“You’ll freeze,” he said a bit crossly. “Get inside.”
Stunned, Rom obeyed. Kyreth loomed over Charlie.
“Shade,” he said, with a long exhalation. Before he could change, Charlie felt a barrier lock around him tightly, fitting to his human form so he could not move. Just to show them, he turned into a bat and flitted angrily about in the Charlie-sized barrier.
“Bring him into the shelter,” Kyreth said over his shoulder to the Emissariae. The humans settled in a group, wrapping themselves in blankets, hardly able to believe they were truly free of their imprisonment. Kyreth laid Rea down and bent over her, his brilliant eyes fixed on hers. This woman shaking with cold and fright was like a ghost of the gifted, willful child he had raised.
“What has happened to you?” he asked urgently. “Why do you not speak to me, daughter?”
When he called her “daughter,” Rea turned her face away.
“She is weak,” said Obrad, kneeling at her side and touching his hand to her pale forehead. “She has no Magic, no power. How is it that she is alive?”
“I do not understand,” Kyreth shook his head.
“Nia has taken her power,” said the King of the Faeries in a cold, distant voice. “The Oracle sensed that her power was growing, had nearly doubled. Now we know how.”
Kyreth rose and looked full at the Faery, who seemed as if he wanted to look away but would not let himself.
“Taken her power!” Kyreth repeated. “There is no such Magic.”
“It would appear,” said Malferio, “that there is.”
“The Mancer Library has no record...” Ka began solemnly from behind them, but Kyreth silenced him with an impatient wave of the hand.
“Can a thing exist,” scoffed the King of the Faeries, “if the Mancer Library has no record of it? Astounding!”
Kyreth looked around at the group of Mancers, Faeries, silver-hounds and humans in the shelter. His own words, There is no such Magic, echoed within him. He heard Foss’s voice saying the same thing, and he remembered the spell Rea had worked to hide Eliza, locking away her nascent power. The connection between the three Sorceresses was profound, and there was Magic in it that the Mancers knew nothing of. How then could they hope to counter it?
“There is nothing we can do now but prepare for the worst,” he said heavily. “Eliza is lost. The line of the Shang Sorceress is ended. We Mancers must return to the Citadel and bend all our power towards strengthening the barriers that hold the Sorceress.”
“I have fulfilled my part,” said Malferio crisply. “The Faeries take our leave.”
Something in the King of the Faeries’ voice made Kyreth look at him closely and ask in a dangerous rumble, “Did you know what trickery she intended with the Oath?”
“You should not be so bold as to make demands of me,” spat the King of the Faeries, flaring into a sudden rage. “You, a band of glorified Scribes, seeking to command the King of the Immortal Faeries!” Then he shrugged and smiled mockingly, as if he didn’t think it worth elaborating. “Do not call on me again,” he said curtly, and he was gone.
“We cannot trust them, Your Eminence,” said Ka.
“Perhaps not,” agreed Kyreth. “But his fear of the Sorceress will remain useful to us. We are wasting time. She has the Book of Barriers and her strength is greater than we knew. We must return to the Citadel and do what we can from there.”
“My daughter,” pleaded Rom, stepping forward. “I beg you, don’t abandon her.”
“It is too late,” said Kyreth. “She has traded her life for yours.”
Rom shook his head, struggling to remain calm. “I cannot accept this. Surely you have the power to save her,” he insisted. “To leave her with the Sorceress is dangerous for you. You are allowing the Sorceress to increase her power even further!”
“If we had the power to save your daughter we would do so!” said Kyreth in a blaze of anger. “We have tried and we have failed. There are other matters to attend to now.”
“Other matters?” Rom took a step towards the Supreme Mancer and felt himself come up against a barrier. He laughed, a harsh, anguished sound. “You stole her from me, saying that only you could protect her. And now she is lost to your enemy! Will you do nothing to help her?”
“I know what it is to lose a daughter,” said Kyreth in a low voice. “But we have done all we can. Now we must leave.”
“I’m not leaving without Eliza,” said Rom.
Kyreth gave a short nod. “That is your choice. I would like to take you from this place to assist in Rea’s recovery. She loved you once, and your presence may be useful.” Obrad made an outraged sound at this, and was silenced with a gesture from the Supreme Mancer. “But if you wish to stay, you will stay alone, and die very soon, I should think.”
“I’ll stay,” called Charlie from his barrier.
Kyreth turned to look at him slowly.
“I can survive here,” said Charlie, talking to Rom. “You cannay do Eliza any good. You’ll just freeze to death, aye. But I can stay and try to find a way back in.”
Kyreth laughed mirthlessly. “You are a spy and will be punished as one,” he said. “It is you who delivered the girl to the Sorceress.”
“No,” said Rom. “I believe him. Eliza called him a friend, said he had helped her. He means her well, I’m sure of it.”
“He will flee and never be seen again,” said Kyreth.
“Maybe,” said Rom. “But I don’t believe so.” He looked carefully at Charlie. “I believe he cares for her.”
“I’ll nay leave this place without Eliza,” Charlie promised him, meeting his eyes. “It’s my fault she’s here. I’ll nay abandon her.”
Kyreth waved a hand. “Very well,” he said impatiently. “We will lift your barrier when we leave. It is no great matter. But should we ever hear of you again...” and here he gave Charlie a threatening look.
“You’ll nay hear from me unless I’m bringing Eliza back,” said Charlie firmly.
“Come,” said Kyreth, placing a large hand on Rom’s shoulder. “Are you satisfied? It is time for us to leave.”
~
The Sorceress and Eliza were seated at a long candle-lit table. A roasted lamb seasoned with fresh mint was in the middle of the table, and there were silver bowls of steaming sweet potatoes and long buttery stalks of asparagus and wild rice with herbs and winter salad. At the end of the table there were platters of desserts, rich chocolaty cakes and pecan pie and delectable fruit and berry tarts and poached pears in cranberry sauce with cream. Their long-stemmed glasses were filled with fine red wine. Eliza’s tears had run out at last, and now she felt simply drained and numb.
“You might as well enjoy the nice bits,” said the Sorceress, who was already tucking in. “I know this isn’t where you want to be, but think about it, Smidgen. If you were with your parents you’d be freezing right now, and I’ll bet you anything the Mancers haven’t got anything good to eat. Do you know what Mancers eat?”
Eliza shook her head. A roaring fire was crackling away in a great stone hearth and the tiger was sprawled in front of it chewing on a large bloody bone of something. Outside the windows it was snowing in thick, swirling white flurries. The room couldn’t have been cozier.
“Neither do I,” said the Sorceress. “I don’t even know if they do eat. Faeries, for example, have no need of food, but they do eat sometimes just for pleasure. It’s not a necessity for them. It’s sort of an event, like going to the cinema. But I wonder if it can really be as pleasurable when you don’t need it. There are all sorts of things that we do because we enjoy them, but how good can eating be if you don’t get hungry?”
Nia paused and looked at Eliza as if waiting for a response. Eliza said dully, “What are you going to do to me?”
Nia put her glass down impatiently. “Are you just going to mope and sulk and spoil the whole evening?” she demanded. “I’ve conjured up this fabulous meal for you. Because I want to do something nice for y
ou. It’s not Illusion food, it’s the real thing. And here you are, not even touching it. This wine, by the way, is not the kind of thing you could just buy at a shop, it’s very old, top quality...but all you can do is dwell on the negative. You don’t need to hate me, you know. I didn’t kill your mother like you thought, did I? And now I’ve let her go, and your father, and all your friends, to show you that I’m not just trying to be malicious. So why can’t we be friends?”
“Because you’re going to kill me,” said Eliza, who thought this a very good reason not to be friends.
“Not right now, I’m not,” wheedled Nia. “Right now, I’m trying to cheer you up. If I wanted to hurt you, I’d be hurting you. But I want us to have a nice evening, and why in the worlds shouldn’t we? We’re imprisoned in the Arctic, after all! We might as well make the most of it.”
Eliza couldn’t resist the smell of the food anymore. Her hunger was so great that her fear paled in comparison. She knew it must be a spell, for she had never felt so ravenous in her life, but she didn’t care. It all tasted so good that she filled her plate twice, until she could eat no more, and drank her wine too, only to find the glass kept refilling itself, while Nia talked happily about the great feasts and exciting parties she remembered from her hundreds of years in Tian Xia.
“And while you’re here, Smidgen, we can go horseback riding and windsurfing and...whatever you like! We’re going to have a marvelous time. We can have food like this every night, if you like, and go to the ballet, and we can go to the fair and ride all the roller-coasters. I promise, we’re going to have such fun, you and I!”
The wine made Eliza light-headed and giddy. She thought exultantly to herself, my father is saved, and my mother, because I came here. I saved them. She felt quite heroic. She had two different kinds of cake for dessert, and then a frothy cappuccino.
“I’ve never had coffee before,” she said. “Or wine.”
Nia was delighted.
“Well, you’re quite old enough. I mean, especially because you aren’t going to get any older, it’s important that you have these experiences now, isn’t it? But you mustn’t ever waste your time with the cheaper varieties because they just dull your senses. You can’t be too choosy when it comes to fine beverages, Smidgen.”
Eliza felt quite relaxed after the luxurious meal. The room was comfortably warm and the snowflakes whirling past the window made her dizzy when she looked at them. She could see tiny, twinkling lights out there too, as if there were a little snow-covered town in the valley outside. Nia was smiling and radiant and when she tossed her hair Eliza caught the sweet, enticing scent of her perfume. An odd sort of haze was creeping over her. Her mind worked very slowly and her whole heart seemed to hang on Nia’s smile. The danger she was in felt like a half-remembered dream, not real at all. It’s a spell, of course, she told herself again, but knowing it didn’t change the strange sense of well-being. Even though she knew she should be terrified and angry, she didn’t really want to be.
“Were you really married to the King of the Faeries?” she asked.
“Long, long ago,” said Nia. She reached over and tucked a loose tendril of Eliza’s hair behind her ear, which seemed entirely natural. “I was very young, only a few years older than you at the time. Just old enough to know how enchanting that kind of youth and fragile mortality can be to the immortal, who has done and seen all there is. And of course, he was...well, he is very handsome, and so powerful, and he seemed to know everything.”
“You were in love with him,” said Eliza drowsily.
“Oh, yes. Passionately. With every fibre of my being.”
“Lah, how did you become enemies?”
“There was one thing I loved even more,” said Nia with a sad little smile.
“What?” Eliza asked.
“Freedom,” said Nia. “I lived with him in the Realm of the Faeries and he gave me immortality, eternal youth. But you see, the Faeries are Masters of Illusion. The sort of thing I can do,” and here she gestured at the room around them, “is nothing at all to their Illusions. I was powerless, entirely at his mercy. With eternity ahead of me I wanted to see more of the worlds, I wanted to experience everything, but he would not let me leave. He was afraid I wouldn’t come back. And so my marriage became a prison, and my beautiful, beloved husband my warden. I knew I had to free myself from his Illusions, and for that, I needed Faery Blood. Watch.”
Nia took the luminous vial from around her neck, unscrewed the top, and dipped her finger inside. She closed it again and touched the air above the table with her finger, which looked smudged with light. It was as if her mere touch tore a hole in the air. The wind came through, raw and cutting, and sharp crystals of icy snow, not at all like the large soft flakes drifting and whirling outside the window over the little lit town. Eliza scrambled up onto the chair and peered through the gap. It was no more than an inch wide and through it she saw only the white freezing wind. It was too cold to stay near the gap and so she shifted her chair further away from it. Nia laughed.
“The vial is enchanted, and so long as I wear it I can see through Illusion whenever I want to. It’s just a matter of looking properly. For the most part, I don’t want to see through it here, of course, because there’s nothing to see.”
“How did you get the blood?” asked Eliza. “Is it his?”
“Yes,” said Nia. “I gave him something to make him sleep deeply and took this vial of blood with a needle. When he woke he knew what I had done and he wouldn’t forgive me. I had to leave, or he might have killed me. I wasn’t as strong as I am now. My powers were still so new, and I was so young. So I fled, and my heart was broken. Oh, I’ve loved and lost since then, of course, but it never hurts as much as the first time. But then, there was never anybody like him, again.”
“He loves you, too,” said Eliza.
“He wanted to possess me,” said Nia viciously. “Knowing it had cost me the love of my life, I made the most of my freedom. But that’s what led to such trouble. You see, Smidgen, all this nonsense about how I wanted to rule the worlds is just that...nonsense. I have no interest in ruling anything. But nor do I want to be ruled, or kept out, or kept in, told what to do, what to be. And there have always been so many beings vying for power in the worlds that I had to become as strong as I could, just to resist the authority of others. It frightened them, how strong I became. It frightened the Oracle in particular. She hated me for rejecting her faith and it was easy for her to win Malferio and the Witch to her cause, for they each had their own reasons to hate me. I was banished from that world, and then I had to deal with the Mancers. I wasn’t setting out to wreak destruction in Di Shang specifically, but what did they expect me to do, get a job in an office somewhere? They have such absurd rules about the use of Magic in this world, and I simply ignored them. They waged war. I fought back, a war of independence if you will. But your world doesn’t interest me, Smidgen. I want to go back to Tian Xia, to do as I please, and teach a lesson to those who cast me out of my own home, my own world!”
Nia’s eyes were glittering with a terrible fire now and her fair skin almost glowed. Eliza felt quite sorry for her, for it did sound as if she’d been badly ganged up on.
“Why does Swarn hate you?” she asked. “She didnay seem so bad to me. Except when she was trying to kill me.”
Nia looked affectionately into Eliza’s face and gave a little laugh. “When I said the Oracle recruited Malferio and the Witch to banish me, I was referring to Swarn’s sister, Audra. The name means ‘whirlwind,’ and it suited her. She was wild as could be and wonderfully good company. She and I were very close at one time, and I learned a great many things about Magic from her. We fell out over something rather trivial. She had enslaved a Shade, whose will she had bound with Magic. I was unduly impressed by the thing at the time. I thought it would be rather useful to be able to call on it. The Shade agreed to serve me willingly if I broke Audra’s spell over it. So I did, and Audra was livid. That was the en
d of our friendship. When I discovered she was plotting against me with my husband and the Oracle I felt terribly betrayed. I confronted her, we fought, and I killed her. It was a mistake, however. Her sister, Swarn, who had until then refused to be involved in the matter, joined Malferio and the Oracle to form a new Triumvira. Her power was greater than her sister’s. They cast me out together.”
“The Shade, was it Charlie?” asked Eliza, amazed by this tale.
“Of course,” said Nia. “He left Tian Xia when I did, vowing never to go back, and he was very useful indeed until he decided to help you.”
“Poor Charlie,” said Eliza. “I didnay know.” Her eyes strayed again to the vial around Nia’s neck.
“You’d never get it from me,” said Nia, very gently. “You know that.”
“I know,” said Eliza.
“Come here, Smidgen,” said Nia. The dinner table was gone. They were on a sofa before the fire. Eliza found herself in Nia’s arms, resting her head against her shoulder, breathing in the warmth and sweetness of her skin while Nia’s fingers traced through her hair, gently working out the tangles. She could not remember her mother holding her as a baby. Her experience of comfort had always been masculine, her father’s broad chest and strong arms, the smell of smoke and sweat. This feeling was entirely different, and intoxicating. Full of food and wine, in the arms of this woman, she felt soothed to a sort of half-sleep.
“It’s been a long day,” said Nia.
Indeed, it was hard to believe what had happened in a single day. The trek through the ice, the awful tension, the changing city, discovering her father and then her mother, her near escape and the despair that followed, all these things flowed through Eliza’s mind and she was relieved, at last, to have come to the end of her journey. She had done what she had set out to do. Her father was safe, and so was her mother. Charlie was all right. Nell was safe in Holburg. She would stay here, now, with the Sorceress. They would do the things Nia had said, like ride horses, and she would drink wine and coffee every day. There was no need to struggle anymore, no need to be afraid or lonely, no more moving from place to place, no more, nothing more. All her life had led her here.
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