Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (40 page)

“The dragons’ll be settling, I reckon,” said Ferghal. “Clever, that, how he set them off! And with the body of that Faery, so he can’t squawk!”

“I’ve been trying to get this one to explain who he is and what he’s doing here,” said Charlie, raising his eyebrows at Ferghal.

“He helped me and Foss,” said Eliza. Her heart ached looking at him. She thought of him running through the wood, the arrows whistling after him, the Thanatosi upon him.

“What is it?” he asked, seeing her eyes well up with tears. “Lah, we’re all fine, Eliza. Trapped in a house with Faeries outside, not a fantastic situation, aye, but still.”

“We’ve got to get out of here quick, I reckon,” said Ferghal. “We’ll run down that passageway and escape on the dragon these two arrived on. I’ve never ridden a dragon, that’ll be something new. Quite a story for the grandkids, not that I’ve met any of them, but I reckon I’ve got several and if I track them down it will be quite a tale to tell. Hello, I’ll say, I’m your granddaddy, and have I told you about the time I escaped murderous Faeries on the back of a dragon? That shall impress them well enough, I should think.”

“But…go…where?” demanded the Blind Enchanter.

“We need a plan,” agreed Eliza. “We cannay just take off with Faeries and Mancers out looking for us. We willnay get far.”

“Will this help?” asked Nell. With a look half-proud, half-shy, she handed Eliza the dragon-skin pouch. Eliza took it.

“The Gehemmis?” she asked wonderingly.

“We have a lot to tell you,” said Nell. Her smile fell away. “Swarn…”

“I know,” said Eliza swiftly. She put the Gehemmis in the backpack with the other two. “We need the last one, the one Anargul’s holding outside. Then we’ll have all four.”

“Then what?” asked Charlie. “We become all-powerful masters of the universe?”

“I’m nay sure,” said Eliza. She looked at the Blind Enchanter. “Do you know how to use the Gehemmis?”

He shook his head.

Eliza laid the three Gehemmis out on the table and examined the symbols, but she could not read any of them or identify any patterns. The Blind Enchanter lifted the strip of bone and sniffed it with his long, agile nose. Ferghal picked up the sphere full of fog and turned it over in his hands.

“Old,” he said, nodding sagely.

Charlie and Nell exchanged a look, a slight roll of the eyes. There was nothing unusual in it, exactly, but the look they gave each other and the way they stood together, shoulders touching, was so intimate and so complicit somehow, so different, that Eliza understood, suddenly, what had passed between them in the last few days. She turned aside quickly and gulped for air.

“Are you all right, Eliza?” asked Nell anxiously.

“Give me a minute,” she replied. She walked to the other end of the long cabin and pressed her forehead to the stone wall by the fireplace.

What a joke I am, she thought to herself. What a stupid girl. Not to have guessed. To have ever thought…she clutched her hands together to stop them shaking.

“You’re nay all right,” said Nell, right behind her. “What’s happened? What are you nay telling us?”

“I’m fine, lah,” said Eliza. “Just scared.”

“There must be somewhere we can go,” said Nell. “What about the Faithful…?” but she trailed off.

“We cannay use the Gehemmis. We cannay read the symbols,” said Eliza, barely hearing what she was saying. “The Book of Symbols is nay even in the Citadel. Or, it is, but it’s empty, Nia drained it.” Her face changed. It came to her then, what they had to do.

“You and Charlie,” she said flatly.

Nell flushed and she broke into a silly grin.

“I wanted to tell you right away, aye, but with everything so dire and serious…” she whispered in a happy rush.

Eliza felt her face crumple. She couldn’t help it. Tears slid out of her eyes. She covered her face with her hands.

Nell stopped, confused, and then turned very white.

“Eliza?” she whispered. She pulled Eliza’s hands away from her face. Her eyes were wide with horror. Neither of them said anything for a minute.

“You dinnay…? Oh Eliza!” said Nell, her voice trembling slightly. “You nary told me! If I’d known…”

Eliza drew a sharp breath and pulled herself together quickly.
That’s right, Smidgen
, she seemed to hear Nia say.

“Charlie must nary know,” she whispered, almost angrily. “You have to promise me, Nell. Swear that you’ll nary tell him, no matter what.”

“Eliza…”

“Promise me.” It was a command from a Sorceress, not a plea from a friend.

“I promise,” said Nell, her face creased with misery.

“Good.” Eliza strode back to the table, where the others were helplessly examining the Gehemmis for nonexistent clues. “We need to get the fourth Gehemmis from Anargul,” she said, directing this at the Blind Enchanter. “Can you use that potion on a group of Faeries at once?”

The Blind Enchanter nodded. “But after…that?”

“Then I’m taking all four Gehemmis to the Hall of the Ancients,” she said, “and freeing Nia.”

There was a long silence.

Nell was the first to speak, her expression still pained. “That’s looped, Eliza,” she said.

“Oh dear,” sighed Charlie.

“That’s what I’m doing,” said Eliza.

“You
cannay!”
Nell cried. “Have you forgotten that she killed Ander?”

“And a great many others, aye,” said Eliza, not looking at Nell. “That’s nay the point. We’re outmatched. The Mancers. The Faeries. The Thanatosi. We dinnay even know how to
use
the Gehemmis. She’s the only one who can help us.”

“She’s nay
going
to
help
us!” shouted Nell. “You must be looped to think she would!”

“I know her better than you do, Nell,” replied Eliza. “If our interests align, she’ll help us. And at the moment, the Mancers are enemies to all of us.”

Nell looked at the others, throwing her hands up. “Tell her! Tell her she’s looped!”

Charlie gave a weak little shrug.

“I’m with you, witchlet! Bring back the Sorceress!” cried Ferghal.

“Shut up, you’re nay part of this,” snapped Nell. “I know you’re upset, Eliza, but…”

Eliza turned a furious gaze on her and Nell fell silent.

“This is what I’m doing,” she said again. “This is my plan. I can create a stir out there with ravens. Once I’ve distracted them, will you use the potion on the Faeries and get the Gehemmis for me?” she asked the Blind Enchanter.

He nodded.

“What about you?” she asked Charlie, not quite meeting his eyes. “Are you with me?”

“As always, Cap’n,” he said bleakly.

“Charlie!” cried Nell. “It’s…she’s…”

“You dinnay have to be part of this, Nell,” said Eliza. “But dinnay think for one second that you can stop me.”

Charlie rose and put his arm around Nell, pulling her close. Eliza averted her eyes and Nell immediately looked down at her feet.

“This is Eliza’s decision,” Charlie said.

~~~

The passageway was cold and dark. They hurried along it in single file, Ferghal and Charlie carrying Foss together. It reminded Eliza of scrambling through the caves in Holburg with Nell when they were children. It led them in a straight line down to the cove at the western tip of the island, where Swarn’s dragon was waiting. The Blind Enchanter was moments behind them with the dark box in his hands, which he gave to Eliza.

“You’ll have…an hour’s…start on them…if that,” he told them.

The Blind Enchanter bound Foss to the dragon’s neck with bands of leather. Nell and Charlie scrambled up onto the dragon’s back, and after some hesitation and speechifying, so did Ferghal.

“What about you?” asked Charlie, looking at Eliza.

“I’ll keep up,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s new,” he said, and then gave a wry smile. “I spose you really dinnay need me at all anymore.”

She could not bring herself answer that, and so turned to the Blind Enchanter instead. They shook hands warmly.

“Will you be safe when the potion wears off?”

“They will not…find me,” he replied.

“Thank you,” she said.

He nodded. Eliza broke into ravens, dark wings scattering across the sky. The dragon followed.

~~~

The journey was not as peaceful as they might have hoped. They flew northwest over the inland sea and the mountains. As they neared the lake of the Crossing they spotted myrkestras in the sky but the swift dragon lost them, weaving through canyons and ravines. They camped that night in the Ravening Forest. Smoky wisps began to tumble from the trees, but Eliza gave a fierce command to the trees and the wisps rolled away, murmuring. Ferghal and Eliza took the first watch, Charlie and Nell the second. Eliza had barely fallen asleep when she heard Charlie cry out. Mist was creeping among the trees. The Thanatosi had found them. Eliza deflected a storm of arrows with a barrier while the exhausted group scrambled onto the dragon’s back again. They flew low over the forest and then over the Dead Marsh. The other cliff dragon met them there, crying out joyfully to find its partner. They spotted myrkestras in the distance again but the dragons outpaced them easily.

A day or two, Ka had said. Eliza’s heart was cold with dread that Foss would die, strapped to the dragon, before they reached the Hall of the Ancients. It was late in the day when they arrived, the sky clanging, the snow and the sky alike bright white. The Hall of the Ancients loomed on the ragged mountain peak.

She did not want to stop being the ravens. She did not want to be Eliza again; Eliza with her broken heart. But the Urkleis was in Eliza’s chest and so Eliza she would be.

The dragon landed just outside the Hall.

“Wait here,” Eliza told the others. “If something goes wrong, go back to Lil and find Uri. He’ll help you.”

They nodded silently. They all knew that if something went wrong, they were finished.

~~~

Nia was staring at nothing, her eyes dead, her hair lank, her lips cracked. Eliza reached tentatively towards her mind but withdrew before a sucking, swirling darkness. She spoke instead.

“I need your help,” she said.

Nothing. Not a flicker.

“I need you to help me to defeat the Mancers. To use the Gehemmis. I have them. All of them. In here.” She held out her camel-hair backpack. “And I have to separate the worlds.”

For a moment, there was no response. Then a faint glimmer returned to Nia’s eyes. Her cracked and broken lips twitched into the beginnings of a malevolent smile.

~~~

It was easier to let the Urkleis go than it had been to take possession of it. She put her hand on Nia’s bare arm. Her skin was cold. She felt the Urkleis pounding in her chest. You can go, she thought. Get out. She could feel it pushing, yearning towards Nia, and Nia was drawing it to her. It was quick and painful. Her chest opened and the Urkleis, a burnt black ball, rolled out. Nia’s arm swung out and the Urkleis landed in her palm. Eliza fell to her knees with a cry of pain, her flesh and bone closing up over the empty space where the Urkleis had lodged. Nia’s fingers closed, the Urkleis melting into blackness and then nothing, as if her skin simply drank it up. She was doubled over and gasping for breath. Eliza looked up at her, almost giddy with the relief of being free of the Urkleis, awash in the old, familiar, irrational love she bore the Sorceress.

“Do you
ever
bathe, Eliza?” Nia gasped out. “I thought we’d spoken about this.”

Before Eliza could say anything in response, Nia’s hand shot out and she had Eliza by the throat, rushing back, pinning her to the stone wall. The Hall span around her as a thousand icy knife-like little hands dove into her, cold shadows searching, grasping, pulling her apart.

Chapter

~26~

Eliza broke into ravens,
all of them flapping up towards the vaulted roof, past the broken carvings on the walls. From above, Nia looked small and pale and very old. She raised her arms with a livid shriek and the mass of ravens were pulled down by a force they could not resist, pulled back together into one struggling shape, back into Eliza.

“That’s clever, Smidgen,” hissed Nia. “But tricks like that won’t help you.”

And again the diving, clutching fingers, the snipping and seeking deep inside her, where dark wings beat against dark air. Her Magic was pinned, stifled. She felt the tremendous force of Nia’s power pushing against her own, felt how quickly Nia would crush her.

She tried to speak but no words would come and so she fumbled for her dagger. Nia’s grip around her throat cut off her breath. The world was closing up into a small, dark, spinning circle. She pulled the dagger from its scabbard and drove it into the Sorceress’s belly.