Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (34 page)

“Stop it!” cried Gautelen, pressing the knife to Nell’s throat. “Put it away!”

Nell and Charlie recognized the object, for Swarn had given Eliza one just like it. The poor girl, thought Swarn – she was so young, she had never hurt anybody before – she hardly knew how. Before any of them could move or speak, Swarn had the object at her lips and blew softly. A dart struck Gautelen in the neck and she fell to the ground, paralyzed.

Nell ran straight into Charlie’s arms and he held her tight. They were both shaking. Uri mon Lil appeared at the door moments later.

“What has happened?” he cried, running to Gautelen.

“I can only assume she took Nell for the Shang Sorceress,” said Swarn. “She is paralyzed. It will wear off in a few hours.”

Ely-Hathana followed in an elaborate white nightdress and looked murder at Swarn. Uri mon Lil stood hastily between them.

“We will get Gautelen to her room,” he said.

~~~

They spent the rest of the night in the visitor’s parlour, sipping hot tea made from wildflowers native to Lil. Nell was not inclined to feel particularly charitable towards the young woman who had held a knife to her throat, hoping to murder Eliza. She wanted to ask what in the worlds was the matter with Gautelen but she held her tongue, looking from Uri mon Lil pacing back and forth with his crinkled brow to Ely-Hathana hanging onto the arms of her chair as if she thought she might fall out of it. Swarn stood straight-backed and expressionless by the door. Charlie nodded off on the sofa, the teacup tipping out of his hands. Nell gasped, but before the cup spilled it righted itself and flew across the room to the table. She supposed there was not much danger of spills or accidents in such company.

“What?” Charlie mumbled, waking up at her gasp.

“Nothing.” Nell smiled at him in spite of herself.

He looked at Uri and Ely-Hathana, rubbed a hand across his face, and said: “I spec it must be hard for you to understand why she’s acting this way.”

Ely-Hathana gave him a poisonous look and said nothing.

“What do you mean?” asked Uri mon Lil.

“I mean, lah, I dinnay think either of you have ever met Nia, have you?” said Charlie.

“I
saw
her, in her final battle with the Shang Sorceress,” said Uri. “But we were not, ah, formally introduced, so I suppose I cannot say I have
met
her.”

“I have not met her,” said Ely-Hathana. “But she has enchanted my child somehow.”

“Nay enchanted, exactly,” said Charlie. “A long time ago Nia freed me, too, from a different kind of bondage. I thought I was going to be trapped for all eternity with no free will…” He glanced uneasily at Swarn, who showed no sign that she was listening. She knew his history with her sister Audra, and with Nia. “And then Nia gave my freedom back to me. When she’s on your side, she’s really prize charming. I served her for a long time, willingly, because she was the face of my salvation. I did some terrible things on her behalf, aye, the worst of them being that I almost got Eliza killed. So I can understand a little what your daughter is going through.”

Nell could not keep quiet any longer. “I’m so glad you’re able to sympathize with someone who had a knife to my throat an hour ago,” she snapped.

“She didnay know who you were,” said Charlie. “She doesnay even really know who Eliza is. She thought you were some kind of all-powerful Sorceress and that she was doing something really dangerous and brave to help Nia. Before I met you, when it was Nia against the Triumvira and Nia against the Mancers, it was easy to see her as a victim, lah, up against impossible odds. It was easy to take her side. It wasnay until she was gunning for Eliza that I started to see things differently.”

“So you think there is hope for her? That she will come to see the truth of the matter?” said Uri eagerly.

Charlie shrugged uncomfortably. “Prolly. Eventually. Of course, I served Nia for about sixty years before changing sides, so it could take a while.”

Uri’s face fell. At the same moment, the water-apes set up a baleful howl around the island. Ely-Hathana rose and pulled aside the curtain, looking out.

“I cannot see,” she said. “The night is too misty.”

“Oh no!” Nell leaped to her feet and ran to the window. The mist was creeping up the hill.

“The barriers,” said Uri, confused. “They have fallen.”

“The Thanatosi could not have done it so quickly,” said Swarn, feeling it too. “There is another power on this island. A great master of the art of barriers, I’ll wager.” She said this between gritted teeth.

“Away from the windows,” said Ely-Hathana as the mist surrounded the house. “There is a secret passage in the basement, it travels under the island…” but she did not finish her sentence. The large windows shattered. White shapes with flying limbs and swinging blades came through them in a rain of arrows. Nell pushed Charlie down behind the broad cushioned settee, throwing herself over him to protect him. One of the Thanatosi, hair flying, leaped onto the back of the settee and swung his great shining sword down towards them. Then something came between them and the sword, deflecting the blow. Swarn swung and thrust a double-headed spear, placing herself before the settee and fighting off all comers.

“Get up!” she cried to Charlie and Nell. “We must go!”

They scrambled to their feet. Swarn tossed a handful of powder into the air. Everything went suddenly very black and still. Nell and Charlie each felt a hand close over their wrists, felt themselves pulled through the thick, heavy darkness, their thoughts swimming slowly:
Something is happening, but I dinnay know what. I dinnay remember.
By the time the potion wore off they were on the hillside, the Thanatosi coming after them, struggling out of the potion’s hold. Swarn threw her head back and screamed, a raw and terrible sound. Out of the jungle surged the dragon. It breathed green fire into the mob of Thanatosi. Swarn, Charlie and Nell leaped onto the dragon’s scaled back and it took off into the air. They left Lil behind them as the Thanatosi streamed down the hill towards the water.

~~~

For a time, Gautelen’s mind was frozen. When it began to thaw and stir, she was in her own bedroom, on the bed, the door and window enchanted shut. She wiggled her fingers slowly. They hurt. Everything hurt as it came back to life, the poison within her dissipating. She sat up, nearly weeping with the agony of it. A grinding anger was working deep within her too. Her parents had betrayed her. They were playing host to Nia’s enemies and had allowed a witch to harm her. She crawled from the bed to the floor to the door, and laid her hands flat against it. Strong enchantments. She knelt there and whispered spells to break the lock, but she was too weak still and collapsed, trembling, on the floor. Through a haze of tears, she saw a door appear in the wall where there had been no door before. The door opened and a shining being stepped through, all white and gold. She sat up again, pulling herself back against the wall.

“I know what you are,” she said helplessly, her voice thick and slow in her mouth. “I have read about you. You are a Mancer.”

“I am,” agreed Kyreth. He went to the window and looked out at the night. “The Thanatosi are coming,” he murmured, and glanced at Gautelen over his shoulder with a faint smile. “They have a task I would like to see finished.”

Gautelen trembled. He had eyes like twin suns and a voice like a tolling bell. She did not know what he was talking about, but she knew Mancers were the Sorceress Nia’s great enemies. The water-apes began to howl.

“Oh, you are wrong there,” said Kyreth. He showed no sign of hearing the water-apes. “It is true that we were long at war with Nia, but some of us had reason to oppose the war. You see, I am her father.”

“I don’t believe you,” whispered Gautelen. “Did my parents send for you? The Mancers are the guardians of the Shang Sorceress.”

“Again, you are misinformed. Surely you have heard that the Shang Sorceress broke all ties with us? But that is not important. Your parents have no idea that I am here. I would not be welcome in the least. I am not here to discuss Sorceresses, Gautelen. They do not concern me now. I am concerned, rather, with a task that Nia left unfinished. I cannot finish it myself and so I need your help.”

“What task?”

“Ending the life of Malferio, former King of the Faeries.”

She drew in a sharp breath and tried to get to her feet. Her knees gave out beneath her and she sprawled at Kyreth’s feet. He knelt swiftly.

“The Warrior Witch has served you a dose of her poison,” he said. “We will see to that. Let me help you.”

She felt his strong arms lift her up.

“I need you to be willing, Gautelen,” he said. “Will you come to Di Shang with me? The Magic to end Malferio’s life is prepared but I cannot administer the killing blow. Will you do it?”

“Gladly,” she replied.

“Good. Look,” he carried her to the window. She saw a mist swarming up the hill and around the house. There were white figures in the mist, leaping and spinning.

“What is it?” she asked.

“They will not harm your parents,” he replied. The windows downstairs shattered. “Now we must go.”

He took her out through the new door. Doors appeared wherever he seemed to wish them. In no time he was striding through the jungle, alive with night sounds, carrying her like a child down to a sheltered cove where a dragon waited.

~~~

Nell clung to Charlie, seated behind him on the dragon’s back. She imagined falling and falling through the early morning sky to the sea below. She had read somewhere that when falling from a great height the shock kills you before the impact, and wondered if it was true.

“Where are we going?” Charlie shouted, for they had left all of Tian Xia behind them and the sea stretched to the horizon in every direction, a disc of green as far as the eye could see, ringed around with the fiery sky.

Swarn looked over her shoulder at him and said: “Where none will follow us.”

They flew throughout the day, high over the sea, descending occasionally for Swarn to spear fish, which the dragon roasted for them with a single breath. As the sun began to sink towards the horizon, the green sea was flecked with crimson and gold. The dragon began to descend.

“Look!” Nell shouted, pointing.

Charlie had seen the same thing. “Islands!” he cried.

These must be the mythical dragon isles, thought Nell excitedly, although she saw no dragons. The islands were bright gold and the setting sun gave them a fiery tinge. They bore no sign of vegetation but soared up out of the water, barren and gleaming with jagged rocks. Swarn’s dragon descended further, letting out a wrenching cry as it circled over the nearest island.

The island beneath them stirred. The tip of the island lengthened, more and more of it appearing, lifting up out of the water. Nell saw eyes as green as the sea, a terrible head at the end of a seemingly endless neck, which lifted higher and higher, water streaming off it. The head opened into a mouth, a mouth large enough to swallow them all, including the dragon they rode upon. Swarn’s dragon was like an insect to this colossal creature. It let out a sound that rent the air, a sound that made Nell’s heart stutter and her mind go black. And then all the islands lifted their heads, all of them dragons as big as cities. Vast wings opened up over the green sea and the air was full of unearthly cries.

Chapter

~21~

The white tiger snarled,
baring red gums and tongue, slinking along the shore. Nia was wearing a fox-fur coat like when Eliza had found her in the Mancer Library. Her face was very white and she was shivering a little from the cold.

“Are you all right?” Eliza asked.

Nia raised her eyebrows. “A funny question, coming from you,” she remarked. “I must say, it seems a cruel sort of irony that it should be winter here, as if I hadn’t had enough of snow. And it appears that one can’t work Illusion at the four lakes, so we’ll just have to bear the cold.”

“I’m sorry.” Eliza wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for. It came out before she thought about it.

A fallen tree lay along the shore, its upper branches disappearing into the ice of the lake. Nia brushed a patch of snow off the trunk and sat down. Eliza sat next to her.

“You’ve had a rough time, I suppose, with the last three lakes,” said Nia. “And not enough sleep these past couple of weeks. Poor Smidgen. It’s all over your face. You never were any good at covering up your feelings. So tell me: What did you see?”

Eliza hugged herself against the cold and fumbled for words that did not come at first. She felt strangely that in all the worlds, Nia was the only one to whom she could tell her secrets.

“The lake of sweet lies…” Nia prompted her.

“He doesnay love me,” said Eliza. “Nay…like that.”

“No, of course not. Oh Smidgen, how blind are you? It’s touching but a bit pathetic. You’d better just get over him.”