“Charlie!” she called. Charlie looked up at her and broke into a smile. Then his legs gave out beneath him and he collapsed on the lawn.
Chapter
~8~
Kyreth’s hands had, over the course of nearly five centuries, done many things. His hands were credited with keeping the worlds apart. They were hands that could See, hands that could Open, hands that could Destroy. They were conduits for Great Magic and had built the greatest Barriers in the worlds. They were feared by many and respected by all.
Now, his hands were plunged into his marble desk past the wrist so he could not move them. Nia’s white tiger watched him with inscrutable, iridescent eyes through the hole she had smashed in the wall. His mind was clouded by the Confusion. He could not bring his darting, fragmented thoughts together to summon the Magic he needed. He was still, however, the Supreme Mancer. Where other beings and perhaps other Mancers would be utterly lost in such a spell, unable to formulate a single coherent thought, Kyreth struggled mightily to clear his mind. Nia was a fool to leave him alone. If she believed that immobilizing his hands and baffling his mind were enough, she was mistaken. The Confusion sat like a mist over his brain. He needed to burn it off with clarity of thought and then he would be able to free his hands. Remembering who he was and what was happening was easy; maintaining a single train of thought was more difficult. His mind was like a wild horse he had to keep on track as it galloped to and fro. Had the Emmisariae escaped before Nia came? If so, and if they found Eliza first, all might still be well. Those five, with time to prepare and assistance from Tian Xia, would be a match for Nia. He wondered too what Nia was doing, where she was, how the Mancers were faring. He forced all these tangled dissonant thoughts away with a great blaze of energy. For a moment his mind was clear but it was not long enough to release his hands before the cloud converged again and scattered his thoughts in too many directions at once.
To become Supreme Mancer was not an easy thing. It required unusual ability and focus. It required perseverance. Kyreth had these. He did not let the spell take him. He did not become discouraged and allow the Confusion to sweep away his very self like a tidal wave. It had all the inexorable power of the tide coming in but Kyreth could hold off the tide and turn it back. Such was his power. Again, he swept aside the spell. He knew there would be no time to find words to free his hands and so he poured his Magic into force, giving his hands all the strength he could. The desk cracked down the middle, but held his hands fast. The tiger, still and watchful, did not move. Every now and then, the tip of his tail twitched.
Hours passed in struggle. Sweat poured down Kyreth’s face and back. Piece by piece he destroyed the desk.
When Nia returned, he was slumped on the floor in an ungainly fashion, holding his head up with great effort. The desk was in pieces, yet his hands remained encased in blocks of marble still. His eyes were like dying embers, red with hatred. She stepped delicately into the study through the hole in the wall. She had not bothered to conjure any doors, simply tore her way through the Citadel’s walls, and Kyreth longed to warn her that the Citadel had Magic of its own and would not tolerate such treatment without retaliating somehow. But he did not want to risk speaking. He could not be sure what would come out and would not give her the satisfaction of hearing him speak nonsense.
“Guess who I’ve just seen!” said Nia cheerfully, stepping over the ruin of the desk and crouching down before him. “Eliza! Such a treat! She looked very well, I thought. Oh, I know, you’re disappointed, you’d hoped your Emmisariae might get to her first. But they’re even more stuck than you are, you see. And Eliza wasn’t with the Sorma anyway, so they wouldn’t have found her. She’s terribly like her mother, with the lies and rebellion, isn’t she? Shall I tell you where she was? Or can you guess? She’d been in Tian Xia! Keeping in touch with Swarn and the Oracle. Obviously she doesn’t think the Mancers can teach her everything she wants to learn. Clever girl. Oh, I can see you’re very worried now. I’d think it was concern for dear Eliza if I didn’t know you better. She’s fine. I’ve given her something to do that will keep her busy and out of my way for a while. If she’s as bright as I think, it won’t actually get her killed, but she’s rather unpredictable so it’s difficult to say. It should tire her out at the very least. I don’t want her putting up a fight and taking up loads of my time when I get back. Yes, that’s right, we’re going on a trip, Papa! Are you excited? Come on.”
Kyreth was heaved to his feet like a puppet having his strings pulled and the blocks of marble fell away from his hands. At the same moment, the fog lifted from his mind. He stood towering over her with all his power. He knew at that moment that it was hopeless. His Magic was slow and he was alone. He was no match for her alone. Not anymore. She looked him in the eyes, waiting, with a slight smile, for him to understand how helpless he was, how little she feared him.
“It is me you want,” he said hollowly. “Do your worst but let Eliza and the Mancers be. Return to Tian Xia and they will not pursue you.”
“Such egotism!” said Nia. “It’s true I’ve something particular in mind for you, Papa, given our long history, but I’ve no reason to harbour warm and fuzzy feelings for those that did your bidding. No, the Mancers must pay for what they participated in, and as for Eliza, she’s far more mine than yours. You like to think you’re protecting her but the truth is we both want to make use of her power. My way is more efficient, that’s all. If you could do what I can, you would. Don’t pretend otherwise. There is no moral high ground between you and me, and justice doesn’t interest me, but retribution does. Now, tell me,” and she stepped closer to him, touched a hand to his cheek, “when I was just a little girl, did you ever look at me and fear, even for a second, that I might be stronger than you one day and demand retribution?”
Kyreth said nothing.
“You didn’t, did you?” whispered Nia. “It never even occurred to you. Such arrogance! Of course, you were very young then, hardly older than humans live to be. And so ambitious! You always wanted to be the Supreme Mancer. As soon as you were made an Emmisarius, free to leave the Citadel on your very own shiny dragon, you had plans. Yes, I know. But how did you think it would turn out? Did you really imagine you could woo my mother, that she would fall in love with you and willingly bear you a child? You weren’t chosen to father the Shang Sorceress back then but you thought you would single-handedly take over the line of the Xia Sorceress. So what did my mother say to you when you propositioned her? Do you remember what her face was like? Did she laugh? Did she spit on you?”
Nia circled Kyreth slowly then grabbed his face between her two hands, pulling it down towards her own face.
“It must have been terrible,” she hissed, her eyes inches from his. “Whatever she said or did, it must have cut you so deeply. And did you imagine that the child she bore unwillingly, cursing it in her womb, would be a true and loyal daughter to you? Did you think that? Or perhaps you only thought you would always be strong enough to keep me in check.” She squeezed his head harder and shook it, then pressed her forehead to his. “But you were wrong, you were so wrong every time. You were wrong to think my mother could love you. You were wrong to think you could take by force what she would not give. You were wrong to think I would be the daughter you hoped for. And you were wrong, Papa, to think I would never be strong enough to make you pay.”
With that she hurled him to the ground so he lay gasping amid the rubble of his desk. For a moment she stood over him, breathing hard. Then she leaned over and pulled him up by his arm.
“Come on.”
The Sorceress and the Supreme Mancer crossed the grounds together, the white tiger loping ahead of them. They could see five bright specks in the southern sky.
“There goes Eliza with your dragons,” said Nia. “Good for her. She’ll figure out soon enough what I’ve made for her but if I know our Eliza she won’t just give up. Do you know how I sent her hopping off that way? I threatened Rea. Such a loyal chil
d, isn’t she! But you don’t know what that’s like, of course. What is it that makes your daughters despise you?”
“Do not speak for Rea,” said Kyreth. The words tasted of gunpowder in his mouth.
“Oh yes, your dutiful daughter Rea. But she wasn’t keen on your choice of husband for her, was she? I don’t imagine you were invited to her wedding with Rom. Oh, and then she did everything she could to keep your grandchild from you! Why do you suppose that is?”
“Rea is my true daughter,” Kyreth said. He could not bid himself be quiet.
“Oooh, your true daughter!” cried Nia. They were almost at the dark wood. “Do you mean as opposed to me? What kind of daughter am I, then?”
“You are a perversion,” said Kyreth. “A twisted and evil thing. A mistake.”
Nia spun and took his throat in her hand, driving him to his knees at the edge of the wood. He choked for breath. The tiger circled them, tail lashing. Nia held him there for several minutes. The world began to shrink and spin and go black. Then she let go and he fell face-first to the grass, gasping for air.
“I came into the world,” said Nia in a voice sharp and glittering as a newly forged blade, “helpless and misused. I made myself the greatest Sorceress that has ever lived, one of the most powerful beings in all of Tian Di. You will see how powerful I am, Papa, and then you will be proud of your little girl.”
She turned and strode into the dark wood. Her Magic dragged him after her on his belly. Many-legged things scuttled over him and the low branches scratched his face. Soon they were on that silver shore and the Boatman emerged from the mist. Kyreth struggled to his feet.
The Boatman faced Nia. “Great Magic bars you from Crossing,” he said in that voice like a blade scraping china. “I cannot take you.”
“But you can, ghoul,” said Nia. “And you shall.”
She raised her hands. There came a flash so bright that Kyreth was blinded. The shore and the water and the line of dark trees were erased. There was only a white brilliance and the Language of First Days rolling across it like thunder, words of terrible power, as old as time. When Kyreth came to himself, the boat hung in a dazzling void and he was on it. Nia stood at the fore of the boat, whispering now, and her whispers were like wind in the sails, driving them through light into light, until the whiteness rushed upwards, blurring and thickening into a mist, and the sea emerged from it beneath them. She had broken the Magic that barred her from Tian Xia.
“There is an island between the worlds,” said Nia to the Boatman, a little breathless. “You know where it is, for it was created by this being in the boat with me. Long ago, you took him there many times and took him away again. But you would not take me away when I begged you to. I had to learn to command you. Do you remember, Boatman?”
“I remember,” said the Boatman.
“Take us there now.”
Kyreth lay in the boat and gazed into the white mist that obscured everything. It was still possible that the Triumvira would stop Nia in Tian Xia but would they help the Mancers then? The alliances were fragile; he could not count on them. He shut his eyes and rested. He would need his strength for what was coming. He slept. In his dreams he saw again and again a golden-haired girl, green eyes full of loathing, backing away from him as he moved towards her.
“Papa.” Nia’s voice was soft in his ear. “We’re here.”
Though he could see nothing through the heavy white mist, Kyreth felt the stone tower he had built himself on a black wedge of rock he had called out of the water. What a day that had been, the exhiliration, for the first time testing the extent of his own power. He could hear the hounds of the Crossing baying all around the tower.
They disembarked, stepping onto the wet rock they could not see, for even their bodies were lost in the mist. Only Kyreth’s eyes were visible, as the sun sometimes is on a foggy day, a haze of flame.
“Here is where my mother threw herself into the sea after you took me away from her,” said Nia.
Kyreth shook his head and then remembered Nia could barely see him. “She did not want to raise you any more than she wanted to live,” he said hoarsely. “I bound her with barriers throughout her pregnancy, kept her here, for your protection only.”
“Barriers,” said Nia in disgust. “This mist still makes me nauseous, centuries later, would you believe! Anyway, I haven’t brought you here to avenge my mother. I never knew her and it was her own fool fault if she was too weak to take revenge and decided she preferred drowning instead. No, Papa, you’re here because of what you did to me. Up we go.”
Kyreth followed Nia into the tower. What choice did he have? Steps wound up to a single chamber at the top.
“Home sweet home,” said Nia. “It was all sightless terror back then. The sound of the hounds all I had for friends...” She walked around the room as if in a trance, touching the walls she could not see. “You thought you could raise me to revere you. When that was an obvious failure, you thought to tame me like a little stray wildcat, break my spirit, and in that way make me your creature. But I wasn’t like my mother, was I? I didn’t give in so easily.”
Her voice had been coming from across the room and so Kyreth was startled by her hand, cool on his cheek.
“What do you think I’m going to do to you?”
“I expect that you intend to kill me,” he replied.
“And is there anything you’d like to say before I do? Any regrets you’d like to express?”
“I could not have predicted your nature,” Kyreth said coldly. “I did the worlds a great wrong, unknowing.”
“You did the worlds a wrong? What about me? What about my mother?”
“How little you understand,” said Kyreth. “I had a vision. I knew the Mancers could be greater than we were. The Shang Sorceress has always been our greatest asset, our warrior. But imagine a Sorceress protecting either side of the Crossing! Two lines, the Shang Sorceress and the Xia Sorceress, guided by the Mancers. We should never have allowed our influence in Tian Xia to lapse. What I did was for a greater good, or would have been, if only you had been other than what you are. My single regret is that I did not see sooner what you were destined to become and snuff you out.”
“Well, never mind,” said Nia with a sigh. “I’m more interested in your suffering than your repentance. I wonder if you’ve ever known true fear? When I was just a small thing, you were all I knew of the world, and you meant me ill. Shall I show you what I mean?”
Now he felt her hands on either side of his face. His strength and certainties poured out of him like blood from a cut vein. He sank to the cold floor. Her voice seemed to come from the stone and the mist, a thousand voices in one, whispering, “Fear was my first lesson, my only lesson from you. I am its master now and will teach you to crawl before it. You will live in that moment when fear reaches its most terrible crescendo, the moment it turns your blood to ice, from now until your death.”
As she spoke, terror swept through him, a mad, reasonless dread. He pressed himself against the wall, clawed at his chest. He could not see, he could not see what was coming, his matchless foe, his undoing. He tried to scream. His mouth opened wide but no sound came out of him.
“I am done with you,” said Nia.
She turned and left the tower, breaking into a run halfway down the steps. She boarded the boat and was seized by a shudder that shook her from head to toe. Her tiger came and pressed against her. She buried her hands in the soft white fur of its neck.
“Go,” she said to the Boatman. “To Tian Xia.”
The Boatman obeyed her, as he had done centuries before, when she was just thirteen years old, crackling with a power that could no longer be contained and never to be mastered again.
Chapter
~9~
Nell ran down the stairs, jumping over Marti and Alban in their sleeping bags, passing her snoring father on the sofa, and out the battered screen door into the backyard. Charlie lay where she had seen him fall, breathing in shallow
gasps. Something was wafting out of his chest like smoke.
“What’s happening to you? What’s the matter?” She knelt over him and put a hand to his clammy forehead.
“The Sorceress is free.”
Nell’s stomach executed a highly uncomfortable somersault.
“Where’s Eliza?” she asked. When he didn’t answer immediately, his head lolling to the side, she asked again, “Where IS Eliza?” and shook him by the shoulders, which made him gasp. A plume of the smoky substance poured from his chest. Nell pulled herself together and ran back inside for towels and water. She pressed the towels to his chest to try and stanch whatever was leaking out of him and raised him up so his neck and head were on her knees. She held the glass of water to his lips and he drank from it.
“She’s nay hurt,” he managed to say when he could speak again. “With any luck she’s gone to Tian Xia...for help from the Triumvira.”
“Why didnay you go with her?” demanded Nell. “You’re hurt! You could have gone to the Cave, aye!”
Charlie shook his head and swallowed some more water. “No time. I would have...slowed her down. Couldnay have made the Crossing...like this.”
The Unmaking: The Last Days of Tian Di, Book Two Page 11
