Bone, Fog, Ash & Star

by Catherine Egan

  The dragon was sprawled across the front lawn, crushing the rows of flowering bushes her father had planted last spring. It turned its flaming eyes on her and for a moment Gautelen could not move. She had never seen any creature as large or as terrible as this one. But the house was not burning; there were no screams from within. It watched her, but made no move to gobble her up. At last she crept past it, breaking into a run halfway, bursting into the house and slamming the door shut behind her. Her knees folded and she leaned against the door, her heart racing. It was the first time she had ever seen a dragon and she thought she could go a good long while without seeing another one.

  There were voices upstairs in the visitors’ parlour. She climbed the stairs quietly and knelt at the closed door to peer through the keyhole. She saw a tall white-haired being talking to her father. There were two others with her, slightly smaller, dressed head to toe in heavy furs. They could only be witches of some kind. She had heard of the Warrior Witch Swarn, who rode a dragon. Another enemy of Nia and friend to the Shang Sorceress. One of the smaller beings turned her head, looking around the room curiously. Gautelen could not see very well through the keyhole, but she made out chestnut hair and a youthful face. Her father had described the Shang Sorceress as a human girl a couple of years younger than Gautelen. Gautelen’s heart began to pound again as she looked through the keyhole at the pretty girl dressed in furs.

  She crept away to the library to think.

  ~~~

  They were tired when they arrived that evening, but Nell thought Uri mon Lil’s house the pleasantest place they had ever stayed in Tian Xia. Built with black bamboo, it had a great many peaked roofs spiked with chimneys. Inside, it was warm and comfortable, with fires lit in every room and lamps lighting the halls and stairways. Uri mon Lil, with his shock of white hair and his shriveled face beaming around bright blue eyes, was a tiny figure next to his towering wife. She had long amber eyes, and her wild hair burst out around a face that might have been sculpted from ebony, so perfect and smooth and black it was. The couple greeted the visitors and welcomed them in the parlour with warm food and drinks. Uri and Swarn agreed to immediately work on putting a barrier around the house and trying to hide Charlie’s presence with Magic. Charlie and Nell sat by the fire growing increasingly drowsy, fingers interlocked. Every now and then they looked at each other and broke into silly smiles. Sleepy though she was, when their eyes met Nell had to hold back the laughter that burbled in her chest. There was nothing funny in particular, and certainly their plight was hardly cause for humour, but she felt so ridiculously happy that laughter seemed the only outlet for it.

  “I will show the children to their rooms and then I will assist you,” said Ely-Hathana to Swarn. “Come, human children.”

  “We’re not children,” protested Nell, heaving herself out of the comfortable chair. “I’m sixteen! And Charlie’s ancient.”

  They followed Ely-Hathana down the hall to the guest rooms, still holding hands. She liked the feel of Charlie’s cool, rough hand in hers. They walked close to one another, bumping shoulders comfortably.

  “You may sleep here,” said the Storm Seamstress to Nell, opening the door with a key from a large ring of keys she carried at her waist. The room was small and simple, furnished with a little bed, a fireplace, a bookshelf with an eclectic assortment of things to read, and a porcelain washstand. Fresh clothes were folded on the bed, Nell noticed gratefully.

  “It is not much,” said Ely-Hathana. “But I hope you will be comfortable.”

  “I’m sure we will be,” said Nell. “Thank you.”

  “Your room is down the hall,” said Ely-Hathana to Charlie. “Sleep well,” she said to Nell.

  Parting was painful. In spite of all the long looks, hand-holding, and silly grinning, they hadn’t had a moment alone since Swarn’s dragon had swooped out of the sky and frightened the Verr mon Noorden. Nell let go of Charlie’s hand reluctantly. He gave a helpless shrug.

  “I will lock the door behind you,” said Ely-Hathana. “You will be quite safe here.”

  Nell stood alone in the center of the room while the key turned in the lock. She heard Ely-Hathana’s sweet, low voice murmuring spells outside the door, and then her footsteps and Charlie’s disappearing down the hall. She washed herself off at the washstand and left her furs heaped on the floor. She decided to sleep in the clean dress they had put on the bed, since there was nothing else to wear. It was a simple, cotton sheath, and fit her well enough, though made for someone taller. She lay down and stretched out luxuriously. How good it felt to lie in a bed, to be safe and clean and fed.

  She expected to fall asleep quickly, but her mind was too busy and would not let her rest. She was worried about Eliza, but hopeful that Swarn’s dragon had arrived in time to help her. She wondered about the dark-headed creatures she had spotted in the water as they flew over the Far Sea to Lil and the deep bellowing noise they made. This was some kind of sea mammal entirely unknown in Di Shang. She was relieved to be with Swarn, who was surely powerful enough to protect Charlie from the Thanatosi. And above all, she was preoccupied with kissing.

  Nell had been kissed before. It had been pleasant, if faintly absurd, with Julian, and then rather too sloppy and wet with Oscar, whose breath was further not reliably fresh. For some reason she had feared Jalo’s kiss even while she’d been curious about it. But in each case she had been passive, accepting or refusing the kiss of another. She had never understood what it was to want to kiss somebody until now, and the thought of it had been present every moment since Charlie had brushed her hair out of her eyes as they raced through the Irahok mountains. She laughed thinking of the clumsy kiss she’d planted on his chin while he looked up, and she felt she would not be able to wait until tomorrow to have a moment alone with him and kiss him properly. She knew it would be something entirely different from what she had experienced before, and to lie here all night, not kissing him, seemed simply unbearable. She got up at one point and tried the door, thinking to go down the hall and see if he too was still awake, but the doorknob was enchanted and she could not turn it. It was all very well to be protected from intruders; she was less pleased at being trapped.

  She went back to bed, but sleep came slowly. She was finally beginning to relax, her mind emptying and her body growing heavy, when she became aware of a soft muttering outside her door. She rolled onto her side and said, “Charlie?”

  There was the sound of the lock clicking aside and the door opened. A shadow crossed the room, swift as a bat. Before Nell could move she felt a strong hand around her throat, pinning her to the bed. A blade glinted in the moonlight that came in through the window.

  “Now, Sorceress, I will cut the Urkleis from your very chest,” hissed Gautelen.

  Chapter

  ~19~

  Eliza felt a breeze on her face, heard the swish of the waves washing against the shore. For one blissful moment, she imagined she had dozed off on the beach at Holburg. But the air was acrid here and the very ground hummed with Magic. This was not Holburg. She opened her eyes.

  Beneath a fringe of overhanging leaves, she saw the pebbly shore sloping down to the sea. The water was a dark, metallic grey, ridged with pointed waves. A huge dragon, rust red, skimmed over its surface, turning and swooping. Eliza crawled out from under the bush and found the white bones of last night’s supper, a fish she had enchanted out of the water. Every part of her hurt, but she felt refreshed in her mind, and hungry again.

  She remembered, now, how they had come here. Like an arrow shot from a giant bow, the dragon had borne her into the mountains, leaving the Mancers and the Faeries flapping uselessly behind on their smaller dragons and myrkestras. They had flown over the foothills and the land of the Giants, where battles raged and great fortresses smoldered. She had clung to the black spike on the dragon’s neck with what little strength she had left, her only thought being that if this dragon had found her, then the other dragon would surely have found Charlie and Nell, and
they would be safe, for now, from the Thanatosi.

  She took the Faery box out of her backpack and opened it to make sure she still had the two Gehemmis. There they were: the flat sliver of bone and the glass orb full of fog. The fog formed symbols, and symbols were scratched on the surface of the bone, but they were not the same symbols and she did not recognize any of them.

  The dragon coasted over the water on its huge wings and landed near her on the shore, lowering its head so that she could climb onto its neck. It swiveled its head round to look at her and she pointed the direction with her dagger.

  The Isle of the Blind Enchanter was a sickle-shaped island at the southern end of the inland sea, its white cliffs jutting high up out of the water. Covered in wildflowers and birds, it was largely uninhabited but for the dragons that nested there and the Blind Enchanter himself.

  As they neared the island, Eliza saw that the pebbled coves and ravines were crowded with small gold-green dragons. They lifted their heads and screamed as the rust-red dragon of the Cliffs of Batt soared over their island. The Yellow Mountains on the southern shore of the inland sea, so-called for the golden flowers blanketing their slopes, created a dramatic backdrop. A stone cabin stood at the highest point on the island. Swarn’s dragon landed there, swiveling its head around defensively. As Eliza leaped to the ground, the door of the cabin opened and the Blind Enchanter strode out to meet her.

  He was not what Eliza had expected. He looked like a body-builder, tall as a Mancer and twice as broad, his head a clean-shaven dome. He had a great square face with a powerful jaw, and beneath beetling black eyebrows, his eyes were white and sightless. He wore a sleeveless leather vest that was giving out at the seams and a pair of threadbare trousers. He approached her with enormous hands stretched out in welcome and sniffed the air once or twice with a long, agile nose to determine her direction.

  “We have been…expecting you…Sorceress,” he said. His voice cracked and wheezed, and it seemed to cost him a great effort to get the words out. “Welcome.”

  “Then Foss is here?” she asked, relieved. “He’s well?”

  “He is as well as a…Mancer can be…in exile,” said the Blind Enchanter. “Which is to say…he is…still alive.”

  He placed his hand over Eliza’s face, his big fingers feeling her features. His palm smelled of some kind of oil or sap.

  “You are…young,” he said, his voice giving out on the final word and collapsing into a whisper that made it sound rather sinister. He turned abruptly and led her indoors.

  The cabin was as simple on the inside as it was on the outside. There was a large hearth with some rough-hewn chairs around it at one end, and a bed at the other end. A long wood table took centre space, and there sat Ferghal, pulling the hard shells off a heap of nuts and popping them into his mouth by the handful.

  “Witchlet!” he cried, rising and spilling shells everywhere. “Though I have been told numerous times by our good host that you are more than that, he says it so, more than that, and tells me you are a Sorceress. Well, and I say, my people of Scarpatha have never been averse to a Sorceress! So if you be a pint-sized Sorceress with powers more formidable than I have seen then I congratulate you, for it is good in such worlds as these to have some power to set one apart and defend oneself against disaster. I have never been able to defend myself against disaster and yet I have a capacity for carrying on in spite of disaster that I think is likely rare…ah, but you are looking past me, you are worried about the sickly Mancer. Well, see for yourself, he is not well at all. It grieves me, for I have become quite attached to him. The blind chap is not much help, though it is generous of him to put us up and put up with us. Do you know, there are dragons all over the beaches so you must be careful. I dare not venture far from the house, for they are very fierce-looking indeed…”

  Eliza had already crossed the room to the bed. Foss lay very still, breathing shallowly. His skin was ash-grey, stretched thin over the bones of his face, his hair limp and lusterless. When she touched him he opened his eyes. Dim light glimmered out as if from a great distance, a fading red, like the last glow of an ember before it goes out. Eliza put her backpack down next to the bed.

  “I have the Gehemmis from the Realm of the Faeries,” she told him.

  Foss wetted his lips and struggled to speak.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Just rest, lah.”

  But as she drew away his hand came out from under the covers, reaching for her. She leaned down and he whispered in her ear, a faint rattle: “Good girl.”

  Her eyes were warm with tears. She squeezed his hand. “You need your rest.”

  Foss wetted his lips again and whispered something she could barely make out, but she thought he said Get the others.

  She couldn’t bear to see him this way. She patted his shoulder and turned away from him. The Blind Enchanter and Ferghal were eating nuts at the table. She sat down next to the Blind Enchanter and said in a low voice: “He’s much worse. Isn’t there anything you can do for him?”

  “No,” said the enchanter bluntly. “Such is the…nature…of the Mancer. He will…not live much…longer.”

  “You must not let him die, little witchlet,” said Ferghal urgently, leaning across the table towards her and throwing nuts into his mouth at great speed, as if he could save Foss by eating. “I sometimes fancy I can see the soul of a being, it is a sort of gift that I possess. He is a noble one and he must live. You must work some clever Magic and save him. This blind chap, he can hardly speak a word, he cannot see, what can he do? You must save him, witchlet.”

  Eliza took some nuts. Her mouth was dry and her appetite gone, but she needed to keep her strength up. She wished the Blind Enchanter would offer her a hot meal.

  “I’m going to go South,” she said to the enchanter. “I need your help, if you’ll give it. I need you to tell me how I can reach the Hanging Gardens. And…what is the Sparkling Deluder?”

  The Blind Enchanter shook his head a few times, opening and closing his mouth. His white eyes rolled about in his head. It was tremendously difficult for him to make the small speech. Sometimes his voice broke on a word like a wave against a rock, scattering. Sometimes it cracked and soared unexpectedly, and sometimes he lost all breath so that no sound came out at all, but Eliza managed to get the general gist of it.

  “There is no…song. There are no…words. What more…can I see…after what I saw…there? What can I…say…of that which is…beyond language? But I will…tell you…what I can. There are four…lakes…Sorceress…and you must…go…to each of them. The first is…the Lake of Sweet…Lies. The second…is the Lake…of Hope. The third is…the Lake…of Awful…Truths…and last of…all is the…Lake of the…Deep…Forgotten. If you go to each…lake and…learn what it…has…to show you…without…surrendering to…delusion or…despair…then you will be…taken to the…cave of the…Beginnings. There…you will know…what you are. If you are…worthy the…Vermilion Bird…will take you across…the Dreaming Wasteland. You…cannot cross it…alone. Those that returned…mad…never saw the…Hanging Gardens…but lost themselves…in the Dreaming Wasteland. Only…the Vermilion Bird…can take you to…the Hanging Gardens.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you…give yourself up. What else can you…do? If you go…you go with faith…and you surrender yourself…to what will be. Your will is…nothing.”

  “But you saw the Sparkling Deluder? What kind of being is he…or she?”

  “All song and…sight I…left there,” said the Enchanter. “There is no…more for me to…see…or sing. You are…young. You should not…go.”

  “I have to,” said Eliza.

  “She has to!” echoed Ferghal. “To help the poor dying Mancer!”

  “Wait,” said the Enchanter. He got up and left, striding out into the bright afternoon. His physical vigor seemed such a surprise, compared to his weak and failing voice.