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

by Egan, Catherine

  “Come,” he said, and held out his hand. The relief on her face was plain. As she came closer he saw around her neck Chiranjivi’s Mirror, the gift of Faery Immortality to a mortal, and a shining vial that, he knew, contained Malferio’s blood. Her hand in his was soft and warm. A sandy path opened among the trees and they took it out of the wood, which fell away behind them. They emerged under a gentle sky, rose-coloured, tinged with gold. Emerald waves lapped against the sandy shore. Behind them chrysanthemums bloomed, heavy-headed on their stems.

  “Very pretty,” said Nia. She looked up at him coyly through a fringe of dark gold lashes. “You called me Queen once. Does that seem funny, now?”

  “Not funny,” said Alvar, but he smiled. “How did you find us?”

  She frowned. “Don’t insult me. I’m not a fool and neither are you. That’s why I came to see you first. The allegiance of the Faery Guard is yours, Alvar. You carry a great deal of influence. Others will listen to you. You have to make my case for me.”

  “I thought you were a match for all of us.”

  “There’s no need for an all-out war. I have no grudge against the Faeries. In fact, I’m rather fond of Faeries. But I have a matter to settle with your king. Whether the Faeries rally around him or not, I will destroy him. If you can persuade the Faery Lords to overthrow him, it will all be very simple. If not, I will have my way in the end anyway, but I will count you in particular my enemy.”

  “You do not need to threaten me,” said Alvar. “You smell wonderful. What is that?”

  “It’s a human-made perfume, would you believe,” she said with a laugh. “They’re surprisingly good at some things. Are you listening to me, Alvar?”

  “It is a difficult thing you ask,” he said.

  The waves darkened and rose up, the sky began to tremble, and he looked at her in surprise.

  “Not so difficult,” she said. A wave crashed against the shore, and the water that splashed them was cold. “Perhaps you would prefer that both he and I were dead, but this cannot be. It will all be over in a day or so and I promise you I will be the victor. This king of yours is not well loved. His marriage to me left him very unpopular as we both know. The Faeries will support his exile. In return I will swear by the Oath of the Ancients never to enter the Realm of the Faeries again. You can accept my proposal now or you can wait for me to give you a demonstration of my power and accept it later. What will you do?”

  “It is not enough,” said Alvar. “The Faeries will not back it.”

  “The Festival of Light, when the Faeries swear allegiance, is the day after tomorrow. I will give the Faeries every reason to turn on their king, I promise you. Overthrown, he is in your power, and you must promise me his expulsion. Do not put my question aside again. What will you do?”

  The waves were dark giants now, the sea black, the sky red. The chrysanthemums were growing, swaying, winding upwards. Nia’s eyes shone.

  “Tell me what you wish me to do,” said Alvar.

  ~~~

  To Eliza’s partial relief, the ravens did not follow when they flew south again. They found the Special Forces deployed by General Malone well before nightfall. It appeared that the General had not taken entirely seriously her assessment of the threat. He had sent a pitifully small troop to deal with the Kwellrahg and they had not fared well. When Eliza and Uri Mon Lil found them, they were in various stages of regrouping at the edge of the Great Sand Sea, just south of the border.

  Uri Mon Lil needed reminding of what he was to do, but he then did it so flawlessly and effortlessly that Eliza was deeply impressed. She was able to make a simple barrier around herself quickly enough, but this! Soaring overhead on a dragon, this spindly little wizard with his wild hair, bright eyes flashing terribly, his arms above his head, used the spell they had retrieved from the Book of Barriers to enclose the hapless troops below in invisible cells. It was sheer luck that had brought her such an ally and Eliza was flooded with gratitude. The barriers would last a day or so at the most, but long enough, Eliza hoped, for her to do what needed to be done without interference. The troops thus contained, they flew on, looking out for the Kwellrahg. They did not have to look for long. It was staggering along the ground several miles beyond the military encampment, wings scorched and hanging useless after the battering it had received from rockets and artillery fire. Aysu and Obrad’s dragons were still pursuing it, circling overhead but keeping their distance. Eliza called the dragons together, glad to have the advantage of speed over the Kwellrahg. They were well beyond any inhabited areas and so they let the beast be and flew into the desert.

  They had left behind them that morning a wintry, snow-covered plain, and now flew over an expanse of burnt sand. Claimed by no country or kingdom, the Great Sand Sea was home only to the Sorma. For thousands of years, cut off from the rest of the world, the Sorma had travelled in small tribes from one oasis to another. It was said that they could bring any being back from the very brink of death and that they could tame any creature, however fierce, however wild. After her rescue from Nia’s Arctic prison, Eliza’s mother Rea had been in desperate need of healing, and so it was to the vast loneliness of the desert and to his people the Sorma that Eliza’s father Rom Tok had brought her. Ten years of torment had left Rea deeply scarred within and broken without. Nia had stripped her of her power and her memory and these could not be returned to her. The Sorma could not replace all that she had lost; they could not give her back the strength she once had. But they could tame her wild terror. They could give her new strength and ease the pain. With the Sorma, Rea seemed to find some degree of peace. She could not remember how she had loved her husband once but she came to love him again. When she was with him, Eliza thought she seemed almost happy.

  Rea’s relationship with her daughter was not so easily rebuilt. They remained careful with one another, both wishing for a closeness they had no idea how to work towards. Eliza spent most of her time with the Mancers in their Citadel, deep in her training as a Sorceress. It was not a journey her mother could make and Rom did not like to leave her, so Eliza saw her parents only when she came to the desert. It was always a joy and a wonder to see her mother alive. All through her childhood some part of her had longed for this woman of whom she had no memory, only a photograph. Now Rea was here, but she remained a stranger, a fantasy come inexplicably to life. Rea herself had trained with the Mancers and with Swarn; she had had a Guide, married and borne a child in secret, fought with Nia, but she remembered none of it. Her Guide had left her. And so Eliza could not turn to her mother for advice or answers to her many questions about the strange life she had been called to. She could not ask her mother why she had tried to hide her from the Mancers. All Rea had known and been belonged to Nia now. In a sense, Nia contained Eliza’s mother, or at least that part of Rea that had been, once, Eliza’s mother. Rom and the Mancers spoke sometimes of how powerful Rea had been, how full of life and joy. But all Eliza knew was the enfeebled stranger in the desert who hung off her father’s arm and woke them all in the night with her screams.

  When she watched her father and Rea together, holding hands, she was glad for him. But she was excluded from their happiness, such as it was. Excluded by her mother because, much as Rea would have liked to be close to her daughter, she did not know or understand her. Excluded by her father because their relationship as it had been before was changed forever. It was this that grieved her most. He had been the strong one, he had made the decisions, protected her and cared for her, once. When the Mancers came for Eliza they had reached a point, too soon and all at once, where she was beyond his protection. Now, at the age of fourteen, she had power, she made her own decisions, and had proved she was more than capable of taking care of herself. Rea, once among the greatest of the Shang Sorceresses, was the one who needed taking care of. And so Eliza’s father took care of Rea and nobody took care of Eliza anymore. She knew it was absurd to want her father to treat her like a child or anything less than what she was, but the
change had happened so suddenly and so traumatically. The life she had known had been over in a flash when the five Emmisariae of the Mancers descended on Holburg. Eliza knew that life was change and nothing ever remained the same, but still, the years in Holburg with her father, in the cottage near the sea with its garden and beehives, remained a sort of golden period in her memory, a perfect world before the storm struck.

  As dusk fell they crossed the flat sandy plains, aiming for a bright hump on the horizon. There began the dunes, vast mountains of sand shaped by wind. They flew over great ridges that swept in creamy curves down into deep valleys, all of it gold in the setting sun. As the sky darkened and the moon rose, these same magisterial dunes shone ghostly white. The desert appeared endless and unchanging, although its valleys and cliffs and ridges were being constantly remade by the wind. There were no landmarks to speak of but Eliza knew exactly where her father’s tribe would be wintering. She had learned on her first journey to the Great Sand Sea that she possessed what all the Sorma possessed – an unwavering sense of the desert. This desert had claimed vast armies in the past, protecting the southern countries for centuries from the powerful northern invaders. No explorer had ever crossed it successfully without a Sorma guide. But Eliza could not be lost here. She knew the desert and it recognized her as one of its own. It would not lead her astray.

  For all that, she would never love the desert. The only place that had ever felt like home to her was Holburg, with its dense green woods, sandy beaches and trees heavy with fruit, all cradled tenderly by the bright blue sea. She was restless in the desert and ill at ease with the Sorma. Though they were welcoming, she felt like an outsider. Their ways were not familiar to her, would always be exotic and only half-understood. She longed for water and colour.

  It was night and the desert sky was bright with stars when the young Shang Sorceress, the wizard of Lil, and the four surviving dragons of the Emmisariae reached the Sorma camp. The camp was on the fringes of an oasis, an island of green in the desert, rich in dates and olives and freshwater springs. Here they would spend several weeks stocking up on food and water before moving on, following their sense of the desert to another oasis that would feed them and provide water.

  Almost all of the tribe had retreated to their tents for the night but a few fires still smouldered. The vast dunes loomed all about the oasis, a startling oval of life and birdsong. But whereas the sea as Eliza knew it was full of life, the Great Sand Sea surrounding this island was sterile and deadly. The four dragons set down at the edge of the camp, where an old woman was waiting. Her grey hair was wound up on top of her head and she wore billowing, colourful fabrics which swept around her in a style that looked effortless but was, in fact, very complicated. Her forehead was marked with the blue teardrop that indicated she was an Elder. Her name was Lai, and she was Eliza’s paternal grandmother.

  “Greetings, Grandmother,” said Eliza, bending to kiss her hand and then kissing her on both cheeks. Uri Mon Lil slid off the dragon’s neck and stumbled up behind Eliza.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Someplace safe,” said Eliza a bit curtly, for she was getting tired of explaining things.

  “I dreamed you were coming,” said Lai, smiling and revealing a row of perfect white teeth. “But in my dream, it was you alone. I did not know you would come with another being and so many dragons. Something is wrong, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Eliza. “Is my father sleeping?”

  “He is. Shall I wake him?”

  “No, it can wait until morning.”

  “You will need refreshment. Come, and your friend, too.”

  Eliza and Uri Mon Lil followed Lai to a broad tent outside of which an old man was sleeping.

  “Your Grandfather always means to count the stars,” commented Lai, stepping over him. “But he falls asleep every night before he reaches a hundred. I will bring him in later.”

  Inside, she poured them each some strong tea and proffered a bowl of dates. They ate and drank gratefully. Uri Mon Lil, who could not understand what they were saying, furtively consulted his book. He was most distressed to discover that he had an unhappily married daughter, was stricken by a terrible Curse, and had gotten himself involved in something very complicated and dangerous with a surly young Sorceress, with whom his relationship was alarmingly described as “uncertain.”

  “Is it true that the Sorma can heal any being, even those on the brink of death?” asked Eliza.

  Lai nodded her head. “This is true. Perhaps you are wondering why your mother remains weak. We cannot heal her because your mother is not wounded. It is not injury she suffers, but a lack. It is not a question of healing, but of wholeness.”

  “I’m not talking about my mother,” said Eliza.

  Lai raised her eyebrows and waited.

  “A being who suffers...you could ease the pain? Even if the suffering were caused by Magic?”

  “I know nothing of Magic,” said Lai. “But we can ease pain and heal the wounded.”

  “And is it true that the Sorma can tame any beast, however wild?”

  “This is also true.”

  “Then I need your help,” said Eliza.

  Chapter

  ~15~

  Gautelen Mon Lil Mon Shol was half Storm Seamstress, half witch. She was seventeen years old and until a year ago she had been happy. For one year now, though she lived as a queen in the heart of the Faery Kingdom, a place whose beauty outstripped any other place in the worlds, her heart felt like a stone sinking fast through dark water. When she woke in the mornings and remembered where she was, she wished with all her being that she could return to her dreams and never have to walk through another waking day as Queen of the Faeries. All the beauty around her, all the beauty of her husband, was dead to her. The world of Illusion was a prism of glittering despair. Because the lives of her parents depended on her obedience, she performed her duty as Queen and as wife, but she did so with her teeth clamped tight over a rage she would not once have believed herself capable of. When the Faeries asked for a storm, she lit up the sky with colour and sound and they were delighted. She could not give them the storm she longed to make – the hail of destruction, the bolts of flame, the wind that screamed all her despair. But just such a storm had been called for a few days earlier, from a power greater than she had ever known. She had given it with all her heart, feeling in the demand for it a fury that matched her own. That storm had given Gautelen some small relief and she was still weary from it.

  She had spent the morning walking in a desultory manner through the Illusions her Faery attendants provided to entertain her when the king was busy. A diamond bridge spanned a starry night sky, but she barely noticed her surroundings. Bored, she napped in a flower as large as a house. On a hillside brilliant with heather overlooking a white city of spires and towers, birds serenaded her and sat on her shoulders, but they were not real and she paid them no mind. It was all false, false, and the wondrous sights had no effect on her. Lying back in the heather, for a moment she thought she smelled the sea. She sat upright immediately, filled with longing. The birds scattered, frightened by something. The heather around her turned black.

  Yes, there was salt on the breeze. The Faeries who attended her looked confused. Something glinted further down the hill, like a window of light suddenly opening. Gautelen leaped to her feet and ran towards it. It was a long mirror. She scowled at her reflection as she approached it. Her bright silk robe and the jewels that decked her arms and throat and hair disgusted her. The diamonds around her neck were like shackles. She fingered the brilliant gems, her anger working a slow burn in her, then tore them from her throat and threw them to the ground. She pulled the jewels from her hair also, until she stood before the mirror with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and gold scattered on the ground at her feet, hair disheveled, the fury she could not act upon throttled in her throat.

  “I hate you,” she said in a trembling voice to her reflection. As soon as she had spoken
, another woman appeared behind her in the mirror, a lovely women in a robe that matched her own, still decked with jewels, but this woman was fair-skinned with golden hair.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let that pass,” said the woman. Her voice was honey-sweet and smooth. “Hate is a confusing emotion, I know, but it’s important to keep it focused on those who have deserved it. Never misdirect it at yourself, you poor girl. That is an amateur’s mistake.”

  Gautelen looked behind her in alarm, but she was alone on the hillside. The charred heather had risen up in a twisted wall, separating her from her attendants.

  “Am I going mad?” she asked unhappily.

  “Far from it, your Majesty.” The apparition in the mirror stroked her wild hair but Gautelen could not feel the touch. “Everything is about to come out right. Now promise me you’ll never say such a thing to yourself again!”

  Gautelen was baffled but not particularly afraid. What did she have to fear?

  “I promise,” she said.

  “Good girl. You’re young and you’ve led a sheltered life,” said the apparition. “When it comes to hate, you are terribly inexperienced. So take it from one who has been at this game a great deal longer than you – self-hatred is a fool’s capitulation. Revenge is the only relief.”

  The apparition stepped out of the mirror onto the hillside, a flesh-and-blood woman, and Gautelen knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her closed and dreary world was about to be blasted wide open. She spent her days surrounded by beauty that did not touch her, but this woman’s beauty made her ache with unshed tears, revived the near-dead memory of joy. Perhaps it was because she was powerful and free and Gautelen was not. Or perhaps it was because she brought with her a rush of hope Gautelen had not felt since before her wedding day.

  “I was Queen of the Faeries too, once upon a time,” said the woman with a knowing smile. Then Gautelen understood whom it was that stood before her.