Bone, Fog, Ash & Star

by Catherine Egan

  “Charlie,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse and strange. She cleared her throat and looked up at him. He was watching her nervously. “That’s a wonderful present, aye,” she said. He broke into a smile.

  “I thought you’d like it,” he said, relieved.

  “I do. Thank you.”

  She folded it up again and pressed it between her fingers. Besides Nell, Charlie had been her closest friend for nearly four years now. Whatever it was she felt for him she thought she had always felt, but as she got older it became more urgent somehow. Lately she found it hard to look at him without her heart quickening, and when flying with him the joy was less in the flight than in the excuse to put her arms around him. His uncomplicated friendship was not enough for her anymore. She had said nothing to him of this, at first because she wasn’t sure what she wanted, and then because she was afraid of what he would say if she told him. After all, he had never given her reason to believe that he felt anything but friendship for her.

  Alone under the desert sky, she knew she had to tell him, here, now; that there would be no better time for it. But fear froze her tongue.

  Have courage, she told herself sternly. You are a Sorceress, and you have done far more difficult and dangerous things than confess your feelings to a boy.

  But he wasn’t just a boy, of course. Not literally, for he was a Shade, a shapeshifter, but also because he was Charlie, her beautiful Charlie. What could she say to him that would not sound ridiculous? She took a deep breath. It was her birthday. They were apart from the others, hidden by the dark. Suppose she said nothing. Suppose she just took his hands, stepped a little closer, and kissed him.

  “Are you sure you like it?” Charlie asked, becoming uncertain. “You look a bit funny, aye.”

  “No, I’m…it’s something else. Charlie…”

  His expression changed and he took her hands in his. “Eliza! You’ve got me worried now. What’s going on?”

  There. He was holding her hands. All she had to do was step closer. Why couldn’t she? Well, she couldn’t. So she would have to speak.

  “I’m sorry,” she said feebly. “This is strangely difficult.”

  She was cut off by the jolt of her heart and the screaming of ravens, wings beating all around them. The ravens were her Guide and they were telling her something but in her shock and confusion she couldn’t make it out. A sudden fog slithered around their ankles and up, engulfing them. She let go of his hands, reaching for her dagger.

  “Stay still,” she said.

  A faint whistle and something skimmed her ear. Out of the mist, leaping, somersaulting, flying, came a horde of beings as graceful as acrobats, their clothes and skin and flying hair ash-white. They had no eyes or mouths, just strange blank faces ringed with streaming hair like white flame. Some held curved, glinting swords, others large powerful bows from which arrows rained. Eliza raised a barrier around herself.

  “Foss!” she shouted. She had lost Charlie in the fog, didn’t know where to put her barrier around him. “Foss!” she cried again. Then she saw Charlie face down in the sand.

  As quickly as it had fallen, the fog lifted. The beings were gone, leaping and spinning over the edge of the dune. She ran to Charlie’s side and turned him over.

  He was riddled with arrows. He had not even had time to change into something else.

  Foss and her father were at her side in seconds, Nell following close after hollering: “What? What? What?”

  “Where are the healers?” Eliza pushed her father back towards the camp. “Get the healers!”

  “Oh, the Ancients.” Nell sank to her knees at Charlie’s side. A mottled, smoky substance poured from his mouth and nose and eyes.

  “A spell, Foss, a spell.” Eliza’s words spilled out of her like tears. The Mancer’s hand was heavy on her shoulder.

  “It is too late for spells and healers, Eliza Tok,” he murmured.

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “Oh, the Ancients,” said Nell again. She held Charlie’s limp hand in hers and looked up at Eliza, her face ashen. “He’s dead, Eliza. He’s dead.”

  She shook off Foss’s hand.

  She thought: No.

  Ravens filled the sky, covered the ground, their wings stirring up a great wind.

  She opened her mouth and screamed and when she screamed the ravens screamed with her. They screamed words she had never learned, didn’t know she knew, and with those words she tore a hole in the world and stepped through it.

  Chapter

  ~2~

  The Supreme Mancer Aysu was looking into the Vindensphere. In it she saw the boy lying dead in the desert, the others surrounding him; she saw Eliza frantic, shouting orders. Then the Vindensphere filled with ravens and went black. She looked up, staring into the darkness of the room.

  “Oh, horrible,” she murmured. “What has happened to me? How have I become a murderer?”

  A voice behind her rumbled, “He was a spy among us here once and a threat to the continued line of the Sorceress. You have done what was necessary.”

  “Necessary?” She laughed a brittle, unhappy laugh. “This is madness, I am mad! What if she learns that the Mancers are behind the murder?”

  Her eyes flared brighter and she tried to stand. Kyreth’s hands on her shoulders pushed her back down into the chair. She felt all the strength drain from her body. What did it matter? What could she do? She remained seated, slumped forward slightly.

  “That is what will bring her back to us,” he said.

  ~~~

  Cold beneath her feet. Not cold stone or cold grass or cold anything she could name. Only cold. The darkness engulfing her was not an absence of light but a thing in itself – a thing with purpose and a kind of hunger. There was no air – that was the thing she noticed first. She rasped a spell, conjuring enough to breathe. Her heart beat against a kind of pressure, as if a strong hand were wrapped around it. A whisper of wings led the way and she followed. She sensed a great number of other beings walking near her but she couldn’t see or hear them. She murmured another spell and conjured a light but the light was swallowed instantly by the hungry dark.

  She walked with the soundless, invisible others and gradually her eyes adjusted. She saw shadows all around her, walking. Some of the shadows were shaped like people, some like animals or other beings. They kept pace with one another, neither hurrying nor loitering. They kept their eyes straight ahead, fixed on the encompassing dark. Eliza could hear running water.

  At length they came to a river. Without faltering, the shadows walked straight into the river and were swept away by its powerful current. The river was full of bodies, only their heads sometimes visible above the black rushing water. Eliza stopped at the bank of the river and felt the strange pull it exerted. She too wanted to step into it and be carried off. She dared not look at it too long, for when she did it seemed to call to her. It was as if the water was telling her, For too long your feet have borne the burden of carrying you and you have never known where you should go. Let me take you now. She walked along the river in the direction that it flowed. She walked alive in the place of death until the river poured between two colossal dark paws and disappeared.

  Eliza looked up. Crouched over the river was a giant panther with a starved face and eyes each as vast and cavernous as the caldera of a volcano, shining with black flame. It was looking right at her.

  Go back, said the panther.

  Its voice was inside her bones, behind her eyes; an empty voice, echoing and insubstantial.

  The black current swept countless beings between the paws of the panther and they vanished.

  I know who you are, said Eliza. The words made no sound. Her voice had no power here.

  The panther said again, Go back.

  Dragons, humans, centaurs, eagles, witches, giants, foxes, trolls – she saw them carried by the river to oblivion between those paws. With a jolt of horror, she saw a gryphon. Not just a gryphon – Charlie. Even as a fast-moving sh
adow in the dark water she recognized him, she knew him. Before she could move he swept past her like the others, disappeared.

  The shock of it froze her for a moment and then her mind began to race. The panther spoke to her again: You cannot follow him. This is the edge of things. You have to go back.

  She knew it was true but in the moment she saw Charlie, her beloved Charlie in his gryphon form flashing by and disappearing, she wanted nothing but to disappear also, to be swallowed by whatever lay beyond those paws. Her grief opened her wide, drew her apart from herself. It weighed her down and pulled her towards the black water. The river called her more surely now, claimed her. She felt it lapping at her feet. She looked bleakly into the water at the beings it carried through the dark. Though at first she could not say why, certain creatures caught her eye in particular: a grey cat, a wolf, a donkey, a half-hunter, but it meant nothing to her until she saw a small, dark-haired woman she recognized: Missus Ash. Missus Ash, who had taken care of her when she first came to the Mancer Citadel as a terrified twelve-year-old, and who had turned out to be only one guise of the Shade. Then she understood that every form Charlie had ever taken was distinct in this river. She could not save them all, but she could save the one she loved best. She scanned the water for his face. What if he was lost already?

  She caught sight of him at last, her own dear Charlie in the shape of a beautiful seventeen-year-old human boy. His face was calm and pale as the water bore him towards the panther. He did not struggle or try to swim.

  “Charlie!” It took all her will to make a sound but he did not seem to hear her. There was no time to consider. Eliza threw herself into the river. It wrapped itself around her hungrily.

  The cold was unlike anything she could have imagined. What breath she had left, it stole from her. It froze her heart and lungs and drew her racing towards the void. But Eliza was a strong swimmer. She drove herself through the black water towards Charlie. She wrapped one arm around him tight and struck out, legs kicking, one arm wind-milling, struggling for the shore.

  The water carried them fast, poured over her head and into her mouth. The taste was death, the simple blackening end to all. She gagged and coughed it up again, pulled herself through the water, pulled Charlie. The great paws loomed. The water filled her veins with its icy darkness. Her heart choked on it. She could not reach the bank and so she grabbed the paw with her free arm. She clung to one silken claw, there at the drop where the river disappeared. She held Charlie to her and she begged.

  Let me take this one. I’ll go back, but let me take this one with me.

  No. This one is mine.

  A rush of wings inside her skull, and then outside, all around – her ravens swarming around the panther’s thin, ravenous face, cawing.

  He is mine! Eliza screamed with something other than her voice. She shook the dark, wrung the airless void. He is mine! Give him to me!

  The panther opened his awful mouth and snapped at the swarming ravens. His teeth flashed white, his tongue was red as flame. The ravens retreated and then dove at him again, cawing, shrieking.

  Give him to me! Give him to me! Give him to me!

  She dragged Charlie over the giant paw to the bank, the cold nothing that lay on each side of the rushing water. Her ravens filled the emptiness with black beating wings and screaming voices.

  Give him to me! Give him to me!

  The panther roared. The river roiled.

  Give him to me. She sobbed, holding him in her arms, rocking him. His cheek was ice-cold against hers. He is mine. She wept and the ravens beat their wings in a frenzy. He is mine. Give him to me.

  Go back! The panther roared again.

  She held him to her. The river swelled and poured over its banks, rushing around them. The ravens formed a towering black column, spiraling around her, the wind from their wings pushing the water back so it swept around her but did not touch her. In the centre of this storm of ravens, in this gap in the roaring river of death, she held him. Her lungs ached, her heart strangled. Water and ravens spun about her. She opened her mouth and felt Magic pouring out of it. The crouching panther lurched to its feet, a great tail lashing somewhere in the dark. Fiery-tongued and roaring he pounced. The Magic pouring from Eliza’s mouth split the dark. Holding the boy close, she burst through the sky, plummeting. Charlie would catch her as he always did. Or she would become a raven at last, this time, and save them both.

  He is mine, she whispered, and they hit the ground. The violent jolt brought sweet air rushing back into her lungs. Her heart began to beat again, slow and frozen from the awful water. She hung onto him, Charlie full of arrows, Charlie bleeding terribly, but alive.

  ~~~

  Nell was staring at her, wild-eyed, mouth open with a question she couldn’t put into words. Foss took her by the shoulders, hard.

  “What have you done, Eliza Tok?”

  “Healers,” she gasped. They were there already, surrounding Charlie. She heard their low murmur, smelled the herbs beginning to burn. He was alive. Barely, but it was enough. If he was alive, the Sorma could help him.

  “Eliza!”

  She looked up into Foss’s flaming eyes.

  “I brought him back,” she said, trying to sit up. His face began to spin and fade and she fainted.

  ~~~

  When Eliza woke up she was alone in her tent with Foss. She leaped to her feet, dagger in hand. Immediately her knees gave way and she crashed back down onto her mat.

  “What happened?” she cried, then couldn’t really think what she meant.

  “Is Charlie all right?” she asked next.

  “The Sorma healers are with him now,” said Foss quietly. “He will live.”

  She nodded her head and felt how weak she was. She leaned back onto the cushions, let the dagger slip out of her hand.

  “You went where you should not have gone, Eliza Tok,” he murmured as sleep swept over her again.

  ~~~

  When she woke up a second time her head was pounding. Her mother was seated in the corner of the tent chewing on a fingernail. Her father was cross-legged at her side, holding her hand. The entrance was tied open to let in the cool night air and Foss paced back and forth before it.

  Rom smiled at her when she opened her eyes. He said to the others, “She’s awake.”

  “Thank the Ancients,” said Rea.

  Rom ran a hand over her forehead. His hand was very cool. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  Her tongue felt swollen in her mouth when she answered him: “Fine. Lah, no, terrible actually.”

  “You have a fever,” said Rea. “But you’ll be all right. Your friend Charlie seems to be stable as well.”

  Eliza glanced at Foss, still pacing, his head down.

  “Am I going to be all right?” she asked.

  His eyes were the colour of sunset when he looked at her.

  “You look well enough, Eliza Tok,” he said. “But I do not yet know the consequences of what you did. Only that it is unwise to make an enemy of the Guardian between life and death.”

  “Drink some water,” said Rom, handing her a cup.

  Nell peered into the tent.

  “Can I come in yet?” she asked.

  “Hello, Nell,” called Eliza.

  “Oh, thank the Ancients!” Nell gasped, bounding past Foss and hurling herself onto Eliza to hug her. “I just looked in on Charlie. He’s still out cold but the Sorma dinnay seem too worried. They say they’ve seen worse, aye.” She laughed a bit at that. “What happened, Eliza? He’s shot full of arrows!”

  “I was going to ask you about that,” said Eliza to Foss. “We were just…we were talking, aye, and then there was a fog and I knew something was going to happen but I didnay know what. And then –”

  “The Thanatosi.”

  “The what?”

  Foss bowed his head. He seemed strangely reluctant to speak.

  “The Thanatosi are a…well, I don’t know exactly what they are. A sort of mystical tribe perh
aps.”

  “Tian Xia worlders,” said Eliza.

  “Of course. They are assassins, essentially. They can be called upon only by Great Magic and once they have been called no power known can stop them from pursuing their goal. From what little I know, they are notoriously difficult to kill – perhaps impossible. I have never heard of them failing, giving up or being defeated.”

  “Will they be back?” Eliza struggled to sit up again. Her limbs felt hot and weak.

  Rea, Rom and Nell were all gaping at Foss in horror.

  “They will,” said Foss. “As soon as they sense their prey is still alive. I have put a barrier around the camp. We are safe for the time being.”

  Nia, thought Eliza immediately. But no. The Urkleis, which bound Nia, was still in her chest. She could feel it: Nia’s power turned in on itself in a furious deadlock, pulsing like a second poisoned heart in her chest. Nothing had changed. Nia could not have called the Thanatosi.

  “Who wants me dead?” she asked, a bit tremulously.

  “Eliza,” said Foss gently, “you were not the target. They achieved their goal, if only temporarily.”

  It took a moment for this to sink in.

  “Charlie?” she blurted.

  “It makes sense,” said Nell. “He’s been around forever, aye, and he is sort of a difficult personality. I imagine he’s got loads of enemies.”

  “But enemies powerful enough to…” Eliza paused.

  “What are we going to do if we cannay repel them?” asked Nell. “I spec the Mancers can get rid of them, nay? I mean, I know you dinnay want anything to do with them anymore, but for something very important like this…lah, we need the Mancers, nay?” This last she directed at Foss.

  “Foss?” asked Eliza. She was beginning to feel faint again.

  He met her gaze with a sorrowful face.

  “I fear that you cannot rely on the help of the Mancers in this matter,” he said.

  “That’s ridiculous!” cried Nell. “We’ll persuade them! We’ll –”