Shade and Sorceress

by Catherine Egan

  He turned to the blank Scrolls on the wall behind him and said in the Language of First Days, “Was the spell worked here to rob her of her power?”

  Characters wrote themselves swiftly down one of the Scrolls: All she was born with she possesses still.

  “Was she born with power?” Kyreth asked dryly.

  The Scroll flickered and changed. She is the Shang Sorceress, Last in the Line.

  Last. Kyreth was not frequently afraid but a cold fear now uncoiled in his chest.

  “She is the last?” he repeated slowly.

  Three Scrolls showed the same thing: She is the last.

  What could that mean but her death too soon? But the future was yet unmade and prophecies were uncertain at best. He would accept this as a warning.

  “Can she be taught?” he asked.

  She can learn, was the reply.

  “Is she in danger?”

  Danger is her destiny, said one Scroll. She will know it as a sister, said another.

  “Our enemy, the intruder, does it still walk among us?”

  All the Scrolls together wrote, It walks, it talks, seen but unknown.

  Kyreth sat back in his chair. As long as she wore the barrier star the girl was safe, but he was uneasy. Somehow that fiend in the Arctic had worked Magic here, in his own Citadel, and he did not know what. Even imprisoned by the powerful barriers of the Mancers she was strong and she was dangerous. He knew she would not rest until she had taken vengeance on them all.

  ~

  As soon as Kyreth dismissed her, Eliza ran out into the grounds. She found Charlie picking pears in the orchard. Approaching him, she felt suddenly shy. What if he went back to school and complained to all his friends about how this dull girl had followed him around during the summer? But when he saw her he broke into a big grin and she relaxed, smiling back. Who else was there for him to hang around with, anyway, she thought. He tossed her a pear and she caught it and took a bite. It was perfectly ripe and sweet.

  “Where’ve you been all day?” asked Charlie.

  “Having lessons. Magic lessons.” She felt foolish saying it. Charlie raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  “Lah, what do you think all that mess we heard yesterday meant?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Who knows!” said Charlie, aiming carefully and then pelting the core of his pear up among the tree branches. Three large scarlet birds took off from the tree, cawing in outraged voices.

  “Dinnay do that!” cried Eliza. Charlie looked at her, perplexed. “You should nay throw things at birds,” she finished feebly.

  Charlie seemed to take this in. “What do you care?” he said finally, not in a nasty way, but as if he was genuinely curious.

  “It just...it scares ‘em,” said Eliza.

  “Oh.” Charlie frowned but didn’t argue. Then he gestured at her pendant. “Lah, you have to wear that everyplace? For protection or something?”

  Eliza nodded. “Do you think...the Xia Sorceress must be after me, nay? Though they nary call her that here...I dinnay know what I’m supposed to call her.”

  Charlie laughed. “It makes her sound like an equal to the Shang Sorceress, nay? They dinnay like to think there’s any connection, I spec.”

  Eliza remembered the other girl she’d seen, or rather felt, when Kyreth was reading to her, that sense that a part of her was running away. “Is there a connection?” she asked.

  Charlie shrugged again. “I dinnay know – there are nay any other Sorceresses, are there?”

  “Are there nay? I dinnay know anything about it. I’d only ever heard of the Xia Sorceress. I’d nary heard of any Shang Sorceress before this.”

  “Mancers like their secrets, my ma says,” said Charlie, a little impatiently. “I spec you and your kind are one of those secrets. Lah, d’ye want to have a contest?”

  Eliza sighed and dropped the subject.

  “What kind of a contest?”

  “A tree-climbing contest, aye. Nay with these trees – with the big ones by the lake. See who can get to the top faster. But we have to pick trees of more or less equal difficulty.”

  Eliza accepted instantly, knowing she would win. She might not be able to do Magic but if there was one thing she was really good at it was climbing trees.

  ~

  Eliza’s lesson with Foss the following morning was farcical. She could not move objects, large or small, with Magic. She could not tell which objects were enchanted and which were not. She could not even smell the difference between powdered dragon’s blood and ground chili pepper. Though Foss begged her not to be discouraged, he was becoming increasingly and obviously so. Eliza felt quite sorry for him and tried her best to follow his instructions, but to no avail. Her mother had sat in this very chair, perhaps, floating pencils with ease, she thought to herself. Kyreth and Foss had known her better than Eliza ever would. Eliza was grateful, at least, to know the truth and to have this glimpse into her mother’s life. But the Mancers had to realize she was not a Sorceress, and she resolved to tell Kyreth again that afternoon that she wanted to go home. This time she would be firm about it.

  But when Missus Ash took her to Kyreth’s study after lunch, she forgot the little speech she had prepared. She would not need it after all, it seemed. Rising from the chair by the desk and turning to face her with a wobbly smile was her father.

  ~ Chapter 5 ~

  Eliza hurled herself into his arms. He held her tight, stroking her hair, and she pressed her face against the rough fabric of his jacket, breathing in the familiar smell of him and struggling to swallow the sob that rose up through her chest like a giant bubble. Once she thought she had control of herself, she drew back, but he held tight to her hands as if he was afraid she would disappear again if he let go of her.

  “I’m going home!” she cried, but she saw in his face and in Kyreth’s that she was wrong. Whatever he was here for, it was not to take her home. She could see he was struggling for the words to tell her so.

  “Why can I nay leave?” she asked, frantic, angry. She looked at Kyreth. “You’ve all seen that I cannay do magic! What good is it, my being here?”

  “Are you unhappy here?” asked the Supreme Mancer in a low voice, puzzled. “Have we not made you comfortable and welcome?”

  “I’m nay a Sorceress!” Eliza half-shouted at him. “Is it nay obvious? I want to go home, to be with my da! I have to go to school.”

  Kyreth rose suddenly, frightening her into silence.

  “I do not wish you sorrow, but for you to leave this place is out of the question. You and your father may spend this afternoon together. You are excused from our afternoon session.”

  He gave Rom a long look then, and Eliza wondered what they had been talking about before she arrived. But it didn’t matter. He was here now and she was awash in relief and gratitude and anger and love – a great, confused mass of emotion. She couldn’t really believe that he would leave without her. They went out into the grounds together, hand in hand.

  “Eliza, I am sorry,” her father said slowly, with effort. He spoke to her in the Sorma dialect she had grown up with, a vowelly, melodic language that she thought of as theirs alone, since she had not yet met anyone else who spoke it. “I should have told you. It was...I was wrong to think you were better off not knowing.”

  “Aye, you were,” said Eliza, answering him in archipelegan Kallanese. The words came out hard and clipped even as she clung to his hand. “You should’ve told me.”

  “It’s difficult to know when is the right time,” he said. “When you were small, you were too young to know everything. And as you got older...well, the longer I hadn’t told you, the more difficult it became.”

  “You should have told me,” Eliza repeated, switching to the Sorma dialect now. She looked up at him and felt the anger beginning to drain out of her. He was here, he was here – that was all that mattered.

  “Forgive me,” he said simply.

  She didn’t trust herself to speak, but s
he squeezed his hand ferociously.

  “I’ve brought some of your things,” he said. “Missus Ash, the woman, took them to your room. Some clothes and schoolbooks.”

  “So I really have to stay?” Her voice sounded very small and far away to her. “For how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is why we always moved so much,” she said. “You were afraid they might be looking?”

  Her father nodded.

  “But why? If the Mancers are good, why did Ma try to hide me from them? Why did you?”

  She thought she knew the answer to this. She thought it had to do with that inscription under all the portraits of the Sorceresses: Killed in battle. But she wanted to hear it from her father.

  Rom shook his head. “Eliza, I don’t know. I followed her wishes, but she never gave me reasons.”

  “So you just did what she said without ever asking why?”

  “I never said I didn’t ask. I said she didn’t tell me.” Her father gave a wry smile here and shrugged his big shoulders. “If you had known your mother you might understand. Whether she shared them with me or not, I knew her reasons were sound.”

  “And that’s why I’ve never met my grandparents, or any of the Sorma,” Eliza continued. “You wanted to stay away from obvious places.”

  “Yes. But this might be for the best, Eliza. I can only guess she wanted to spare you the hardship of her destiny, but times have changed. The war is over, and it must be clear to the Mancers that you don’t share your mother’s gift. I think they mean you well. We might be able to convince them eventually to allow you more freedom. You can finally meet my people. Your people, too.” He stroked her hair and smiled. “No more running around and hiding.”

  “I liked hiding,” said Eliza rather forlornly, and her father laughed.

  They walked for a while among the sweet-smelling orchards. She kept an eye out for Charlie, eager to show off her brave, handsome father, but he was nowhere to be seen. She wanted to show her father the portraits of the Shang Sorceresses, but without Charlie it took a great deal of confused wandering through the east wing before they found the right hall. She dragged her father by the hand as he gazed about him wonderingly, until they stood in front of the portrait of Rea. He looked up at the glaring figure of his wife for a long time, in silence.

  “I know how she really died,” said Eliza at last, and he put his arm around her. Now, when they were quiet and serious, she told him about the pendant she had to wear, and the siren that had gone off when she first arrived, and how the Mancers thought the Xia Sorceress was looking for her.

  Her father listened carefully to everything she said, his brow furrowed.

  “The Supreme Mancer told me a little of that,” he said after a pause. He took her by the shoulders firmly then, bending over and looking straight into her eyes. “I didn’t want any of this for you, Eliza. Neither did your mother. But it’s happened now, and we just have to be strong and deal with it. And the truth is, they’re probably right that you’re safer with them. I don’t understand them and I don’t much like them, but I know they want no harm to come to you, and they have the power to keep you safe. More than I do.” He looked as if it pained him to say this last. Eliza leaned into him, not really believing it.

  They returned to the kitchen for supper and Missus Ash served up a pot roast. Rom had brought a little magnetic chess set with him and they played a game at the table after their meal. Neither of them played well and Eliza won.

  When they had finished the game and were sipping hot cocoa, Rom said seriously, “They won’t let me stay, Eliza. I asked, but they don’t want me here. They’ve promised I can visit often and we just have to accept that for now. No scenes when I leave, or they might decide it’s too much trouble. I’ll talk to them about you visiting Holburg and the Sorma eventually, but we can’t push them. Not yet.”

  “Okay,” Eliza whispered, her heart sinking.

  “I know it seems like I just let them take you,” he said, his voice pained. “But I’m no match for the Mancers, Eliza. I couldn’t have stopped them. I wanted to, but there was just no way. It’s important that we cooperate if I’m going to be allowed to see you at all. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Brave girl,” he said, and touched her cheek gently. “So, how angry are you with me?”

  “Zero,” she said, and even managed to smile.

  ~

  After saying goodbye to her father, Eliza went to her room and unpacked the bag he had brought. Among a few clothes and schoolbooks were two envelopes. One contained her only precious photograph of her mother, and the other, a letter from Nell. After some thought, she placed the photograph of her mother under the mattress of her bed. Then she tore open the letter and read it through several times, grinning widely.

  Dear Eliza,

  Your da says you’ve gone to live with the Mancers to learn to do Magic, I cannay believe it, you are so lucky!! You have to promise to write to me and tell me everything about it, this is the most amazing, prize thing that has ever happened. It’s all anyone is talking about on the island, of course, the Mancers and their dragons and how they all knew there was something different about you, when really they nary knew a thing. Did YOU know it, Eliza?? Are ye a witch then? But if so, why is it the Mancers want to teach you instead of banishing you from Di Shang? Your da could nay tell me much, or nay wanted to, and I may well be the first person ever to actually die of curiosity. Lah, Mentor Frist says he hopes the Mancers have better luck teaching you than he did, ha ha, but I spec Magic is a lot more interesting than Arithmetic.

  I really miss you. Yesterday and today I hung about with Maddy and Alanah but it’s nay the same. I’ll nay show them any of our secret places and hope you can still come back to visit. This is so amazing, you must be having the prize time of your life. If you learn Magic you HAVE to teach me. Your da said he’s going to see you and can take a letter but he’s going soon so I dinnay have time to write more. I’ll write another letter later but you HAVE to write to me and tell me EVERYTHING. What is going on???

  Lots of love from your best friend, Nell

  Eliza sat on the bed re-reading the letter until Smoky came and nosed it out of the way, climbing onto her lap. She rubbed the cat behind his ears and he set up a rhythmic purr. She didn’t feel like crying anymore. She felt almost empty of emotion, wrung dry. She fell asleep on top of the covers, still dressed, with Smoky on her stomach and Nell’s letter on the bed beside her. She dreamed she was planting a little tree in the snow, digging at the frozen soil beneath the snow with her bare hands, which were torn and cold.

  “It won’t bloom,” said Anargul, manipulator of wood, behind her.

  Eliza gritted her teeth in the dream and didn’t answer. When she put the tree in the frozen ground she felt its roots stretch gratefully, eagerly, as if it were a part of herself. Ravens wheeled in circles overhead, crying out in almost human voices. Poor little tree, somebody else said, a woman’s voice, but Eliza couldn’t see her. How will it weather the storm when it comes?

  ~

  The days after her father’s visit passed swiftly. Always quick to pick up new dialects, Eliza was at least able to please Foss with her rapid progress in learning the Language of First Days. However, each lesson began less successfully with the practice of Magic. Foss would place a pencil before her, or one enchanted amulet with two ordinary amulets, or he would tell her how to mix a simple potion. But since she could not make the pencil float, or distinguish the enchanted amulet from the others, or make an effective potion, they began to spend less and less time in practice and devoted more and more of the lesson to writing and reading out loud. She quite enjoyed these mornings in the Library, poring over huge musty books and learning how to decipher the mysterious script within them. She particularly liked being allowed to climb the ladders way up to fetch books, balancing carefully along the ropeways, following the leaping amber lights that spun and twirled acrobatically. She
felt like she was climbing about in a forest of books, as if they grew naturally from the lofty marble shelves.

  But every day around lunchtime her stomach began to work its way into a knot of anxiety. Her afternoon sessions with Kyreth left her always bewildered and depressed, seeing sunspots from the brightness of his eyes. Most days he read to her from Commentaries on the Early Texts, reading each passage in the Language of First Days before translating it into Kallanese for her. The books varied. Sometimes they were about applying Magic to Deep Astronomy or Deep Physics, which Eliza found nearly impossible to follow. Sometimes he read from a book called The History of Symbols, a dry, ponderous tome which described in far too much detail how particular symbols had come into use and what they were used for, but the key points were so buried in excess information that Eliza found she could remember almost none of it at the end of the lesson. Occasionally, without referring to books, Kyreth simply lectured her on topics such as The Interpretation of Prophecy, or Moral Uses of Magic, or Dyads and Balance. He encouraged her to ask questions and voice opinions, but Eliza was mute with confusion and left his study always with the greatest relief. She knew he was disappointed in her and it was an awful feeling.

  Her favorite part of the day was the late afternoon, before supper, when she was free to run outside. She found Charlie always waiting for her. They made a few half-hearted attempts to find a way into the towers, but beyond looking for doors they knew they wouldn’t find there was not much they could do. Mostly they roamed about the grounds, picking fruit to feed to the farm animals and trying to lure pale fawns out of the woods around the lake with berries. They had seed-spitting contests, which Charlie always won, and climbing or jumping contests, which Eliza usually won even though she was smaller. They never approached the dark wood in the northwest corner. Eliza felt inexplicably afraid whenever she looked at it. She wondered whether Charlie felt the same way but didn’t ask in case he then insisted they go have a look.