Shade and Sorceress (15 page)

“Or his mother. Or whatever shape he may have taken now,” said Kyreth in a low, furious voice.

“What do you mean?” asked Foss.

“We are fools not to have seen it sooner. He is a Shade. He takes whatever shape he pleases. There is no spell of disguise to detect because shape-shifting is in the nature of a Shade. He chose the form of child and mother to appeal to the girl on two fronts, to lure her into trusting one or the other or both. But of course we have never seen them together. He could have entered the Citadel as an insect in her pocket and then worked the Confusion given to him by the Sorceress to cloud our memories, persuading us that the female human and her son had always been among us. But of course, you were right, you began to see through it before any of us: Why would we have had humans among us?”

As Kyreth spoke, the spell over Foss broke too.

“How ludicrously simple,” he said, a bit sadly. “I suppose he was the pig as well.”

“What pig?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He shook his head. “The Shade has already won her trust, it seems. I wonder if it was her idea or his.”

“Go and guard the children. I will find the Shade.”

“Shall we alert the others?”

“Not yet. He must not know we have discovered him. If he chooses to hide himself it may prove very difficult indeed to find him.”

~

Nell and Eliza searched every inch of the room, pulling the heavy bed away from the wall to look for trapdoors, but they found nothing and could not think how Smoky had escaped. So they sat by the window and waited.

“There’s Charlie!” cried Nell.

Charlie was outside, running towards the tree fort. He turned towards the window once, holding up a book triumphantly, and then scampered up the tree and disappeared among the leaves.

“It better be the right book,” said Eliza.

Charlie descended the tree without the book and began jogging back towards the south wing of the Citadel. He had almost reached the door when Kyreth burst out of it, striding across the grass towards the boy. Charlie looked up at the Supreme Mancer in surprise, frozen in a moment of indecision. Then he was simply gone. Kyreth moved quickly, his hand reaching out and catching something in the air. They could see his lips moving but could not hear what he was saying. Soon other Mancers were pouring outdoors and circling about him. Nell and Eliza watched in speechless horror until the door opened behind them.

“They have him,” said Foss. “Eliza Tok, you are safe at last.”

~ Chapter 8 ~

The Citadel was dark
and silent. Eliza and Nell opened the bedroom door and peered into the cavernous hallway. Eliza’s skin prickled and the sound of her own heartbeat thudded in her ears as they slipped out of the room and ran down the hall, their footsteps softened by the carpet. She had never explored the Citadel by night. By day, the hallways were dim and wide and empty, but now she felt a kind of presence, something tense and waiting. The walls of the Citadel, watching her. They took the stairs down to the bottom floor, clinging to the cool railing, and emerged into the grounds. The sky overhead was spangled with stars, so many that Eliza knew for certain they could not be anywhere near a city. The cool night breeze lapped against her face. Less fearful of making noise now that they were outside, they sprinted wildly across the grounds, as if they were fleeing some terrible danger. They ran until they reached the north wing and the unguarded, spiral stone stairway that led into the dungeons.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Nell, panting. Eliza shook her head but started down the stairs anyway.

“What do you think he’ll look like?” asked Nell, hurrying behind her.

“I dinnay know,” said Eliza. “I dinnay even know if he’s here.”

“Where else would he be?”

In fact,
what will he look like
was the very question that was haunting Eliza. A Shade, Kyreth had called him. Her friend Charlie, with his wicked smile and his dark eyebrows that turned up at the ends, wasn’t even real. Missus Ash, who had been a sort of mother to her since she’d come to the Citadel, wasn’t real either. That night when she’d returned to her room and seen the empty spot on the bed where Smoky was usually waiting for her in the evenings, she realized the cat, too, must have been one of the guises of the Shade. That was how he had gotten out of the room earlier. He had disappeared under the door as a spider, and a moment later Charlie had knocked on the door. She felt foolish now, remembering that they hadn’t heard him coming the way they had heard him going away. Her only three friends in the Citadel had turned out to be one and the same, and not a friend at all, but an enemy. He had been the messenger in the dungeons too, of course. The whole thing made Eliza feel queasy with misery and anger. Still, he would know what had happened to her father.

As they crept through the dark maze of cells, they caught snatches of a faint melody. Cautious, they followed the sound. It became obviously singing, and then obviously Charlie’s voice singing. It was a popular holiday song with the words all changed, in the way children do with their friends at school. It was so like Charlie to be singing such a song that Eliza felt a sharp pang, and then anger again at his betrayal. The original song, which both Nell and Eliza knew well, was ordinarily sung during Winter Festival. It concerned a poor man given shelter and food by an elderly couple on a cold night and how he came back years later, a very rich man, to repay them for their kindness. Charlie’s lyrics to the same tune were quite different. They involved a lecherous, incontinent brute being naively cheered on by the deluded old couple and coming back years later to slaughter them in their beds.

He stopped singing when they reached his tiny cell. They could not see him in the dark, but he said, “Eliza? Thank the Ancients! I wasnay sure you’d come.”

“I know what you are,” she said, and it came out loaded with bitterness. She felt Nell take her good hand and give it a comforting squeeze.

“Dinnay be angry. I was just doing what I promised her.”

“Stop talking like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re an archipelegan boy. You’re nay from the archipelago. And you’re nay a boy neither.”

“Lah, this is how I talk when I’m Charlie, though. I cannay change that now.”

“I thought you were my friend.”

“I
was,”
he said firmly. “I
am.
Aye, okay, I’m also a spy for the Xia Sorceress. She just wants this book, and she knew you’d bring it to her if she snatched your da, which I think is sweet, by the way. You know you cannay count on the Mancers. I can get you out of here and take you to the Arctic. I’m here to
help
you, Eliza.”

“You’re nay on my side,” Eliza blazed at him. “You’re working for someone who snatched my da! She killed my ma! She
prolly
wants to kill me!”

There was a short silence. Then Charlie said, “I dinnay ask you to trust me completely, but think about it, Eliza: If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it when you took off the barrier star to trick Foss.”

It was true, Eliza pondered. If the Xia Sorceress had wanted him to, Charlie could have killed her easily then.

“Lah, why does she want
Eliza
to bring her the book?” Nell demanded. “If she could sneak you in here, would it nay be easier for you to steal it and take it to her? Why involve Eliza and her da at all?”

“She prolly thinks I’d cut a deal with the Mancers,” said Charlie thoughtfully. “Maybe I would have, too – I’m not very reliable, after all. She’s not big on trust, the Sorceress. But as long as she has your da, Eliza, she can be sure that
you’ll
do exactly what she wants. Look, I’m trapped in a barrier here, but it’s a pretty feeble one, aye. They dinnay think much of me, I spec. Are you going to break me out?”

“We’re nay here to break you out,” said Nell. “We’re here for
information.”

“Because the Mancers will nay tell you the truth, lah?” said Charlie. “Listen, Eliza, she really will kill your da if you dinnay do what she says. And you’ll nay get out of here without me.”

“How would you get us out?” asked Eliza. “Foss says that the Citadel has powerful barriers all around it. No one gets in or out without the Mancers lifting the barriers.”

“That’s true,” said Charlie. “But there’s another way out, aye. Sort of a roundabout route, but still. You’ve seen it, Eliza.”

For a moment Eliza was baffled. Then it hit her, and her injured arm gave a painful throb.

“The Crossing,” she said.

“No barriers there,” said Charlie cheerfully. “And from Tian Xia there are any number of ways back into Di Shang. We cross over from here, then cross back and come out somewhere completely different. But you’d nary make it without me. You’d nay last five minutes in Tian Xia. It’s a dangerous place, even for a would-be Sorceress.”

“You’re looped if you think we’re helping you escape,” said Nell.

And suddenly it was Missus Ash’s voice speaking to them in the dark: “Dinnay see that you’ve much of a choice, chicken. It’s me or let your da die, nay?”

Eliza reeled backwards.
“Stop
it,” she yelped.

“Sorry.” The voice was Charlie’s again. “I’m just saying.”

“Dinnay listen to him,” said Nell. “Or...her. Or it. Everything it says is prolly a lie!”

Eliza took Nell by the arm and pulled her out of the cell into the passageway.

“Hey! Come back!” shouted Charlie, a note of desperation creeping into his voice.

“I dinnay know what else to do,” Eliza whispered to Nell. “The Mancers are the only ones who can help me, but they’ll nay do it. Charlie’s right – they dinnay care about my da...”

As she spoke, a thought crept up on her and froze her so she trailed off. She had been telling herself that only the Mancers, in all the world, were a match for the Xia Sorceress. And that was so. But she had other enemies – enemies who had defeated her before – enemies in the very place Charlie was offering to take them.
Someone
had defeated her and banished her from Tian Xia. Eliza’s blood chilled at the sheer impossibility of what she was contemplating.

“There has to be some way...” Nell was saying. Trembling, Eliza turned and strode back into the cell.

“Let’s say we agree to your plan, aye,” she said to Charlie. “How would we free you?”

“Eliza!” cried Nell, following her.

Eliza took hold of her hand and squeezed it hard. “Just trust me.”

“Are you wearing the barrier star?” asked Charlie, evidently relieved.

“Yes.”

“Good. We’re going to need a few things. The Mancers’ve nay noticed the Book of Barriers is missing, have they?”

“I dinnay know,” said Eliza.

“It’s lucky all this happened around sundown, aye. They’re so rigid in their little routines, they nary do anything after dark, have you noticed that? If they dinnay know it’s gone, it will still be in the crow’s nest, and we’ll need it. We’ll also need a day’s food and water, and something valuable for the Boatman.”

“What boatman?” demanded Eliza.

“At the Crossing,” said Charlie. “We’ll nay be given passage without something valuable to pay him with, and we cannay cross without the Boatman. Mancers rise with the sun so we’ve a few hours still, but it’s going to take time to get this barrier down, aye. You need to get everything here and be ready to run for the dark wood as soon as the barrier is broken. They’ll feel it when it breaks, and just because they dinnay like to work Magic at night doesnay mean they’ll nay do it. You’ll have to come along too, Nell. We cannay risk the Mancers Listening to your thoughts later and knowing exactly what we’re up to.”

“Of
course
I’m coming,” said Nell indignantly. “I’d nay leave Eliza alone with you!”

“Come on,” said Eliza to Nell. “Let’s get the book and some supplies.”

“And something for the Boatman,” Charlie called after them.

“Dinnay worry,” said Eliza. She had already decided the barrier star would serve as payment. It was gold and it was Magic and she already had it, which saved them having to steal anything. But if she was leaving the Citadel for good there was something else she didn’t want to leave behind.

As soon as they emerged from the dungeons into the grounds, Nell said, “You cannay trust him, Eliza.”

“I know that,” said Eliza. “But staying here is nay doing my da any good either. The Mancers’ll nay help me, but maybe there’s someone else who will. Someone in Tian Xia. Old enemies of the Xia Sorceress.”

For possibly the first time in her life, Nell was speechless.

“Charlie can get us across, aye,” said Eliza in a rush. Now that she was saying it out loud, it sounded beyond ridiculous, beyond impossible. “Then we...we escape and...look for help. I know how it sounds, but I cannay just stay here and do nothing.”