The Unmaking: The Last Days of Tian Di, Book Two

by Egan, Catherine

  Eliza was not feeling very well either. She steadied herself with a hand on the half-hunter’s shaggy arm. The destruction happening here, the erasing of thousands of years of lore and history, was unthinkable.

  “Are you frightened?” asked Nia sympathetically. “Fear is so unpleasant, isn’t it? I believe it’s the worst sensation there is and it’s best to banish it altogether. If you fear nothing, you’re truly free. As long as you’re afraid, everything requires courage, and courage is an exhausting thing to maintain.”

  Eliza gripped her dagger tighter with her right hand.

  “Get on with it, aye,” she said. “Whatever you’re going to try to do to me, stop talking and just do it.”

  Nia laughed aloud at that. “Quite the teenage attitude you’ve developed,” she said incredulously. “Well, Smidgen, if you’re so impatient, I won’t bore you any longer. I could just turn you to stone like the Mancers or shut you up in a barrier while I take care of my other business, but I have far too much respect for you to do anything so prosaic. Instead, I’ve spent a great deal of time and energy making something very special just for you, something to challenge that sharp little brain of yours. Would you like to see it?”

  “Show me,” said Eliza.

  Nia tipped her head back and opened her mouth wide. Suddenly it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. A dark shape was crawling out of Nia’s mouth. It grew larger as it emerged, expanding and stretching, massive limbs reaching for the ground. It kept coming from somewhere inside her, a mass of darkness and flame, until it landed on smoking hooves, towering over Eliza. She took in curling horns, a myriad of spiked arms, the powerful thighs and hooves of a horse. Charred flesh flamed and smouldered around a colossal skeleton broken in too many places to count. Its eye-sockets burned in a face like molten rock and its immense wings were black and veined with fire. The hideous thing let out a roar that left cracks in the walls and showcased the bright white of its ribcage between the broken, burnt flesh. Then it lunged at Eliza. A part of Eliza that was faster than sight or sound spoke a barrier spell. It was a feeble barrier and the spiked fists scraped along it and tore it open but it gave Eliza just enough time to dodge its grasp and drive her dagger into its side. Lava poured out over her dagger. Before she could cry out for Charlie to stop, the half-hunter drove both his swords into the beast and made for its throat with his teeth. He emitted a strangled airless howl as lava poured down his face and the thing drove its razor- sharp spikes into his chest. The half-hunter crashed to the ground while Nia applauded from her vantage point on the pile of books. Eliza pulled her dagger out of the beast’s side, stumbling back, lungs bursting. The monstrous thing left its two foes on the floor and bounded to a tall window at the back of the Library, crashing through it and taking flight, black wings beating hard and trailing sparks behind him. Once he was gone, Eliza found herself able to take a breath. It was like emerging from the sea after diving too deep. She couldn’t gulp the air back fast enough.

  “Isn’t he horrible!” exclaimed Nia, delighted. “I don’t like to brag, but I am brilliant, aren’t I? Do you know where he’s going now, Smidgen?”

  And Eliza knew, with a heart-plunging-into-the-stomach kind of knowing, that everything was about to get even worse.

  “He’ll stop in a few towns on the way and smash everyone in sight to bits,” said Nia cheerfully, “just to cause a bit of a sensation. I want people to know I’m back, you see, and this is the sort of thing they expect from me. But those destructive little jaunts will just be detours. He’s going to the desert, to find your lovely mother. He’s drawn to her, like a magnet to metal, and his one desire in this world is to tear her limb from limb.”

  Eliza felt a pounding behind her temples. Nia was watching her with a curious little smile. She crawled across the floor to where the wounded half-hunter lay panting in weak gasps.

  “Are you badly hurt?” she asked.

  He struggled back into human form, and Eliza saw the nature of the wound on his chest. He was not bleeding in the ordinary way. He was leaking a sort of shimmering interplay of dark and light, his true form.

  “Oh, Charlie,” she whispered, her heart contracting painfully.

  Nia rolled her eyes and, bored now her creature was gone, picked up another book.

  “I’ll be all right,” Charlie managed to say.

  Eliza nodded. There was no time to waste. She had to go after the thing, but it was obvious Charlie was too badly hurt to carry her or engage in any kind of further battle. She took the potion Swarn had given her out of her pocket.

  “Drink this,” she said, putting it to his lips.

  “You might need it,” he said faintly, turning his head aside. “It’s really nay...that bad, Eliza.”

  “Stop it.” She forced the mouthpiece between his lips and poured the thick mixture into his throat. He coughed and sputtered, but swallowed most of it.

  “Disgusting,” he gasped when it was done. “Like kissing a giant.”

  “Now you’ve got to get out of here,” she said urgently. “Go, Charlie. Please.”

  “I willnay...” he began, and rolled onto his side.

  “She’s nay going to hurt me right now,” said Eliza. “I’ll get one of the dragons, aye. But you have to go first. Please.”

  “Dinnay go after it on your own, Eliza,” said Charlie weakly, getting to his knees. “Get help. Get Swarn.”

  “Yes. And you fly clear, hide somewhere.” Her voice cracked with desperation.

  “Poor Smidgen,” commented Nia. “Everything always seems so complicated for you. Too many attachments, that’s your real problem. It makes you such an easy target.”

  Charlie began to change again as the shadow and light leaked from him. Wings strained from his back and his face lengthened into a great beak as he became a gryphon again. He limped across the battlefield of scattered books for the broken window, then looked back at Eliza over his shoulder. Nia was busy emptying another book and ignored them. She tossed it aside. Thunk.

  Eliza gave a last look at Foss, frozen at the side of the room with his arms up in defense, and a powerful surge of anger pulsed through her, banishing all else.

  “I’m going to kill that thing,” she told Nia. “And then I’ll come back for you.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t kill it, if I were you,” said Nia breezily, picking up another book. Eliza lingered by the hole in the wall long enough to see Charlie take to the air, then turned and ran.

  “Good luck, Smidgen!” Nia called after her.

  Chapter

  ~7~

  She took the stairs three at a time and burst out into the grounds. If she was right and the Emmisariae had already left, perhaps to seek her out in the desert, there might not be a dragon for her to escape on, but with the help of Swarn’s potion Charlie would at least be able to fly to safety. She held the crystal around her neck in her fist and muttered as she ran, “Kyreth, help me, help me, help me!” Light poured out of it between her fingers. It became so hot she had to let go of it. It slowly dimmed and cooled again. There was no sign that her call had been heard.

  She knew the dragons were kept in caverns beneath the Inner Sanctum and so she entered it a second time. There were several chambers branching off from the main hall, many of which were the private chambers of the manipulators of earth. Above one narrow doorway the characters were carved into the marble: Hall of the Dragon. Eliza entered the room. It was bare and plain but for a single pentagonal flagstone on the floor, which bore a mosaic dragon. Eliza knelt before it and tried to think what to do. She knew a few simple opening spells, but she doubted they would be much good in a place as deeply enchanted as the Mancer Citadel. She tried muttering them anyway. As she had expected, the dragon flagstone did not budge. She laid her hands on it and tried to use force but that was equally useless. A sense of her own powerlessness began to creep over her. She shook it away. Now was not the time to lose confidence. She knew another way into the caverns. She had gotten los
t in the dungeons with Nell a long time ago. They had smelled the dragons down there.

  Eliza ran across the grounds back to the north wing, wondering if Nia was watching her. As soon as she entered the dungeons she was assailed by the abominable stench of the Cra. She could hear their sickening hissing and lip-smacking. They were still held by the Mancers’ barriers but they knew something was happening. She was glad of the darkness, glad to be spared the sight of them at least. Keeping one hand to the cold wall she ran through the maze of corridors, trying to remember her way. She was too frantic to manage a seeking spell or a light and had been going in circles for a while before she felt a gust of cool air and realized one of the larger caverns must be nearby. Once she found it, it was easy – a straight run back towards the Inner Sanctum underground. Halfway there the cavern forked in two and she went to the left, slowing down at the smell of sulfur.

  Eliza tightened her grip on the hilt of her dagger. She knew very little about dragons, in fact. She knew they were highly intelligent and deadly. She knew they were impervious to most kinds of simple Magic. She knew they lived a very long time and were not easily mastered. The Mancer dragons were not as vicious as the wild dragons of the cliffs of Batt that obeyed Swarn but their loyalty was to the Mancers and she did not know how they would react to her. The dragon claw that served her as a dagger should, according to Swarn, enable her to command dragons, but she had never put this to the test.

  She could feel their hot breath and hear the scraping of their metallic scales as they moved in the darkness. The sulfur of their breath stung her nostrils. She did not know the language of dragons, so she spoke in the Language of First Days and hoped they understood.

  “Great beings,” she began nervously, “I am the ward of the Mancers. I have –” and then she bumped up against something hard and screamed, leaping back. It was as if she’d run into the wall, but it wasn’t a wall. She reached out and touched it. It was stone, a tall figure; she felt an arm, a hand. Her heart sank. She moved about the cavern slowly, feeling for more statues, and she found them. Five. The Emmisariae. They must have been planning to go the desert to find her when Nia froze them thus. But where was the Supreme Mancer? Had he heard her plea for help?

  “Great Dragon,” she said again in a high, thin voice. She could feel one of the massive beasts very nearby. “If you are willing to take me where I need to go, come with me to the Door.”

  Even as she said it, she realized she did not know the spells to open the vast iron door. There was no other way that she knew of for the dragons to get out. Charlie had gone. Suppose she was trapped here, with Nia and the Cra and the army of stone Mancers? Fear spread through her stomach, a cold sick ripple. But she began to walk back down the tunnel anyway and a hiss of smoke soared over her head. She heard the grating sound of scale on scale as more than one dragon lumbered to its feet, and the crash of claws on the stone floor of the cavern. They were coming with her. Not turning around, she walked back to the turn she had taken earlier and carried on straight. To her immense relief, the massive door at the end of the tunnel swung open with a groan as they approached, revealing a bright square of daylight. She did not know if it was the dragons performing this Magic, or even Nia sending her off on her quest, but it didn’t matter. Eliza turned, and now she could see the dragons filling the cavern. The one nearest to her was staring at her intently, its head hanging low to the ground. Each of its gleaming, kaleidoscopic eyes was the size of her head.

  “May I...get on?” she asked nervously. The dragon stared. She walked around its head, noting the steam that furled from its pulsing nostrils and the teeth like sabers curving over its powerful jawbone. Its neck was long and serpentine, gold-spiked. She placed a cautious hand at the base of its neck, just before it broadened out into muscled, scaled shoulders. On one of the scales she noticed a mark that seemed to have been branded on to it. It was the character for fire.

  “You’re Ka’s dragon,” said Eliza.

  The dragon lifted its head ever so slightly, looking back at her, waiting. So she put her dagger away and took hold of one of the gold spikes with both hands. She braced her left foot against the creature’s neck and heaved herself up and over, so she was seated at the base of the neck, between spikes, her back against the one behind her, holding on to the one ahead of her. As soon as she was settled, the dragon lumbered towards that square of light. The Mancer Citadel could move from place to place in Di Shang but for some years now it had been perched on the edge of a cliff in the arid plains approaching the Western Ocean. The door opened onto a dizzying drop into a canyon. The dragon leaped through the open door, joyfully stretched out its huge wings and pounded the air. The other dragons, letting out sharp, whistling screams, followed close behind. All five of them, including the dragon that carried Eliza, swooped down into the canyon and soared back up, embracing the wind and spitting fire. Unlike the wild dragons Swarn commanded, these dragons spent most of their time in a dark cavern. No wonder the open sky seemed to bring them such delight. Eliza, too, felt a great release in leaving the conquered Citadel behind. A part of her wanted only to go and hide or return to Tian Xia and beg Swarn for protection as Charlie had told her to. But she knew Nia was not lying when she said the monster she had made was going to find Eliza’s mother. There was no time to go to Tian Xia, and hiding was not an option. It was not only her mother she had to protect. She was the Shang Sorceress. If the Mancers were all turned to stone there was only her to stop the thing before it hurt anyone. Nia knew her well and had created the perfect distraction.

  As these thoughts raced through her mind, something struck her like a thunderbolt – created. I’ve made something special, Nia had said. Eliza couldn’t be sure that the thing was not Illusion but if Nia thought Eliza might have Faery blood with which to defend herself against Illusion it seemed unlikely she would rely on it. The ravens had warned her about Nia’s coming and about Making. Could it be that Nia had in fact Made a monster, just as that long ago wizard had Made the mortal dragons? If the thing was not an Illusion, what else could it be?

  At her command, the dragons veered south over the parched earth. She kept an eye out for Charlie but did not see him and tried not to worry. Unlike her mother and all the people in the border towns between here and the desert, Charlie could take care of himself. He was a survivor, she told herself. The dragons dove in formation. Soon Eliza saw what they had seen. Nia’s creature was flying low to the ground in an odd sort of zig-zag, roaring occasionally.

  Eliza kept the Onbeweglich Cord always looped at the back of her coat. They had been a birthday present from Foss. While Foss had no doubt been right that it was excessive to use such powerful bonds on Abimbola Broom, they would be useful now. If Nia had Made this creature, then perhaps catching and killing it would hurt her in some way. Two of the dragons were making for it at a terrifying speed. When they were almost upon it they each spat a long blade of fire straight into it. The creature seemed to draw the flames into itself, absorbing the fire into its burning body, trailing flames through the air and burning even more brightly in the seams and cracks between its seared flesh. Eliza’s dragon stayed above the others to give her a good view of what was happening. Fire would be of no use, obviously. The thing was already on fire; it was half made of fire. A third dragon dove into the thing and made to tear it apart with its vicious talons. The talons cut right through the monster but could not pull it apart. It was bonded tight by something else, something not physical. The burning flesh and bright, visible bone was severed in so many places and yet everything remained in place as if held together by some internal gravity. They had been flying low and the dragon hurled the burning beast to the ground. It tumbled and rolled and then rose upright with another roar, wings flexing. It was a roar of such unrelenting agony and rage that Eliza’s heart clenched and a sob rose to her throat. Another dragon made a pass over its head. The beast leaped into the air and scraped its spiked fists against the scales of the dragon’s belly. The dra
gon screamed and pounded its wings, rising out of reach, but the thing moved with it and drove several fists at once right into its chest. The other dragons all made for the thing at once and it fell away from them, spinning in flames as they breathed great balls of fire onto it. The hurt dragon crashed to the ground and threw its head back with a hideous scream. The monster was upon it in no time, slashing at its neck, and had to be pulled off by the three others while Ka’s dragon circled anxiously overhead with Eliza on its back. What Eliza saw below her was a simple stalemate. The dragons were faster and stronger and outnumbered Nia’s creation but the thing had one very clear advantage – it seemed to be indestructible. The dragons could tear it to pieces but it was already torn to pieces. They could burn it with fire but it was already burning. How could they destroy destruction embodied? They could delay it and hold it off but until they understood how it had been Made they could not kill it.

  The hurt dragon was spitting blood now, thrashing its wings with rage. But Eliza knew enough from Swarn’s tales of dragon-killing to know it was not near death yet.

  “Down,” Eliza told Ka’s dragon and he dove straight for the raging beast. As they approached, she felt her breath drawn out of her, the air growing hot and thin and then unbreathable. This was not like killing the Cra. She could not make an error here. She gave herself over to her Deep Knowing, whirled the Onbeweglich Cord over her head and let them fly, holding one end in her hand. The lasso at the other end looped neatly over the monster’s neck and Eliza pulled it fast. The dragon circled the thing at breakneck speed and Eliza wound the Cord around it. She had it, bound fast. But just as soon as she felt a surge of triumph the thing began to burn brighter inside, bleeding lava out between its cracks. It strained and strained and twisted and then burst free of the Cord, leaving the Magic rope she had used to lasso so many of the Cra in tatters. Ka’s dragon rose quickly out of reach of the thing. It did not pursue them. Eliza drew in a deep shuddering breath of air.