Bone, Fog, Ash & Star

by Catherine Egan

  Eliza looked at Ferghal, who was still shoveling nuts into his mouth. She took a few more.

  “Thank you for bringing Foss here,” she said.

  “’Twas a great adventure!” Ferghal enthused. “We were given donkeys by those peculiar people in black. They have no eyelids, had you noticed? Most unsettling, when you can see nothing but the eyes, and the eyes have no lids. Your Mancer was weak, but we went on donkeys all along the great black cliffs, ah, for days! Through the mountains we travelled, hunting and foraging for our food. We came to the sea and I built a raft with my own hands! Thought I had seen all there was to see of the world, and now here is another world. Terrible creatures live in the mountains, nasty things with black wings, but they seemed afeared of the Mancer and left us be. I fear for him, little witchlet, for he gets weaker by the day. We have not had a conversation of any kind since we reached the sea, and while this blind chap is a decent sort, it grates the ear to hear him talk.”

  Ferghal continued to relate the adventures they’d had on their journey for some time, until the Blind Enchanter returned with four stones in his large palm.

  “This is the…most I can do…for you,” he rasped. “I have…enchanted…the stones. Throw one…in each lake…to clear the…image and…pass on. It will…speed your journey.”

  “Thank you,” said Eliza. She took the stones and put them in her pockets. “I’d hoped I could rest here tonight, but I dinnay think there’s time. I should go right away, lah.”

  “Yes indeed, witchlet. Go and find a cure for our friend here,” Ferghal urged her.

  Eliza longed to stay the night but she was terrified that if she did, Foss would be dead when she woke up. And so she said goodbye, returning to Foss’s bedside to kiss his cold cheek. This time he did not open his eyes, but he found her hand with his and clasped it with a weak pressure.

  She left her camel hair backpack containing the two Gehemmis in the care of Ferghal and the Blind Enchanter and told them to hide it, reckoning it was as safe with them as with her, if not safer. Swarn’s dragon carried her over the strip of grey sea between the island and the shore, and as dusk fell it flew into the Yellow Mountains, following a stream of ravens that cried out in the dark. The Hanging Gardens of the Sparkling Deluder twinkled on the southern horizon. They seemed just as far as they had always seemed, the glimmer of an unreachable world. Eliza’s heart thudded in her chest as she imagined herself returning changed, unable to speak or see, perhaps, or unrecognizable as her former self. But there could be no turning back now. What kind of life would be left to her if she lost both Foss and Charlie? What would be the point, then, of remaining Eliza? They spent the night in the mountains and carried on before first light.

  The ravens landed at last on the shore of the first lake, and the dragon a little further back. Eliza had seen these lakes on rough maps of Tian Xia, though they were named only in the Songs of the Wayfaring Rhapsodist. This first lake, the Lake of Sweet Lies as he called it, was the largest, almost like a small sea. The Yellow Mountains surrounded it, soaring high and gold into the brightening sky, the first light of dawn glimmering to the east. Birds sang and bees buzzed and dipped among yellow, white, and purple wildflowers. A gentle breeze was blowing. The ground was wet with dew that soaked Eliza’s shoes. A myriad of small creeks ran down from the mountaintops and fed into the lake, and Eliza had to leap over a number of these to get close to the water. The dragon knew better than to get too close. It had landed a fair distance from the lake, and the next time Eliza looked over her shoulder she saw it had taken to the sky again, a dark shadow against the mountains. Her heart sank. It was leaving her here.

  A short distance down the shore she saw two figures walking hand in hand. Their heads were close together and they were talking softly. There was something familiar about them. She reached into her pocket and took one of the Blind Enchanter’s stones in her hand. The pair did not seem dangerous, however, and she was loath to disturb them, for they seemed so intimate. So she stayed still as they drew closer, and gradually she could make out their faces. Her heart began to beat a little faster.

  There was herself, smiling and soft-faced, walking hand in hand with Charlie. She knew without asking that the danger was gone, that he knew everything and felt as she did. The Eliza holding hands with Charlie looked up at the Eliza surrounded by ravens and laughed kindly. “You didnay need to be so afraid,” the other Eliza said. “All you had to do was tell him, aye.”

  Charlie looked up at her too, tearing his eyes away from the other Eliza.

  “It’s funny to think that all that time we were thinking the same thing, lah, but too afraid to say so,” he said. The Eliza holding his hand laid her head on his shoulder.

  “You could stay with us if you wanted to,” said Charlie. “We owe her that, nay?” he said to the other Eliza, who murmured something into his neck.

  Eliza felt her heart harden as she watched them. “But you are sweet lies,” she said in a clipped little voice. She tightened her fist around the stone in her hand.

  “What would you prefer?” asked the other Eliza. “Bitter truth? Life is too short.”

  “Reality is all in our perception of it, aye,” said Charlie. “Who are you to say what is real and what isnay? How can you judge? Look.”

  He leaned to kiss the other Eliza, who tilted her head up to meet his lips, her mouth soft, her body bending into his. Eliza could not watch. She turned away from this happier self and hurled the stone the Blind Enchanter had given her, into the clear water of the lake. Where it splashed, a slender boat emerged.

  “Are you leaving?” she heard Charlie’s voice behind her. She felt his hand in hers. “If you go,” he said, “I’ll never see you again.”

  She could not see through her tears. She splashed through the water to the boat and climbed in. The boat carried her across the lake as the sun rose high into the sky, leaving her beloved Charlie and that other, happy Eliza hand in hand on the shore.

  ~~~

  The lake narrowed, and the leafy trees on either side of it bent over the water, creating a sort of tunnel. Then the passageway widened out again into another lake. The water here was clear and still, reflecting the Yellow Mountains and the verdant shore, shimmering in the sudden summer heat. A breeze disturbed the surface of the water, breaking the mountains into streams of gold light, and when the lake stilled again Eliza saw something altogether different reflected there. Now she saw her mother walking freely along the path that led from their old house to Holburg town. She could see her father’s garden flourishing, and the little house that had been home once. She could almost hear the buzz of the bees. She leaned over the edge of the boat and another breeze smoothed the image away. She saw Charlie and Nell skipping rocks and she heard their laughter echoing over the water. Nell’s voice said clearly: “I passed the test, aye, so I’ll be starting at Austermon in the fall. You two will have to visit.” She leaned further, then caught herself and sat up suddenly. Foss was in the boat with her, his back straight, his eyes white fire.

  “You’re nay real,” she said, her voice catching.

  “A strange notion,” he smiled, kindly. “Of course, I am dying on the Isle of the Blind Enchanter, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that here I am not real.”

  The lake widened into a blue sea, and the sky overhead was blue as well. She looked up at it gratefully. How she missed the Di Shang sky when she was away from it! The boat bobbed on the waves, and Holburg lay green and beckoning on the water. Her heart leapt.

  “If it’s real in some way, can we go to Holburg?” she asked, plying the oars.

  Foss glanced over his shoulder at the island. “I don’t think you can go there,” he said. “This is hope, not the fulfillment of hope.”

  “I dinnay see the point of this,” she said wearily, letting go of the oars. “I want my friends to be safe and happy, aye. I want my mother to be well, aye. I want you to be well, aye. I wish I could go back to Holburg, aye. I know all that. Why do I h
ave to row along a lake and see visions of it?”

  Foss looked at the island again. “Why only wish you could go back? Surely you can go back whenever you like.”

  “But not to live. Lah, I spose I could live there, but it’s different now. My father isnay there. Nell isnay there.”

  “So the people, not the place, are most important to you. And you have them in your life even without the island.”

  Eliza laughed. “You must be real after all,” she said. “That’s some very Foss-like logic. Lah, all right then, I wish for that time in my life when the people I loved were together in the place I loved.”

  “Before you knew you were a Sorceress,” said Foss.

  “Yes.”

  “And back then, what did you hope for?”

  “I dinnay know. I was twelve. I wanted to stay in Holburg forever. Nell was the one plotting all the things we’d do when we grew up, aye, all the places we’d go. I didnay want anything to change.”

  “But this is not the lake of nostalgia, or the lake of longing, or even the lake of wishes. This is the lake of hope. How can you hope for that life? You are not a child anymore.”

  She clenched her fist around a second stone. “I didnay pick the vision,” she said.

  “But it is your task to understand it, is it not?” said Foss.

  “Or I could just use this.” She took the stone from her pocket.

  “Certainly,” he agreed mildly. “But would you be worthy, then, of the journey to follow?”

  She gazed at the island across the water, the lookout tree clearly visible on the southern cliffs.

  “Holburg is stillness,” she said at last. “And safety. All my life I’d travelled with no purpose. We were fleeing and hiding, but I never knew why. And then we were home, and we were safe. At least, that’s how it felt, aye.” She looked straight into his brilliant eyes. “Until the Mancers came.”

  “That is what you hope for? To feel safe again?”

  “For my world to have limits again. To be finished with all this. I hope for an end point, a destination, a place to belong. To feel like I’ve arrived and I can stay.”

  “The life of a Sorceress is perpetual struggle,” said Foss. “With forces both external and internal.”

  “I know,” she said. When she looked at the water it raced with images of those she loved. She stood up in the boat and took one last look at Foss, strong and powerful, as she might never see him again. Then she hurled the stone at the island. It broke apart and she was alone in the boat, which carried her swiftly across the length of the lake and down another narrow corridor of water.

  This next lake was the smallest yet. Brilliant leaves fell from the trees along the shore and swirled in the chilly wind. She did not look at the water. She held the third stone firmly in her hand and stared straight up.

  The sky over her was a glass dome. Through it she saw Kyreth, like a giant looking down on her, his eyes great pools of white fire. Malferio’s pale face sneered behind him. They were looking at her, she understood instantly, through the Vindensphere.

  “I wondered if we would meet here.” Kyreth’s voice resonated through the trees and the shore and made ripples on the lake. “It appears that I am to be the teller of truths you would rather not hear. Fitting.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Malferio looked confused.

  “Does he know what you’re planning to do?” Eliza demanded, and Malferio looked down at her, shocked.

  “Can she hear us?”

  “He knows,” said Kyreth. “I could not do it without his consent. Immortality is not easily stolen.”

  “We’re getting rid of Sorceresses,” said Malferio. “It’s our campaign. A noble cause to die for.”

  Eliza noticed how glassy his eyes were, his cheeks slack. She felt sick.

  “Tell me the awful truth, then,” she said. “I want to get out of here.”

  “To begin with,” said Kyreth, “you are doing very well. You have two of the Gehemmis already. This third will be the most difficult, I think.”

  “What do the Gehemmis do?”

  Kyreth smiled again. “I am not an Oracle. I am not here for you to ask questions of. I am here to tell you the truth, not necessarily what you want to hear, but what you need to know.”

  “Right,” she said flatly. Malferio had retreated, bored. “The awful truth.”

  “Let us begin with the Book of Barriers,” said Kyreth. “You took it to Nia in exchange for your father’s life. It didn’t work out the way you had expected, in the end, but you knew that the Book of Barriers might enable her to free herself, and that, free, she would be a force of massive destruction. Did you ever wonder if what you did was right? If your father’s life was worth many lives?”

  “Oh,” said Eliza. “We’re going to go over my mistakes? That’s nay so bad. No, I didnay give it much thought. I couldnay know what would happen if Nia had the book, I just knew I would do anything to help my da. But obviously, it was stupid of me.”

  “Stupidity is far from the point,” said Kyreth. “Your father’s life was all that mattered to you. The consequences, the price that others might have to pay as a result of your actions, you did not deem worthy of consideration.”

  “I thought he was going to die,” said Eliza. “I’m nay making excuses…I didnay know what else to do.”

  “Indeed,” said Kyreth. “What of the Cra?”

  “The Cra?”

  “They have a name for you, you know. An-murth. It means blade of death.”

  Eliza said nothing.

  “Abimbola Broom. You considered the merciful option, I am sure. Handing him over to the Sorma. But instead you punished him, and his family with him.”

  Eliza clenched her jaw. “Dinnay ask me to feel sorry for him.”

  “I am not asking you to. Merely pointing out that you don’t. Do you think Jalo will go unpunished for your theft of the Gehemmis? He helped you.”

  “If I’m in an impossible situation, that’s your fault,” she replied.

  “Amarantha is back in the worlds. Witches will have a name for you too, when word spreads about the forest. Will you stop at nothing?”

  She lifted her chin. “Nothing,” she said.

  “You would kill me without hesitation if it would save your friend, I don’t doubt.”

  “It wouldnay take that much.”

  “Ah! There is my girl. Do you think you can claim to be good, Eliza?”

  “I try to be,” she said. “Which is more than can be said for some.”

  “No points for effort!” came Malferio’s voice. “How much longer is this going to take?”

  “What is most important to you?” asked Kyreth. “To know love, to be good, or to do good?”

  “To know love,” she answered immediately. “But that’s not to say I dinnay care about being a good person. I try, lah. I do. You should come down here and see what the lake tells you. I spec you’d be surprised. Or praps you wouldnay be.”

  “Rea would have said that pure intent is the most important thing,” said Kyreth. “To be good. She and I differed there. I took the longer view. Our actions are all that touch the world, all that will be remembered when we are gone. To do good has been my aim, and whatever I had to be, myself, to achieve those aims, I accepted. But when history judges your actions, Eliza, when your story is written into the Chronicles of the Sorceress, what will it say? There will be a list of careless, selfish acts. You will go down in history as a lying, murdering thief who cared only for her friends and family and did nothing for the worlds.”

  “Praps,” said Eliza. She shook with the echoes of the screaming trees, the bones of the Cra breaking, their black blood, the Kwellrahg stumbling in the sand, Abimbola Broom on his knees before her. Nia saying Eliza, don’t do this to me. “Praps.”

  “But perhaps all of that will be overshadowed, forgotten,” said Kyreth. “When you bring me the Gehemmis.”

  She hurled the stone at the sky, shattering it. The world rained
down in pointed shards and the current carried her fast to the next lake, which was half-frozen. The sky was hidden by a dark reddish cloud covering. The boat moved for a while among shifting plates of ice and eventually got stuck. There was somebody waiting among the evergreens on the snowy shore. Eliza got out of the boat and made her way carefully over the ice, across the lake. She knew who was waiting long before she was close enough to really see her. She knew because the Urkleis in her chest had begun to throb.

  “Hello, Smidgen,” said Nia when she reached the shore. “The Lake of the Deep Forgotten! Fancy seeing you here.”

  Chapter

  ~20~

  Kyreth rose, the Vindensphere in pieces at his feet.

  “That was strange,” said Malferio, who had scuttled back towards the wall when it shattered. “How did she do that?”

  “It is almost finished,” said Kyreth. His hands were trembling and the brilliance of his eyes turned the room almost white. “I must go.”

  “Go?” shrieked Malferio. He snatched up the empty pipe and waved it at Kyreth. “Go where? You can’t leave me! I need my dose. I can feel this scratching behind my eyes and the shadows are turning nasty again.”

  Kyreth looked at Malferio almost as if he was looking through him.

  “You will be taken care of, too, Malferio. That is one of my errands. I have chosen a suitable killer for you.”

  “Don’t talk about it!” Malferio screamed, panicking. “Give me my dose!”

  “Soon we will have the four Gehemmis and the Shang Sorceress here in the Citadel,” said Kyreth. “If she succeeds…she must succeed.”

  “You’re not listening to me!” Malferio hurled the pipe at Kyreth. Kyreth knocked it aside with a casual wave of the hand.

  “It is a pity about the Vindensphere,” he murmured. “I had hoped to take it with me. Never mind.”

  “Take it where?” Malferio had curled up on the bed and was looking at Kyreth like a miserable dog.

  “To Tian Xia,” said Kyreth.

  The floor opened up into stairs and Kyreth swept down them.