Shade and Sorceress

by Catherine Egan

  “Perfect,” he said, very relieved. “I thought the sun was going to come up before I found anything. You just need to say Fuxi Wei Nao, lah? Undo these bonds. And while you say it, hit the barrier with the barrier star upside down. Easy!”

  “Foo shi way now?” repeated Eliza.

  “Good enough, aye,” said Charlie. “Are you both ready to run for it?”

  “The food bag is prize heavy,” complained Nell.

  Eliza tucked the book of barriers into her satchel. She took off the barrier star, feeling a little chill of fear as she did so. She was forfeiting the protection of the Mancers now.

  “Swing it in slow circles over my head,” Charlie instructed her.

  “I cannay see your head. It’s too dark in here.”

  “My head is roughly where my voice is,” he said dryly. “Quit stalling, aye. Swing it in circles.”

  “Okay,” said Eliza, and began to swing the barrier star. As she did so, a golden glow emanated from it, illuminating a bright membrane around Charlie.

  “Can you see the barrier?” he asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “Hit it hard with the barrier star. The barrier star HAS to hit it upside down. And say Fuxi Wei Nao.”

  Eliza felt an odd sort of prickling in her fingers and on the back of her neck. She remembered, suddenly, the bandit raid in Quan, how she had been huddled against the doorframe of their little house, the sun hot and blinding on her, when a man’s shadow fell over her. She remembered his face, ugly and sweating, the dust in his moustache, his missing teeth as he grinned at her. And her father’s legs as he stepped between them. She struck at the barrier, saying, “foo shi way now.” The pendant bounced off it, almost striking her in the face.

  “Why didnay it work?” she said, shaken. Her fingers felt clumsy, hot.

  “It was nay upside down, praps. Try again.”

  Once more she swung the pendant round, creating the broad glow. The prickling feeling was spreading up her arms now. She thought of golden sand, a too-bright sky full of screaming black birds. She forced the images away, ignored the prickling that was becoming more intense, and struck. The pendant hit the barrier squarely, creating a sudden blaze of light, and she said, “Foo shi way now!” The dungeon was pitch black again.

  “Run,” hissed Charlie Ash, pushing past them.

  ~ Chapter 9 ~

  The three of them bolted along the corridor and up the stone steps, Nell struggling in the rear with the heavy bag of food. They made it out into the grounds before Eliza heard her name in her head, Eliza, as hard as a blow, and stumbled. It was Kyreth’s voice.

  “Eliza, dinnay stop.” Nell caught up to her and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her on towards the wood. A chorus of Mancer voices set up chanting in her head. Her limbs felt like lead.

  “Charlie, help!” cried Nell.

  A hugely muscled man with the head of a dog came charging at her from nowhere. He hoisted Eliza over his shoulder, grabbed the bag from Nell, and made for the dark wood. Nell screamed, and mid-scream realized this must be Charlie in another form. She raced after him. As they entered the wood Eliza felt a stabbing pain shoot up her injured arm.

  “I have to go back,” she gasped. “Put me down.”

  Something inside her was tearing right open. It was excruciating. She couldn’t remember why they were here, but she knew the pain would stop only if she returned to the Mancers. Their voices filled her head, murmuring, crowding out everything else.

  A few moments of crashing through the woods and she was lying on the pale sand where the hound of the Crossing had pinned her and crushed her arm. The voices had ceased.

  “They’ll be here soon,” said Charlie, who had returned to the form of a boy. “But they’ll nay be as strong outside of the Citadel.”

  Eliza struggled to sit up. Nell was crouched at her side, anxious.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Aye,” said Eliza, not at all sure that this was true. Her arm was throbbing in the tight bandage, as if it had been freshly torn. She looked fearfully out at the glassy water cloaked in mist. A boat began to take shape in the mist, as if it were being slowly penciled in before their eyes from bottom to top. It was a long wooden sloop, and although there was no wind its pale sails were full and it cut through the still water silently. It touched the shore and the bow of the boat cut a line through the sand, drawing to a halt. A hideous apparition peered over the bow of the boat at them. His skin was translucent, like liquid glass poured over a tangle of bone and vein and knotted muscle. He reached towards them with a pale arm.

  “Do you seek passage?” he asked. His voice was an awful scratching of the air. Nell gripped Eliza’s arm, truly afraid of something other than tedium for the first time in her life.

  “Yes,” said Eliza, scrambling to her feet.

  A silver-white ramp was lowered to the beach. Nell and Eliza followed Charlie aboard the ghostly ship. The Boatman swiveled his gruesome head towards Eliza and asked, “How will you pay for your passage?”

  Eliza took the barrier star from her pocket and held it out to him.

  “What did you bring that for?” Charlie asked as the Boatman recoiled, the veins in his neck bulging hideously.

  “What is that thing? You care nothing for it,” the Boatman seethed. “Do you think to buy your passage so cheaply?”

  “It’s gold,” protested Eliza. “And it has...Magic properties.”

  “Gold! Magic! What do I care for gold or Magic when you care not for them? You would cast it into the sea as soon as keep it. It has no value.”

  “It has to be something valuable to you,” said Charlie Ash impatiently.

  “You nary said that!” cried Nell.

  “How was I to know you’d think something worthless to you might pass as valuable?” he snorted. “You’ll have to give him something else.”

  “But we dinnay have anything else,” said Eliza, horrified.

  Nell rummaged frantically through the bag of food, then opened Eliza’s satchel, which still hung over her shoulder.

  “What about this?” She pulled out the photograph of Eliza’s mother and held it out to her, her eyes apologetic. Eliza took it, misery twining about her heart.

  “Ah!” The Boatman’s translucent skin flushed with blood. “There! A treasure! Enough for three.”

  Friend or foe, Eliza’s mother seemed to be asking in the picture. This is the last I’ll ever see of her, thought Eliza. Her resolve hardened and she handed it to the Boatman. Her mother was gone, but her father was still alive. That was what mattered.

  “Thank the Ancients,” breathed Charlie. “I was nay looking forward to being turned back.”

  As the boat sailed into the mist Eliza saw the five Emissariae reach the shore, towering and blazing white before the dark line of trees. Their Magic could not reach her now. She took Nell’s hand.

  “We did it,” she said to her friend.

  Charlie Ash threw them a dubious look, then went to the side of the boat and watched the grey, lit sea as it raced beneath them.

  ~

  One by one they dozed off on the deck, for it had been a long and eventful night in the Citadel and the movement of the boat made them even sleepier. When Eliza woke the mist had thickened. It hung about the boat like a white shroud. The Boatman was no more than a shimmering silhouette at the bow and the stern of the boat was lost in the mist altogether, as if it had been erased.

  “Nell.” Eliza shook her friend awake. “Look.”

  “Oh,” breathed Nell, sitting up and looking around. She gave a weak smile and shivered. “I used to worry I’d never get to leave Holburg, and now here I am on my way to another world! Not quite what I had in mind when I dreamed of traveling, but still.”

  The Boatman remained at the helm, expressionless. Eliza noticed that although she could look at his hideous face, she couldn’t look closely at his eyes. She mentioned this to Nell and the two of them took turns trying, but no matter how they struggled their o
wn eyes averted themselves from those of the Boatman, obeying some command greater than the will of their owners.

  Gradually the fog thickened, obscuring the Boatman, obscuring the entire boat, until Eliza could no longer see her own hand held before her face. They sat in a tight cluster for fear of losing one another. The only sounds were the water rushing under the hull and, occasionally, the awful baying of the hounds of the Crossing, which made Eliza’s arm throb.

  “How long d’you think we’ve been sailing?” asked Nell.

  “I’ve no idea,” said Eliza.

  “It doesnay usually take this long,” said Charlie Ash. “I think it must be you two slowing down the journey, aye. You dinnay belong in Tian Xia and you’ve no Magic to speed it along.”

  “The journey gets longer and longer all the time,” came the Boatman’s terrible rasp from the mist. “Some say that one day the gulf will be too wide to cross at all.”

  “What will happen to you then?” asked Eliza. It felt strange speaking to someone she couldn’t see.

  “The gulf will swallow me forever,” he replied.

  “Speaking of swallowing,” said Charlie, “I’m starving. Where’s that bag of food?”

  It was difficult to put together sandwiches they could barely see, and there was a little bit of guesswork involved with the tins and jars Nell had stolen, but they managed well enough and ate their fill. After Nell and Eliza had finished, Charlie went right on, polishing off an apple, a banana, and a tin of something that turned out to be beans.

  “Praps you’d best turn into a grasshopper before you eat all our supplies,” snarked Nell.

  “I can find us more food when we get there,” he replied cheerfully. “One of my favorite things about being human is eating. Humans eat much better food than other creatures, aye. For most animals it’s just a matter of survival, but humans really put a lot of thought into making eating pleasurable. And talking, too. I love talking, aye. I have so much to say, but if I’m being a lemur or something, I cannay say any of it.”

  “I still think I’d like you better as a grasshopper,” said Nell.

  ~

  The fog closed around them like total blindness. They saw nothing at all for a time. Then it began to lift, pulling away slowly until the boat was visible again, and then the water around it. Eliza sat with her knees pulled up close to her chest and her good arm wrapped around them and tried not to think about what she was doing. Nell was sleeping again, with her head buried in her arms. Charlie Ash lay on his back, arms folded behind his head. His eyes were closed.

  “Charlie,” she whispered, and his eyes opened.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just checking if you were awake. I cannay sleep.”

  He rolled onto his side and regarded her calmly.

  “You know what I hate?” he said.

  “What?”

  “When you’re trying to sleep but your mouth keeps filling up with saliva, and you have to keep swallowing it, but it keeps filling up again. That must bother humans.”

  Eliza laughed in spite of herself.

  “So be a cat, aye. I miss Smoky.”

  “Oh, but then my ears itch.”

  Eliza thought for a minute and then said, “Why did you decide to be so many different beings in the Citadel? A boy, a woman, a cat. Why not just one being?”

  “To throw them off a bit. And lah, it gets boring being the same thing all the time,” he said. “I dinnay know how other creatures can stand it, day in day out, always being human or whatever.”

  “But you’re the same thing all the time underneath, nay?” Eliza said. “I mean, whether you look like a woman or a boy or a cat, you’re still what you are.”

  “I spose,” he muttered, looking at her oddly.

  “So, what are you, Charlie, when you’re nay looking like something else?”

  He looked very uncomfortable and turned over on his other side so his back was to her. “Nothing,” he said. “I just pick a shape and that’s what I look like.”

  “But there must be something, when you’re nay choosing to be anything in particular, a sort of original form, lah? Show me.”

  “Why would I show you? And anyway, shouldnay you be thinking about your poor da and how his life’s in peril?”

  “I dinnay even know your real name.”

  Charlie snorted. “What real name? As long as I look like this, my name is Charlie.”

  “But dinnay you have a name? For who you really are?”

  “What for?”

  “What for?” Eliza echoed. “Dinnay you have friends who know what you are? It would be strange for them to have to change what they call you whenever you change shape, aye.”

  Charlie didn’t reply.

  “What does the Xia Sorceress call you?” Eliza asked.

  Still he said nothing.

  “Must be lonely,” she murmured.

  ~

  A breeze scattered the last shreds of mist. They were sailing in the middle of a vivid green sea or lake, ringed by what could only be the shadow of land, under a sepia-coloured sky. There was no sign of the shore they had come from.

  “We’re here, nay?” said Eliza. “This is Tian Xia.”

  “Home sweet home,” said Charlie, looking glumly at the horizon. “I prefer your world, aye. It’s...gentler.”

  Eliza thought she understood already what he meant. There was something about the dark, distant hump of land encircling the lake that frightened her. It wasn’t a fear of anything so obvious as danger or even the great unknown into which she was plunging. Rather, the land itself somehow seemed malevolent, as if it was a live thing possessed of consciousness and knowledge, waiting for her. She wrapped her good arm tighter around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. The feeling only got stronger as they got closer to the shore and the shadow became more clearly a great wedge of dark cliff obscuring the world beyond it. Eliza hung on to herself as if for dear life. She felt the nearly uncontrollable urge to jump overboard and swim in the other direction. But there was no way back now. Where they had come from only the Boatman could take them back to.

  Nell woke with a start, her face chalky white and shining with sweat.

  “Are you all right?” asked Eliza.

  Nell started to say something, but instead she just made a frightened little croaking noise and clutched at her throat.

  “Nell, what’s wrong?” Eliza took her friend’s hand in her own, alarmed. Nell’s hand was like ice.

  “I dinnay know,” gasped Nell. “I dinnay know.”

  Then she doubled over and threw up violently on the deck. Eliza held her hair back, the way her father had done for her when she’d had the flu four years ago. When Nell had finished retching she sat up, shivering and wiping her mouth.

  “What a waste of food,” she managed, her voice quaking.

  “It’s the change, aye,” said Charlie. “I used to get it too, crossing over to the side I nay belonged to. The first time is the worst.” He looked at Eliza curiously. “You seem all right.”

  Eliza didn’t feel ill, but she wouldn’t exactly say she was all right, either. She couldn’t bring herself to voice the mounting terror that nearly choked her when she dared look at the dark wall of rock they were sailing towards.

  “Oh no.” Nell lurched towards the side of the boat, where she threw up again over the side. When she was finished, her knees gave way. She lay on the deck breathing laboriously, terribly white. The Boatman glanced over his shoulder and made a sound that might have been a chuckle.

  “Not a good journey for a human,” he commented.

  “I’m human,” said Eliza.

  “Are you,” he shot back blankly. “But you belongs here, or you’d be feeling the sickness.”

  “That’s true,” commented Charlie. “I only ever feel it going into your world, aye. Nary coming home.”

  Eliza felt Nell’s forehead. It was burning hot, but her hands were still cold.

  “What should we do?” she ask
ed frantically. “Should we take her back?”

  “No turning back ‘til we’ve reached the other side,” said the Boatman. “Have you passage for the journey back?”

  Eliza stared at Charlie. “Passage for the journey back!” she said. “How are we going to pay for the way back?”

  “We’ll work it out,” he said. “It doesnay always have to be an object, it’s just easier that way. And look, she’ll be fine, aye. It’s not fun, the sickness, but nobody’s ever died from crossing over.”

  “No human’s made the crossing since the Middle Days,” commented the Boatman. “It was a shorter journey, then.”

  Nell said weakly, “That’s something to be proud of, lah.” She tried to smile at Eliza but it came out a wince.

  “I’m telling you, it passes,” insisted Charlie.

  Eliza hung on to Nell’s icy hand. For a time Nell retched intermittently where she lay, but then she grew very still and cold and silent. Her eyes hung half-closed, looking at nothing. Her breath came in short, agonized little gasps, and the long wait between each new breath nearly made Eliza’s heart stop. Eliza tried to reassure her but she couldn’t even tell if Nell could hear or see her anymore.

  “We’re almost at the Steps,” said Charlie.

  Eliza looked up, but she did not see any steps. What she had assumed to be a wall was in fact a huge black cliff that circumscribed the lake. Figures of magical beasts and beings had been half-carved into the rock, but left incomplete they gave the impression not of deliberate carvings but of beings struggling to emerge from the stone. Huge symbols whose meaning Eliza did not know had also been hacked into the upper reaches of the cliff. Though she could not read them, the sight of them struck her to the bone with a terror deeper than anything she had ever felt. It was not a fear of something but a dread that was its own entity. It took up residence within her and ruled her every thought. She could not, she would not, pass through that wall of rock.

  Nell began to tremble violently from head to toe. Her clothes were drenched with cold sweat and her eyes rolled back into her head.

  “We have to take her back,” said Eliza, but it was no longer concern for Nell that drove her to speak. It was the wordless, reasonless dread that clutched her heart in its dark claws. “There’s no way through, lah, we cannay go through. We have to go back.”