired of dancing they set off fire-flares into the desert sky.

  Nell and Eliza lay side by side on the sand and watched the fire-flares explode into dazzling showers of colour.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” said Eliza. “I know it’s nay easy for you to take time off right now.”

  “Lah, I couldnay miss your birthday!” said Nell. “Anyway, I brought my notes with me.” She pulled a cream folder, thick as a book, out of a stylish satchel to show Eliza. “This is it. Everything I’ll need for the Austermon Entrance Exam.”

  Austermon was the top university in the Republic. Nell had her sights set on studying cetology there with the renowned marine biologist Graeme Biggs. With top grades and countless academic awards from prestigious Ariston Hebe Secondary School, Nell was certain to be accepted, but she needed to a win a full scholarship if she was going to afford it. That meant acing the notoriously difficult entrance exam, as well as the interview.

  “I’ve got my own shorthand, aye, and I’ve been reviewing nonstop,” said Nell. “I dinnay recommend trying to study on the back of a dragon, though. I lost a few pages, and I had to get Foss to make the dragon land so we could look for them. They’d fallen in the top of a tree and it was very awkward getting them all. He got a bit annoyed with me, I think. It’s hard to tell when he’s annoyed, though, dinnay you find?”

  Eliza laughed, and then said carefully, “Charlie was disappointed that you didnay ask him to come get you.”

  “It just seemed easier this way,” said Nell. “Besides, I like dragons. Much smoother ride, aye.”

  Eliza rolled over on her side to look at her friend. Nell’s face was lit up by the fire-flare exploding overhead, her violet eyes reflecting the shower of brilliant sparks. Her light brown hair formed a pool of silken waves around her head. She was a beautiful girl and perhaps too much aware of it.

  “Is everything all right between you and Charlie?” Eliza asked. “He thinks you’ve been avoiding him. And it’s true we’ve hardly spent any time together this past year. The three of us, I mean.”

  “Everything’s fine,” said Nell airily. “I’ve just been busy. And lah, you’re the one who’s really my friend. Charlie’s your friend and of course I’m fond of him too, but I cannay make time to see him when I’ve got so much studying to do.”

  “All right,” said Eliza. “But I think his feelings are a little hurt.”

  Nell rolled her eyes. “He’s a mite oversensitive. He hardly showed his face in Kalla for months after we got back from Tian Xia. And now he thinks I’m avoiding him?”

  Eliza sighed and dropped it. She didn’t want to argue tonight and it would inevitably be sticky getting in the middle of whatever had come between her friends. It was true that Nell was under a lot of pressure lately. She decided to wait until after the Austermon exam to broach the subject again.

  “I think that’s it for the fire-flares!” shouted Rom.

  Nell bounced upright. “Let’s give Eliza her presents!”

  The others laughed.

  “Now is as good a time as any,” Rom conceded.

  “I agree!” said Eliza.

  “Mine first!”

  The sat around the dying fire. Foss looked like a golden giant, beaming and luminous among the dark-skinned Sorma – Eliza’s grandmother Lai and her toothless grandfather Kon, her many aunts and uncles and cousins. Rom sat with his arm wrapped around Rea and she rested her head on his shoulder peacefully. From her satchel Nell pulled out a perfectly wrapped box with a purple ribbon around it and handed it to Eliza. Inside was a leather shoulder strap with a long beaded scabbard attached.

  “I made it!” said Nell proudly. “It’s for your dagger, aye. So you can look a little more stylish while you tote that thing around! Look, you wear the strap across your chest like this. You can move the scabbard so the blade is against your back or at your hip. See?”

  Eliza hugged her friend, touched that even while she was cramming for exams Nell had found the time to make her something special.

  Most of her presents were handmade. Her grandmother had woven her a sturdy backpack of camel hair and her aunt Ry had made her a jaunty little cap. Her father had carved her a chess set with hinges at its center, so it could fold up into a little box. Foss, predictably, had brought her a book: Legends of the Ancients. It was an unexpected gift, since Foss had originally objected to her wanting to read it at all, insisting it was mostly rubbish. Written centuries ago by an eccentric Mancer and now mostly discredited, it contained some of the more far-fetched theories regarding the Ancients, which Eliza had begun to take an interest in.

  “So you’ve changed your mind?” Eliza asked him laughingly. “You think this book might have something useful in it after all?”

  “Not a bit,” replied Foss. “No, I think it is arrant nonsense, but it is your birthday and you may read it for pleasure, remembering always that there is no evidence at all to support these wild speculations!”

  “I’ve brought some presents back from your friends in Tian Xia,” said Charlie, handing her two small parcels.

  The first was from Swarn, the Warrior Witch, who trained Eliza in potions and weaponry. It was a slender white cylinder with the centre bored out and a mouthpiece at one end. Eliza examined it, puzzled. It looked almost like a flute, but a bundle of black darts was attached to the side of it by a tight loop of wire.

  “That must be dragon bone, aye,” said Nell, leaning forward eagerly to get a better look at it.

  “But what is it?” wondered Eliza.

  She handed it to Foss and he turned it over in his big gold hands. He took one of the darts and sniffed it, then placed it in the hole at the end.

  “Try blowing in the mouthpiece,” he suggested. “Point it away from us, please.”

  “And away from the s!” piped up her grandfather, Kon, in the Sorma dialect.

  Eliza put the cylinder to her lips and blew. The dart hissed away into the night.

  “You will have to ask Swarn,” sai
d Foss, “but I think the darts contain verlami, a substance that paralyzes.”

  Eliza laughed dryly. “Swarn has a funny idea of what a sixteen-year-old needs,” she commented.

  “Let’s see what Uri Mon Lil has got you,” said Charlie.

  The wizard’s parcel was wrapped in a delightfully soft, silvery substance that fell away under her touch. At the centre of it lay a little amber dropper with what looked like smoke inside. Attached was a card written in the wizard’s spidery hand: My dear Eliza, here is a pleasant dream to celebrate your first sleep as a young woman of sixteen! Do come and visit us in Lil soon. Your affectionate friend, Uri Mon Lil.

  Eliza smiled. “How just like Uri!” she said.

  “When the Sorma turn sixteen, we send them out into the desert for twenty days and they have to find their way back to us,” said Lai, speaking rough Kallanese out of politeness towards the visitors. “But in your case…you have already proved such a test unnecessary.”

  “That sounds like a rotten birthday,” said Nell. She had slipped a couple of pages out of her folder and was scanning them by the fading firelight.

  “I’ve got something for you too,” said Charlie softly in Eliza’s ear. “But I’ll give it to you later, aye.”

  And her heart began to race like when she’d been falling through the sky, braced for impact.

  ~~~

  The Sorma were raking sand over the glowing embers and tents had been set up for Foss and for Nell. It was close to midnight, the moon a bright sliver in the sky. Charlie drew Eliza aside and they walked a little way from the camp.

  “Lah, this is your present,” he said, handing her a piece of paper. “Or, this is nay it exactly but it tells you what it is.”

  Willing her hands to stop trembling, Eliza unfolded it. It was a map of the Western Ocean. Marked out in the centre was a little dot, which Charlie had labelled, Eliza.

  “I’m almost sure it’s nary been discovered,” he said in a rush. “It’s an island just about ten miles around. You cannay find it on any other map. White beaches and a jungle full of birds and lizards and snakes. There’s a lake on the island too, a small one, and seventeen waterfalls. A tiny island but seventeen waterfalls, aye. I’ve named it after you. Whenever you have time, I’ll take you there.”