Bone, Fog, Ash & Star

by Catherine Egan

  “You are not the Shang Sorceress,” she said.

  “No,” said Nell coldly.

  “I do not like this place,” muttered Ferghal. “Hello! My friend awakes!”

  Foss was sitting up slowly, painfully, a faint glimmer returning to his dark eyes.

  “Kyreth!” he called out, his voice still weak.

  The Emmisariae were standing directly behind Kyreth and started when Foss spoke.

  “It is Foss!” Finnis cried out joyfully; then he fell to frightened silence.

  “You are leading the Mancers astray, Kyreth,” said Foss. He tottered to his feet.

  From somewhere in his flowing robes, Kyreth drew a long, gleaming sword.

  “See what becomes of a traitor!” he called out to the assembled Mancers.

  “Will you stand by and watch murder?” cried Ferghal, outraged, leaping to his feet. “Defend your fellow from this monster!”

  The Mancers looked at one another fearfully. Kyreth strode towards Foss, sword aloft. Ferghal snatched up the dagger Gautelen had dropped.

  Before they reached each other, the earth moved, as if the Citadel was perched atop the back of a sleeping beast that was now stirring. The great walls and towers trembled. For a moment they all froze, waiting in the strange hush that fell for what would happen next.

  Ravens poured out of the sky. Ravens burst from the ground and the white walls. The world was a mass of them, seething. They covered the grass, they covered the walls, they filled the trees. They formed a doorway against one of the walls, and through it stepped Eliza.

  Her eyes were black pools, her hair dark cords that snaked around her shoulders. Light trembled from her fingers.

  Kyreth span towards her, sword raised, and Ferghal lunged at him, driving Malferio’s enchanted dagger into his back.

  The Citadel shook again. Kyreth staggered. Ferghal was backing away from him, eyes wide, mouth working soundlessly. The walls groaned. The earth gave a jolt and they all staggered. Great cracks began to run across the walls and the ground.

  Kyreth stumbled towards Eliza, the light draining from his eyes, his bright gold skin fading rapidly to white and then to grey. She stood still as he grabbed her by the shoulders, towering over her.

  “Eliza,” he whispered. “The greatness of the Mancers depends on Di Shang. You must not…you must not…” His voice faded. He fell to his knees.

  “There are many kinds of greatness,” said Eliza.

  He looked up at her, unseeing, his eyes black caverns, and then toppled sideways, dead. The walls and towers tumbled with him. The Inner Sanctum cracked and fell. The Mancers and the humans covered their heads and ducked among the trees for shelter from the falling stone. When the sound had abated and the dust cleared, they began cautiously to emerge. The Citadel lay ruined.

  Ferghal helped Foss climb onto the rubble of the Inner Sanctum, where he addressed the Mancers.

  “I would like to call an emergency council,” he said weakly. “With all Mancers in attendance.”

  ~~~

  Once Eliza had explained her side of the recent events, she left the Mancers to their council outside the ruined Inner Sanctum. Foss was getting stronger every moment that he stood among his fellows, she was glad to see. They had all been stunned by the revelation that their Magic had for eons connected the worlds rather than pulled them apart, and a great many of the Mancers were still insisting that this was impossible. Most of them, however, saw the truth of it as soon as they heard it. Eliza hoped that they would agree to go to Tian Xia peacefully, but had made it clear that any who refused would have to contend with her. They all looked at her fearfully now; Obrad in particular avoided her gaze. She had other things on her mind for now.

  With some trepidation, she joined her friends sitting under the trees. The ravens were mostly gone, just a few of them here and there pecking at the dust. To her relief, they looked at her as if she was unchanged. As if she was still Eliza.

  “Nia’s really dead?” asked Nell.

  Eliza nodded.

  “I’m sorry about…before,” said Nell. “On the Isle of the Blind Enchanter. It’s just, lah, when you said you were going to her for help…”

  “It’s all right,” Eliza said quickly. “I understand.”

  “And look at you now,” said Charlie. “The power of three Sorceresses! How does that feel?”

  There were no words for it. What could she say? The power she felt trembling within her and around her was terrifying. She was connected to everything, or so it seemed, but not in a nourishing way. She could pull the sky down with her fist, stop time. It felt destructive, too large and too dangerous for this quiet, gentle world. She felt as if she had been swallowed by Magic and was looking out of it from a great distance at everything that had once been familiar. Her friends.

  Thankfully, when she didn’t answer, Charlie kept on talking. “So, separating the worlds. I used to be opposed to the idea, but being human now, I’ve had a change of heart, aye. It’s awful how vulnerable humans are. It might be the right thing to do after all. I mean, if you think it is, then I’m all for it.”

  “I dinnay know if it’s the right thing to do or nay,” said Eliza. “That’s too big a question for me. But it’s what would have happened naturally if the Mancers hadnay been stopping it. It’s also the only way to keep the Thanatosi away from you for good, aye. I’m guessing they’re on their way to Di Shang right now.”

  Charlie grinned, a little nervously. “How many people can say that their best friend sundered two worlds on their behalf?”

  “And all that needs to happen is the Mancers need to leave,” said Nell. “That means you’ll be the only being with any power left in Di Shang!”

  There was a short pause. The truth hit Nell and Charlie at the same moment.

  “No!” said Nell.

  “Eliza!” said Charlie.

  She looked down at her hands. Light still flickered around her fingertips. It was unsettling.

  “It’s the only way, lah,” she said. She couldn’t look at them.

  “But…how will we see each other?” cried Nell.

  Eliza stood up. Her own grief felt dangerous to her, tinged as it was with this terrible and unfamiliar power.

  “We willnay,” she said shortly. “But it’s the only way. I’m going to see how Gautelen’s doing.”

  The young Storm Seamstress sat huddled by herself under an oak tree, her dark face streaked with tears. She looked up when she heard Eliza approaching.

  “I don’t understand,” she said dully. “I thought you were her enemy. Now it seems you were her friend.”

  “A little of both,” said Eliza, crouching down next to her.

  “And Malferio…she hated him. I thought she’d be…grateful.”

  “It’s complicated,” said Eliza. “It always is.”

  “Is she dead?”

  Eliza nodded and Gautelen buried her face in her hands. Eliza put a hand on her shoulder.

  “We’ll take you back to Tian Xia,” she said. “Your parents will be worried.”

  She sat with the weeping girl until Nell and Charlie came and joined her. Nell’s eyes were red and puffy.

  “They’ve all agreed,” said Charlie. “The Mancers, I mean. They’re going back to Tian Xia. They need to go through the ruins for books and enchanted objects…that’ll take a while I spec. And they’ve just voted Foss Supreme Mancer.”

  “What?” Eliza leaped to her feet.

  “At first they all assumed it would go to Ka. But then he said he wasnay worthy because he’d known Kyreth was wrong and suspected him of killing Aysu but hadnay done anything. He said the only one who had been willing to do the right thing was Foss and he should be Supreme Mancer. I cannay say everyone looked happy about it, but they agreed.”

  “There must be some way you can stay here,” Nell burst out, almost before Charlie had finished.

  “I dinnay think there is,” said Eliza. “And I’ve done a lot of damage in Tian Xia. Amaran
tha is still on the loose. Now I have all this power, praps it’s time to do…something good. Something useful.”

  “You can be good and useful in Di Shang!” cried Nell.

  “And be the last thing linking the two worlds, aye,” said Eliza. “If anything crossed over from Tian Xia, it would be my fault. Besides, I spec the Sparkling Deluder would be as good as its word, or as bad as its word, and take me back like it threatened to. I know what I have to do and it’s nay easy. Dinnay make it harder.”

  They were all silent for a while, finding it difficult to look at one another. At last Nell said, “By the way…it’s nay the best timing, praps, but do you spose we could borrow a dragon from the Mancers?”

  Eliza and Charlie gaped at her.

  “What for?” asked Eliza.

  Nell shifted uncomfortably. “My test is tomorrow.”

  ~~~

  The following weeks passed in a blur. Shortly after Nell left for Austermon on Ka’s dragon, the Thanatosi appeared. For the first time, Eliza performed the Magic that would have been her duty as the Shang Sorceress, the Magic her ancestors had performed. She banished them, forcing them with Magic to return to the Crossing and to Tian Xia, never to come again to Di Shang. Of course, as Foss had said, there were always more, like the Cra. Until the worlds were severed, they would keep coming.

  For several exhausting days in the desert, Eliza returned her mother’s memories to her. Nia had been right that the power was deeply entwined with memory and other aspects of self. Returning Rea’s memories and thoughts and fears and strengths without returning any power to her required a very strenuous, meticulous kind of Magic. She could not return it all in the precise form it had been when it was taken. Rea’s old self was returned to her fragmented and altered, not quite what it had been, but nevertheless the change in her was remarkable. She could walk unaided at last, and some of the pride and certainty Eliza had seen at the Lake of the Deep Forgotten returned to her.

  In the ruined Citadel, she returned the knowledge Nia had drained from the Mancer Library. The many treasures of the Mancers as well as the thousands of books were piled around the dark wood that still stood at what had been the northeast corner of the grounds.

  They repaired the Vindensphere and searched out the few Tian Xia worlders remaining in Di Shang. This included, among others, a fair number of the Cra, several womi, one very shy wizard who had, for over a hundred years, disguised himself as a snow-covered rock in the Karbek mountains, three witches, one of whom was the president of a major corporation and was not at all pleased at being forced to abandon all her holdings, and a community of trolls living underground in Huir-Kosta. Besides banishing all of these, Eliza had, every few days, to contend with new hordes of the Thanatosi. When Charlie was not with her, he had to remain within a barrier.

  And yet in all these endeavours she felt she was using but the surface of a Magic that went deeper than she dared yet to plumb. She was weary, but she knew there lay within her a vast, dark well of power, and when she was quiet and alone, she felt something from its depths stir and whisper unintelligibly.

  Ferghal was granted use of a dragon to return to Scarpatha. Without the Mancers propping up the Republic, he said, he was interested to see how the politics of Di Shang would shift, and he wanted to stand with the Scarpathians. Foss wrote him a letter presenting him to the Prime Minister of Scarpatha, currently in prison, and allowed him to take three treasures from the Citadel. He chose a goblet of Faery Gold, for, as he said, he was short on cash and it was no doubt worth a fortune, a crystal ring that turned dark when danger approached, (“There is nothing worse, by all that’s mighty, than having danger sneak up on you unawares!”) and Foss’s portrait, which they managed to retrieve unharmed from the rubble of the Portrait Galleries. He and Foss said long and emotional farewells, but the other Mancers seemed very relieved to have him gone and Eliza heard a number of them commenting on how nice and quiet it had become.

  Eliza thought once or twice that she would like to see Holburg again before leaving, but in all the activity there was no time, and the day she had to say her farewells crept up on her faster than she had expected. Perhaps it was better that way, she told herself.

  ~~~

  In her tent in the desert, she looked over her few possessions, wondering what to pack. Here was the chess set her father had carved for her, and the little amber dropper Uri mon Lil had sent for her birthday. A good dream. The Legends of the Ancients – its author had not been so far from the truth after all, she thought. Foss was now eager to work on a commentary to the text. She unfolded a piece of paper and saw it was Charlie’s map of the island he had named Eliza. She would never see that island now. Seventeen waterfalls, he had said.

  Her father entered the tent and sat down with her. When she had told him what had to be done, pain had closed his face, but he had not said one word to dissuade her. Unlike her friends, he was used to accepting the decision of a Sorceress. He knew, more than she did even, what it meant, and the sacrifices that were required. Now he said nothing, but waited for her to speak.

  “I dinnay feel like myself,” she said. “With all this power, am I still even Eliza?”

  He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her face towards his, looking deep into her eyes. She looked back. If I cry now, she thought, I won’t stop. And she pushed her sorrow deep down again, where the Magic was waiting.

  “You’re Eliza,” he said firmly, releasing her. He looked around the tent. “What are you taking with you?”

  “Nothing,” she decided.

  He followed her out of the tent. There on the hot sand, she found herself inescapably in the moment she had been dreading above all others.

  They stood before her. Her mother, still half a stranger to her. Her beautiful Charlie, her beloved Nell, holding hands. Nell was crying and Charlie had a puzzled look on his face, as if he didn’t understand what was happening. And her father. It was impossible.

  “I cannay say goodbye,” she told them. “I’m sorry, but I just cannay.”

  Her father’s face crumpled and he reached for her. She fell into his embrace, breathing in for a brief moment the familiar smell of him, then pulled away. She couldn’t speak and she only hoped that they would understand. You will cut out your own heart.

  She turned away from them and became a single raven, flying north, straight as an arrow over the desert.

  ~~~

  The Mancers were waiting for her.

  “Where will you go?” she asked Foss.

  “We will build another Citadel in the Yellow Mountains,” said Foss. “And we will turn our power to the accumulation of knowledge and the recording of history, our true strengths. But what about you, Eliza Tok?”

  “I dinnay know.”

  “You are welcome with us, of course. Whatever the relationship between the Sorceress and the Mancers is to be in the future, you and I will forge it together. There will be no Shang Sorceress henceforth. You will be the only Xia Sorceress. Nia’s heir, ironically, and also the most powerful Sorceress ever to have lived.”

  “I wish I knew what I should do with all this power.”

  “I hoped you might help us build the new Citadel. But you have just cause to be wary of the Mancers.”

  “So do you,” said Eliza, smiling. “Helping with the new Citadel will give me something to do to start out, aye. Plus it’s a good way of making sure I know what’s in all the secret rooms and towers! Then I’ll go see my grandmother. Praps she’ll be able to help me figure out what to do next.”

  Foss nodded gravely and turned to the assembled Mancers.

  “It is time.”

  Eliza went first into the dark wood. It made way for her and she came quickly to the silver shore. Hundreds of boats emerged from the mist. The Boatman bowed in wordless greeting to her. The Mancers set about loading the boats with their treasures and books. Eliza, Foss, and the Emmisariae boarded one boat.

  Di Shang slipped away.


  The Crossing seemed briefer than in the past. Long before Eliza expected it, the mist parted and the countless boats made their way across the green water to the great black cliffs. Steps opened up before them.

  “My time is done, Sorceress,” said the Boatman, with a respectful bow. When she looked back, she saw that the thick white mist at the centre of the lake was gone. It was only a lake now. There was no way back.

  “Come,” said Foss.

  He held out a big golden hand and Eliza took it. Together they climbed the steps into Tian Xia.

  Epilogue

  Many Years Later

  Nell makes her way up the windswept hill, holding her coat tight around her. Seabirds call out to each other from the rocky shore behind, skimming the water and landing on ice floes. She bends down and picks a tiny purple sprig. Ellis Mosapa, native to these islands off the northern coast of Scarpatha. While most would consider it a barren place, Nell will miss it. The islands are bleak and icy, but the sea here throngs with life. Now winter is setting in, and they cannot stay. Her assistants all left a few weeks ago, and the few islanders remaining will soon take the boat for the mainland and pass the winter there.

  She tucks the sprig into the buttonhole of her coat and shivers as an icy gust sweeps over her again. The research centre stands at the top of the hill, sturdy and squat against the wind. She can see Charlie readying the little plane that is his pride and joy. The Gryphon is painted in bold black letters across its side. She smiles and climbs faster.

  “Boo!”

  She shrieks, nearly jumping out of her skin. The two little girls who had been hiding behind a rock are laughing uproariously now.

  “Frightened you!” shouts one, a skinny, swarthy little thing with corkscrew curls, no more than ten years old, and for half a second Nell’s heart swells hugely in her chest. She shakes her head and laughs at the girls.

  “You’d better get on home,” she says to them in fluent Scarpathian. “The wind is rising. I’ll see you again in the spring!”

  “Where will you go?” asks the little girl who reminded her so of Eliza.