Shade and Sorceress

by Catherine Egan

  “Forsake the Ancients,” muttered the general, no longer looking at her. “Some game she’s got going. Some game.”

  “Look! A fairground!” cried Eliza. “That wasnay there before, was it?”

  The fairground on the waterfront grew as Eliza explored it. She helped herself to cotton candy and rode a ceaselessly rotating merry-go-round of dragons and goblins. There were paddleboats shaped like swans that could be taken out into the bay, where the cloud-pulling bird-boats had settled down and were drifting listelessly. The general sat himself down on one of the terraces, watching Eliza suspiciously as she paddled around the bay. When her legs were tired Eliza paddled back to the harbour, looking up at the mansion. Nia was no longer on the balcony but Eliza knew somehow that she was still watching. It was almost a physical knowledge – she knew it in the same way one knows if one is hot or cold or hungry.

  “It’s a right prize city!” Eliza shouted. “It’s an amazing Illusion! But you said I could see my da. You promised!”

  There was no reply. The others came back in pairs to the waterfront.

  “Just glass everywhere,” the magician reported. “One street looping in a circle. We couldn’t get anywhere.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Eliza, surprised.

  “It looks big, but it’s like you said – Illusion.”

  “But...lah, we’ve explored a fair bit,” said Eliza. “There was a lot to see.”

  The magician shrugged warily and looked at General Malone. The general gave a curt shake of the head. They all seated themselves around him, quiet and nervous.

  “You dinnay trust me,” said Eliza, crestfallen. None of them replied. It didn’t matter anyway, she decided, feeling terribly lonely. They weren’t going to be able to help her – not even the famed General Malone. Without another word, she turned away from them and headed into the city.

  It was different now, solider, the vaulting crystal city replaced by sturdier looking buildings of a pale blue marble with pillars in front of them. She went inside one of them and found shoes walking around with nobody in them, candlesticks swaying to ghostly music, shelves lined with books that laughed when she opened them, and most unsettling of all, paintings hanging from the walls in which the mostly human figures screamed for help and wrung their hands at her. She went back outside quickly and ate hot fresh muffins from an empty bakery, thinking. Either the magician had been lying, or Nia didn’t care enough to maintain the Illusion fully for the others. This was for Eliza, and Eliza alone. It had taken a lot out of her, Nia had said when she first made the city appear. It must be a difficult Illusion to maintain, in which case she would not be able to keep it going forever. At some point she would become too tired and she would have to dissolve the city, and then Eliza would be able to see this place for what it was. She explored street after street, trying to keep a high demand on Nia’s power and perhaps wear her out. After a while, though, she began to fear that the Illusion would wear her out first. When she was so tired she wasn’t sure she could walk another step, or eat another over-sweet treat, or dance another jig with another grinning marionette, she looked down the hill at the harbour, and her heart leaped. Instead of blue sea, she saw ice. There was a gap in the Illusion. The instant she saw it, she felt a dizzying shift, and she was no longer in the streets of the city but in the lobby of a hotel. There was nobody else in the lobby, but the guest book was open on the front desk. The single entry said Rom Tok, room 411.

  Her heart in her throat, Eliza ran straight up the stairs and down the hallway until she found room 411. She threw the door open without knocking.

  He was seated by the window looking out at the unchanging white expanse. When the door opened he was so deep in thought that it took a moment for him to turn, and when he saw Eliza, he froze.

  “Da!” Eliza cried, running to him and throwing her arms around him. He sat rigid and unresponsive. Eliza pulled away and looked him full in the face.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, please no.”

  “Da, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  “How?” he asked, as if the word caused him terrible pain.

  “I came to find you,” she said. “I came to rescue you!”

  “It’s not really you,” he said. “It can’t be Eliza.”

  “It is me! It is! How can I prove it to you...?” But her father was holding her face in his hands now and his dark eyes were full of tears. He shook his head.

  “It isn’t you,” he said firmly. “You’re not here. You’re safe. The Mancers will protect you.”

  “Da, listen, please listen. It really is me. I can explain everything.”

  Eliza began to tell her father the whole story in a rush. At first tears flooded his eyes and subsided and returned as he listened and stroked her hair, looking at her closely as if trying to see through a disguise. His expression changed slowly as she described fleeing the Citadel. His jaw tightened, and his eyebrows drew together. He stood up, and Eliza fell silent.

  “You foolish girl,” he said, his voice like a whip. “Why did you come? You were safe. Why did you come?”

  “The Mancers weren’t going to rescue you,” she said furiously. “Nobody was. I had to come.”

  “But you were safe!” he said again. The pain in his eyes was too awful for her to look at. “That’s all that mattered to me. I could spend my life here, she could torture me or kill me, but I knew you were safe.”

  “I’m going to get us out of here,” she insisted, half-pleading.

  “Such endless optimism, Smidgen!” said Nia, who was suddenly sitting in a gilded throne across the room, her hair caught up in a spiky diamond crown. “But this is sweet, really. I’ll bet you’re glad you don’t have an overly-shiny Mancer as a father. Your mother was quite right to run from that horrific option. It caused a great fuss, as I remember. I don’t think Obrad ever recovered from the rejection. All proud and puffed up about fathering the next Sorceress and he gets passed over for a human. The thing that amazes me is that none of the other Sorceresses rebelled before. Aren’t you pleased I’m going to spare you from marrying a Mancer, Smidgen? Frankly, I’d choose death over that. And I’ve gone to great lengths to live forever!”

  Eliza’s father drew her closer to him, his strong arms tight around her. Neither of them spoke.

  “I have to say, though,” Nia continued, “I think Rea could have done better for herself. She used to go to Tian Xia all the time, so why settle on an ordinary human? Never mind. The endless mysteries of a woman’s heart! How did you enjoy the city today, Smidgen?”

  “It was...wonderful,” said Eliza haltingly. “Thank you.”

  Nia beamed, delighted, and Eliza gathered the courage to continue.

  “I dinnay think you’re as bad as everybody says, and...I brought you the book, like you asked, but if that’s nay what you really want, I could bring something else.”

  “Eliza,” her father said warningly, but she pressed on: “I’ll do anything you want if you’ll let us go. We’re no use to you, after all.”

  “Smidgen!” cried Nia, leaning forward in her throne. “Why would I have brought you here if you weren’t any use? Your father has served his purpose, of course, but you aren’t going anywhere. You are extremely useful.”

  “But you’ll let my da go?” Eliza asked, ignoring her father’s admonitions. “And the others? Like the general? You dinnay need them for anything, do you?”

  Nia looked genuinely surprised. “Why do you care about them?”

  “Can they go too?” Eliza demanded stubbornly.

  “What general?” cried Rom Tok. “What are you talking about, Eliza? Stop this. Don’t try to make deals with her!”

  “I’d love to let them all go as a favor to you, Smidgen,” said Nia, ignoring Rom. “But we’re in the middle of the Arctic, you know. I don’t think they’d survive the journey, and I’m not keen to waste my time getting teams of the Cra together to bring them home. It’s too much work for something I c
are too little about.”

  “Charlie could take them,” said Eliza, her mind racing.

  “Stop this immediately, Eliza,” said her father, in a tone that would have frozen her in her tracks once. “She doesn’t mean a word she says. Don’t talk to her.”

  Still taking no notice of him, Nia said to Eliza, “Who in the worlds is Charlie?”

  “The Shade,” said Eliza. “He could be a dragon, a big one, aye! He’d be able to carry all of them.”

  “Aren’t you selfless.” Nia smiled. “Look, I really don’t care one way or the other, now that I’ve got you. But I don’t think your doting father is going to leave you here.”

  “I certainly am not,” said Rom, at last making himself heard. “What do you want with Eliza? We’ll find another way to help you. Whatever it is.”

  “You’ve already helped me,” said Nia. “Eliza is all I want. And it is starting to feel a little cramped here, isn’t it? I’ve got to keep coming up with different Illusions for you all.” She regarded Rom thoughtfully. “The others haven’t really been entertaining for quite a while. It was quite exciting when Karan was trying to make up her mind between Dag Tish and Jarron, but now that’s all settled and they’ve become sort of dull and quiet. They used to argue a great deal and come up with hilarious plans. I hoped Cherry would start up a dramatic romance, or hate somebody, but she’s surprisingly prudish and shy. I was going to throw you into the mix eventually and see if you could shake things up, but perhaps it isn’t worth the bother. If it would make dear Eliza so happy, I honestly don’t mind you going off with her friend the Shade. Look, here he is.”

  The Shade form was on the floor before the throne, under Nia’s foot.

  “Make up your mind. Are you abandoning your daughter and saving your own skin, or staying here to watch her die?” She directed this question at Rom.

  He trembled with rage but managed to say, “I’m not leaving.”

  Eliza could feel his misery. She realized how ridiculous it had been of her to come here as if she could rescue him, when in fact she had struggled so hard just to join him in his imprisonment and play into the Sorceress’s hands.

  “Well, that settles that, doesn’t it?” said Nia pleasantly. “If only I’d had such a caring, self-sacrificing father, things might have turned out very differently! We wouldn’t be here, certainly. But this is how it is. It’s a pity, really.”

  “Why do you want to harm my daughter?” Rom implored the Sorceress. “She doesn’t have the power of her ancestors. She’s no threat to you.”

  “Of course she has power,” said Nia. “You’re all blind not to see it. Naturally she isn’t a threat, and it’s not that I want her dead. That’s just the unfortunate, inevitable result of what I do want.”

  “And what is that?” demanded Rom, holding Eliza close to him.

  “Aren’t you nosy?” Nia said playfully. She turned to Eliza with a suddenly intense look, her eyes flashing Mancer-bright. “What I want is all you are. Your power, all that has been passed down to you by your foremothers, your thoughts and memories and desires and fears, the sources of your strength, I want to feast on them, your essence, that inexplicable something that makes you Eliza and nobody else, your will to live, your joy in living, in which your power is rooted.” She leaned back and flashed them both one of her sudden, dazzling smiles. “And once I’ve taken all of it, you see, there won’t be anything left of you. I wish it could be done differently, but there we are. You’ll have some time together, in any case. I have things to do before we get started.”

  And she was gone, and so was the door, leaving Eliza and her father trapped in the room with the absurdly elaborate throne.

  ~ Chapter 19 ~

  Eliza ran to Charlie’s shimmering, shadowy form on the floor.

  “Can you hear me, Charlie?” she asked. He rippled as if in acknowledgement, but he was trapped against the floor as he had been to the wall in the other room.

  “What the hell is that thing?” asked Rom.

  “My friend,” said Eliza. “Dinnay worry, Charlie. We’ll get out of this.”

  Rom Tok looked miserably at Eliza. She knew he was wishing she hadn’t come but wouldn’t say so again.

  “Have you been here the whole time? In this room?” asked Eliza, straightening up again and looking around. She knew their situation was desperate, but just seeing her father, so strong and clever and brave, she felt better, somehow hopeful.

  Rom nodded. “There’s no night or day, so I haven’t been able to keep track of how long, but I’d guess a couple of weeks.”

  “What about food?” asked Eliza, thinking of the general eating the penguin in the aquarium.

  “Conjured food,” said Rom. “Or perhaps Illusion, though I think that would only stave off hunger. Either way, I don’t think she’ll let us starve. She’ll come up with something more creative than that.” He looked around, his dark brow fiercely creased. “She’s not going to accept any kind of a deal, so we’ll have to find a way to get you out of here without her noticing. But honestly, I’ve spent my whole time here trying to think of a way out and I haven’t come up with much.”

  Eliza tried the window. It was locked.

  “We could break it,” she said.

  “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve broken that window and punched up the walls,” said Rom with a grim laugh. He showed her his scabbed knuckles, and her heart gave a sick little lurch. “How can we escape when we can’t see what is really there, when our own movements lie to us? We have only our senses to go by, and they’re all caught up in her Magic.” His voice grew louder as he spoke and when he was finished he stood flexing his fingers, his jaw working furiously. “Forsake the Ancients!” he burst out suddenly, in a strange, harsh voice Eliza had never heard him use. “What good am I? Can’t do a thing. My own daughter, and I can’t do a thing.”

  “Da,” she said, her mouth dry. It was terrible to see him this way. His eyes met hers for a moment and then he turned away, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms and pacing the length of the room.

  “Let me think, let me think,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

  An idea came to Eliza and she put it aside immediately. Not because she didn’t believe it would work, but because she believed it might. She knew that to voice the idea to her father, or even to think on it too intently, could alert the Sorceress.

  Eliza still had the dragon claw, which hung cold as a log of ice around her neck, as if it alone were impervious to the Illusion that kept her warm. Though she didn’t yet know how she might put it to use, it was the one powerful item in her possession and Nia could not take it from her. The only other power she had lay in the depth of her connection to Nia. The Sorceress had been able to come to her in dreams and trances, and Eliza had felt as soon as she laid eyes on her that she knew her somehow, not in the way one ordinarily knows people, but in far more profound and complicated way. She could feel it when Nia’s attention was on her, like a warm glow, and she could feel it when that attention shifted elsewhere. She felt Nia’s mood lift, or her energy flag, almost as if these were her own feelings. If she concentrated on the vast waves of energy she felt from Nia now she could place her precisely. She walked, eyes closed, to one of the walls and placed her hand against it. Whatever Nia was doing, she was doing it right behind this wall, and the wall was thin because Nia had nothing left over to make it thicker. She had expended enormous energy in creating the city to impress Eliza. Now she had left them in a bleak little room, undecorated, without even creating any view beyond the Arctic whiteness outside, because she was busy doing something else that required all her strength. And so although it seemed that they were more trapped than before, in this tiny room, Eliza knew that they were in fact less trapped, and that if they were to escape at all it would have to be at such a time, when Nia was not paying attention, when her power was at a low ebb or concentrated elsewhere. Eliza pressed her face to the wall. Whatever the Sorceress was doing, it must be i
mmensely difficult. And she was doing it just a few feet away.

  “Eliza...” Rom began, then stopped. She seemed to have gone into a kind of a trance. He watched her closely, and a great confusion of pride and horror and grief tangled together within him. He wanted to tell her to leave everything to him, to stop whatever she was doing. He wanted to promise that he would save her. But no words came. Ever since his wife had come back from Tian Xia twelve years ago holding this tiny squalling bundle with his face, all that had mattered to him was protecting her, keeping her safe. But he couldn’t protect her anymore, and he couldn’t keep her safe. What he saw now with such a mix of emotions was that she was no longer really a child, and that she was indeed her mother’s daughter.

  ~

  The Emissariae set up camp in the Arctic within a heated, domed shelter. They stood in a row behind the Supreme Mancer, Kyreth. He was seated, waiting, his long fingers drumming against the arm of his chair.

  “Perhaps he will not come,” ventured Ka.

  Kyreth did not reply immediately. After a pause he said, “If he ignores our call this time we cannot count on him for anything. It will be open war between us.”

  They were silent then, but they were all thinking the same thing: they could not afford a war with the Faeries when the Sorceress was rattling her cage. They needed friends.

  The door of the shelter flew open and the silent, ghost-grey silver-hounds of the Faeries poured into the dome. The Mancers watched as the long-legged creatures moved swiftly about the shelter and among the Mancers themselves, pointing with their noses, looking about them with bottomless black eyes, seeking the scent of silver, which rendered a Faery powerless. Finding none, they let out in unison a ghostly cry and then settled down on the ground, watchful. The Faeries appeared as if out of nowhere. It was a trick of theirs, intended to impress. They were dressed in silk and brightly feathered capes. They stood in formation around the King of the Faeries himself, who did not look pleased.