“No. I spose he’s a new...development.”
“Why do you sound like that?”
“Like what?”
“The way you sound – ‘He seems...nice. He’s a new...development.’ ”
“It’s just...surprising.”
“Yes. That’s what it is, aye. Surprising.”
They sat in the wardrobe a minute longer, until Charlie said, “Why are we still sitting in here?”
Eliza got the giggles and they pushed the doors open and scrambled out. At noon, Nell burst in with some lunch for them.
“By the Ancients, they’re piling on the tests before Winter Festival!” she groaned, flopping onto the bed. “Were you two horrendously bored, cooped up here all morning?”
“We kept ourselves entertained, lah,” said Charlie. “I turned into a river goblin to scare the cleaner. That was fun.”
“You didnay,” Nell grinned. “And I wouldnay have approved if you had. Esta is my source of insider gossip. Now, I need to talk to Eliza privately for a minute.”
She looked pointedly at Charlie, who stared back at her, confused.
“Could you leave the room, please?” said Nell politely. “Just for a minute.”
“What for?” asked Charlie.
Nell sighed in exasperation. “Just wait in the hall.” She slid off the bed and shoved Charlie towards the door. He looked shocked but didn’t protest, stepping out into the hallway and staring in at them. “Just stay there,” said Nell, shutting the door on him. She turned back towards Eliza with a huge smile.
“Lah, I have a present for you,” she said, and pulled a little parcel of pink paper out from under her bed.
“Thanks,” said Eliza, unwrapping it. Inside were two crisp white bras with lace flowers on the straps. “Oh!” she exclaimed.
“You need them, aye,” said Nell matter-of-factly. “I spec between the Mancers in the Citadel and your parents in the desert, nobody thinks of these things for you. Does your mother remember things like bras?”
“I dinnay think my underwear is high on anyone’s list of priorities,” said Eliza dryly. She should have been expecting something like this. It was Nell she’d turned to for supplies when she started menstruating, feeling quite unable to ask the Mancers.
“Good thing you have me,” said Nell, pleased with herself. “Somebody who actually lives in the world! Try one on.”
It was impossible to be self-conscious with Nell. Eliza took off the tie and shirt and awkwardly put the bra on. Nell did it up swiftly at the back.
“Better. I knew it would be the right size. How does it feel?”
“Sort of constricting,” said Eliza. She put the shirt back on and fumbled with the buttons.
“You’ll be grateful next time you have to run down a flight of stairs,” said Nell. “And you’ll get used to them, aye. Here, put this one away and I’ll let Charlie back in.”
Eliza stuffed the other bra hastily into her skirt pocket and shoved the paper back under the bed. Nell bounced over to the door and threw it open. Charlie was standing in the hall with his arms folded, frowning.
“Come in,” said Nell grandly.
“What was all that about?” he demanded.
Nell gave him a look. “Dinnay you know what private means, Charlie?”
He ignored her and sat down on the bed with Eliza, who quickly did up her tie. To avoid his gaze, she picked up the book on Nell’s bedside table.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Physics,” said Nell. “It’s one of my stronger subjects, but the Mentor really seems like he’s trying to trip us up in the tests.”
“I should get you to tutor me a bit, aye,” said Eliza. “I dinnay learn any of this kind of thing anymore. I’m going to grow up knowing lots about Magic and nothing about anything else.”
“Lah, I think you’ll probably survive without Wennot’s Sixth Law,” said Nell.
A bird hit the window suddenly, hard, and fell out of sight. They all jumped.
“How horrible,” said Nell, wincing. “I hope it’s nay badly hurt.”
Eliza was shaken. It had been a large, black bird. “Tell me about Wennot’s Sixth Law,” she said, ignoring the look Charlie was giving her. “See if your physics is as good as you say.”
“It’s one of the laws of motion,” said Nell lazily. “Equal and opposite force, aye. It’s why we dinnay float off into space or fall through the ground, for one thing. If you go and push on that wall, it will meet whatever force you push against it with an equal and opposite force and nothing will happen. You press your hand against the wall, aye, but the wall is also pressing against your hand with the same amount of force, in the opposite direction. Neither you nor the wall will give way.”
“But if she uses Magic something will happen,” said Charlie. “She could conjure a door between your room and the next, just like that, nay, Eliza?”
“P’raps,” said Eliza.
“Of course you could!” said Charlie. “You’re excellent at making doors! You should have seen how great she was getting into that creep’s house!”
“Aye, tell me about that!” cried Nell. “So much more interesting than Wennot and his laws of motion!”
They became so absorbed in their conversation about Abimbola Broom and eating their lunches that the ruckus outside had been going on for quite a while before they became properly aware of it. Charlie suddenly leaped off the large bed with its quilt embroidered with the school logo and went to the window. The girls became aware of the yelling and cawing outside as he did so. They followed him to the window and the three of them stood and stared.
The grounds were covered with ravens, black as ink on the white snow. They were on the ground, in the trees, all over the wall and the gate, hundreds of them, cawing furiously. Students were shouting and pointing and a few teachers were waving sticks at the ravens to try and frighten them away but the ravens were not in the least frightened. One raven flew past the window, looked straight at Eliza, and opened its beak in what was almost a scream. Then all the ravens took to the air en masse, swirling before the window like a dark tornado, shrieking and cawing.
“What by the Ancients is going on?” whispered Nell.
“I dinnay know,” said Eliza hollowly. She turned away from the window and covered her ears. Charlie drew the curtains firmly.
The noise continued all day, with ravens covering the roof of the school as well, as Nell reported later. Charlie and Eliza left under cover of dark, promising Nell they would see her again soon. The mob of ravens followed them like a black cloud through the night sky, cawing, from Kalla all the way to the Karbek Mountains, the longest mountain range in Di Shang and home of the volcano Harata.
Chapter
~4~
As the sun rolled up over the horizon, Foss knelt in his chamber and let his mind slip into the morning trance with the ease of long habit. Waiting for him as always was the black crab on the dark, wet sand. The crab scuttled up the sand, away from the water, to where five blackened, twisted stones stood upright, stretching towards the sky. The crab moved among them sideways, his black fore-claws waving and snapping. Although the sky was clear, the air tasted heavy with rain. Beyond these stones were more stones and they grew taller and more plentiful until he found himself in the midst of a forest of black stones, tortured and charred like lumps of cooled lava. He could feel how they strained from within. There came then a deep cracking sound from all around and the stones splintered and fell away. At the core of each was a Mancer, unmoving, silent. They stared out with sightless eyes and then slowly, slowly twisted and darkened into stones once again. The sky groaned deeply and seams appeared in the blue. Something dark as blood began to seep through and spill downwards in smoky threads. With his claw, the crab wrote in the sand, Kyreth does not trust you, then fled back towards the sea.
Foss opened his eyes and sighed. This was hardly news to him. When Eliza fled the Citadel two and a half years ago, Foss had spent a short time in th
e dungeons for letting her go (colluding with her, they’d called it – a bit of a stretch but he had not tried to defend himself) and he had been threatened with expulsion. The power of the Mancers was uniform, interwoven, and dissent was dealt with harshly. Even though he had been officially restored to his position as Spellmaster upon Eliza’s demand, he was shut out of the inner workings of the Citadel, no longer invited to important meetings. If he went to Kyreth and told him of today’s trance, omitting the coda of course, how would Kyreth interpret it? It was an unsettling vision, and once he would have reported it immediately. But today he decided to keep it to himself until he understood it better. If something were much amiss he would not be the only one to have sensed it.
The gong rang and he left his chambers, joining the manipulators of water filing out of the north wing and across the grounds towards the Inner Sanctum. They took their places and, when Aysu gave her command, the manipulators of water began to call upon the power of the seas and the rains. Anargul gave the same command and the manipulators of wood began to call upon the trees that covered the earth. Then Ka called out his command and the manipulators of fire called upon the interior of the earth, the sun and the stars. Trahaearn called out and the manipulators of metal called upon the ore that flowed in the veins of the earth. At last Obrad called out and the manipulators of earth called upon the Earth itself. Foss felt within him the deep, eternal pull of the ocean, vast and secretive. He felt the gathering of rain and the swift rushing journey of rivers making their way from the mountains to the sea. There was something in this too large to be called joy but it was a kind of joy nonetheless. In a single voice they spoke the old words, made themselves conduits for the forces of water, and the power that was drawn into them was pushed out again as Magic. Now it was for Kyreth and the Emmisariae to guide this Magic to its purpose. Kyreth had already begun the lengthy and difficult recitation of the Sperre-Tahora, the Barrier Incantation. Foss lent his entire will, his very self, to the task of channeling the Magic, and in his mind the ever-moving, overlapping layers of the Xia Sorceress’s prison came into view.
He had once tried to explain to Eliza, as a sort of Deep Math lesson, the structure of this prison. It was largely his own design and he was prouder of it than of anything he had ever done. A single barrier, no matter how strong, would eventually fall before the Magical onslaught of a Sorceress as powerful as Nia. Instead, they had created a multi-layered series of barriers, not merely flat walls but grids and spirals and cones, an infinitely complex maze that was never still, each piece following its own pre-determined rotation. At the centre of all this was the approximately fifty square feet in which the Arctic Sorceress had lived for twelve years. She had of course sent spells of seeking into what gaps she could find, to try to unlock the secrets of the maze, but there was no way out. The Sorceress’s seeking spells were lost in the continuing orbit and infinitely varied geometric patterns of the barriers. It was indeed a thing of beauty. It was, Foss believed, a mathematical perfection.
This daily task of strengthening the barriers had become more critical and also more taxing since the Sorceress had used Eliza to steal the Book of Barriers. While her thousands of seeking spells swirled and eddied, lost among the barriers, she began to make holes. Even with the Magic outlined in the Book of Barriers, she could only make a hole in one layer at a time and, because of the complexity and constant movement of the barriers, this did her little good. The layers shifted levels and slid to and fro, so that a hole she made in the layer nearest to her might soon be lost somewhere near the centre of the barriers, entirely inaccessible, useless.
However, the Mancers knew better than to underestimate the Sorceress. They were concerned by the holes. They sealed up as many as they could and added continually to the barriers. Foss had mapped out the Sorceress’s efforts on charts in the Library and often pored over them with Kyreth or Aysu late into the night, trying to determine a pattern. Her choices seemed to be entirely random. It was possible she was simply trying to alarm and distract them, to waste their power in patching holes while she worked some other Great Magic to bring down the barriers. But strong as she was, the barriers of the Mancers were nigh unbreakable. Today, as every day, with the four directions of the compass and the five elements they drew upon, the Mancers poured all their power into the task of strengthening and rebuilding the barriers, protecting themselves and the worlds from the most dangerous foe they had ever known.
In the afternoon, Foss was summoned to speak with Kyreth. The Spellmaster was surprised and more than a little apprehensive. Kyreth spoke to Foss rarely these days and only to lay out Eliza’s curriculum. He stood before the Supreme Mancer stiffly while Kyreth looked down at his marble desktop.
“Eliza left yesterday,” said Kyreth.
Foss wasn’t sure if this was a question or a statement. He said nothing.
“How does she seem to you?” asked Kyreth.
“Much as usual,” said Foss, taken aback by the question and the apparent sincerity with which the Supreme Mancer asked it. “She is diligent and makes good progress considering how late she has come to this. Her natural ability is not remarkable, for a Sorceress, but I think it is sufficient.”
“I am referring to her manner. How does her manner seem to you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I am concerned. She seems unstable to me. She is a deeply angry child, do you not think?”
“I think...” Foss paused before continuing, unsure of how blunt he should be. “I cannot claim to be an expert on human girls but I do not think she is unusual. She is fourteen years old and grew up without the discipline of her foremothers. What may strike you as excessive belligerence or even anger is, I believe, a result of ordinary adolescent turmoil. Not altogether ordinary, of course. She misses her father. Her life is anything but normal. But the attitude you refer to should not, I think, concern us unduly. She will outgrow it.”
“And what do you think of her killing the Cra?”
“I do not weep for them.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“Where did she learn to kill? You left her at the mercy of a hound of the Crossing once. That was her first kill, was it not?”
Kyreth looked annoyed. “It was a test, and a necessary one at that. But self-defense is not the same as hunting. She has no self-control; she is too emotional. Anger drives her and she acts, pity drives her and she acts. She comes and goes as she wishes, she makes imperious demands of us. How are we to impress upon her the importance of her duty? Of restraint?”
“It is difficult for her,” said Foss. “She was not raised among us. If you are asking me for advice, I can only say I believe she is doing her best and requires our patience.”
Kyreth did not look satisfied but he nodded his head.
“Thank you, Spellmaster. I wished to hear your honest opinion and you have given it. She trusts you, I can see. You have great influence with her.”
Foss laughed dryly. “I think it is an exaggeration to say I have any influence.”
“She listens to you. She respects you. Tell me, have you ever spoken to her on the matter of an heir?”
Foss was quiet for a moment and then said simply, “She is still too young.”
“I realize that. I am not saying she should be married now. Only that it is best she be prepared.”
“We have not spoken of it,” Foss replied.
“When she returns, I hope you will speak with her,” said Kyreth. “We cannot risk another debacle such as Rea’s marriage. You may go, Spellmaster. Chart the new holes in the Barrier and inform me immediately if anything worries you.”
Foss hesitated, wondering if he should tell Kyreth what he had seen in his trance. But Kyreth was already turning away from him, towards the Scrolls, and so he bowed and left the study, saying nothing.
~~~
Di Shang was pockmarked with secret, hidden points of entry and exit to the Crossing, that mystical divide between the worlds. There were ga
ps in the atmosphere that led not into space but to the Crossing, so high up in the sky that they were not, as Charlie put it, human-friendly. There were other entries through boiling vents at the bottom of the ocean. There were whirlpools in rivers that might leave a drowning human or animal stranded on the shore of the Crossing, unable to go back. The Mancers maintained their own access to the Crossing through the dark wood of the Citadel but, of course, Eliza could not use that one without their knowing. The safest way was through certain volcanoes. Harata was a land-locked volcano, several hours east of Kalla. It was a dark red, towering hulk of a mountain, flat on top where its peak had exploded centuries ago.
The flight there was made horribly stressful by the trail of ravens pouring after them. Eliza could not shut out their ugly voices. She buried her hands and her face in the feathers of Charlie’s neck and willed the journey to be over. When they reached the great lava beds of the volcano, the gryphon did not pause for an instant. He headed straight for the crater and plunged into a vent barely wide enough for his wingspan. The ravens did not follow further but circled and swarmed around the mountaintop. Eliza clung to the gryphon’s neck as they shot through the darkness and heat. He landed on a sharp lip of rock that hung over a pool of steaming water and became a boy.
“Do your mojo,” he said, breathless.
Eliza nodded and struggled to regain her composure. Even without the pursuit of the ravens, entry into this volcano was harrowing and working Magic afterwards was not easy. It was a law known to all who crossed over that something of great personal value must be given to the Boatman. Only beings of great power could command him. Eliza was the Shang Sorceress and so she ought to be able to command the Boatman, but so far the Boatman did not agree.
In the utter blackness of the cave, a white misty boat began to form. Eliza called to it in the Language of First Days, “My power spans the worlds and that between the worlds, my power spans the skies and seas of Tian Di, my power is undivided. Where I walk is the ground and what I speak is the truth. The tide will come to me when I beckon, the moon will sink when I point to the horizon. Here I demand a bridge, here where I stand, here I call upon the Boatman of the Crossing, passage to be mine.”
The Unmaking: The Last Days of Tian Di, Book Two Page 5
