Shade and Sorceress (32 page)

The locket was no longer in Eliza’s hand but in Nia’s. She hung it around her neck again, with the little vial of luminescence. “You see, we’ve rather a lot in common,” Nia was saying. “We’re both the last in our line. Except that I’m going to go on and on and on, whereas your line will just stop, with you.”

Eliza turned away from the Sorceress, unnerved by the cheerful threats she tossed out, and looked down over the crystal city. If the Sorceress was to be believed then all this was somehow, in actuality, fifty square feet of ice. That knowledge was the key to getting out. But first, she needed to find her father.

“You go ahead,” said Nia, flapping a hand at Eliza as if she was a dog. “Explore. I’ll watch from here.”

Eliza felt a momentary rush of elation and hope. She had to remind herself that she was not getting away from Nia by escaping into the city. All of this was her construct and could be undone in a moment. Eliza would not be able to go anywhere Nia didn’t want her to go because none of it was there unless Nia wanted it to be. This was a game Nia had set up, and Eliza needed to work out how to play it.

A staircase led from the balcony to the gem-encrusted road. Eliza hurried down it and into the city. Shining spires jutted this way and that, some of them pointing straight upwards, while others arced overhead like bridges, or twisted round in impossible spirals, all of it flashing and glittering in a soft light that seemed to emanate from the whole of the pinkish sky. She walked by a courtyard of brilliant flowers and poison-green grass, and a long glass hall full of glowering bronze statues who waved their many arms at her and blinked their many eyes. Though she seemed to be walking a long way in a straight line, she realized that she must in fact be going in circles, twisting her way about the small Arctic prison, within the barriers, just steps away from being out of reach of Nia’s Magic. She made her way down towards the harbour and walked along it, looking longingly out at the sea. If her father was free to walk around he would surely be by the sea as well. The city behind her climbed the hill to the great mansion at the top, where Eliza could still see the white figure of Nia the Sorceress watching from the balcony. When she saw Eliza look back, she waved. Eliza waved back, disconcerted, and kept walking.

~ Chapter 18 ~

Eliza had assumed the city
was entirely deserted, and so got quite a start when she realized that several people were seated on a glass terrace not far along the waterfront and all of them were watching her. They appeared to be human adults, but her father was not among them. She could see as she got closer that they were frightened, which made her feel a bit bolder. She stepped up onto the terrace. It extended out over the water, and long grey sharks were swarming beneath it, nosing at the glass and snapping at her feet. The people on the terrace seemed unaware of the sharks. Not one of them spoke. They sat rigid, watching her apprehensively. Oddly, they all looked familiar, but Eliza couldn’t think where she might have seen them before.

“Hello,” she said.

This was met by a long, uncomfortable silence.

“I’m looking for my da,” she said when it became clear nobody was going to say anything else. “He’s a tall Sorma man. Anyone seen him?”

“Who are you?” asked the oldest in the group, a rugged man in his fifties or sixties with piercing eyes and silver hair. He was wearing a threadbare military uniform.

“Eliza Tok,” she said. The little group exchanged anxious looks. Clearly, she hadn’t answered the question to anybody’s satisfaction. Then, all at once, she remembered who the young woman drinking coffee at the back of the group was. She recognized her from the cover of one of Nell’s pop albums. In that photo she had been draped over a piano wearing very little, but it was certainly her. Eliza groped for her name.

“You’re Cherry Swanson!” she cried.

The young woman froze, her coffee cup halfway to her lips.

“I’ve seen your picture, aye,” said Eliza. “My friend listens to your albums.”

“Oh,” said Cherry Swanson, and she started to laugh nervously. “This is much too strange!” she said to the others. “Is she a new one, or something else?”

“I think we’d all like to know a little bit more about you,” said the rugged older man who had first spoken.

“My da was snatched,” Eliza explained, unsure how much to reveal. “I have to find him.”

“Hang on a minute. How did
you
get here?” demanded a handsome blond fellow with a chiseled jaw. “Are you saying you
weren’t
snatched?”

“I came on a gryphon,” said Eliza, pleased with how that sounded, “to rescue my da. Are you
really
Cherry Swanson?”

“Ye-es,” said Cherry Swanson cautiously. It crossed Eliza’s mind that they might be part of the Illusion, but they seemed too cowed and fearful to be anything other than real people.

There was a pause before anybody spoke again. Then the rugged older man, who seemed to be a sort of spokesperson for the others, said, “We were all taken. Kidnapped, you might say. I was the first. It was not long after the war ended. I was on the news a fair bit back then. I’m General Tobias Malone.”

Eliza nodded, amazed. It was a familiar name. He had been a war hero, personally honoured by the Mancers for his cooperation with them and his courage in facing the Tian Xia threat. But then he had gone missing. Suicide had been suspected but never confirmed.

“I was knocked unconscious in my own home and woke up here. Although it wasn’t like
this.”
He swept an arm out to take in the waterfront, the crystal city. “When I first arrived it was an endless palace, no way in or out that I could find. I was the only one there besides a beautiful young woman. At first, I thought she was lost too. She didn’t seem to know where she was or what was happening. I grew very fond of her. It was...some time before I began to doubt her. There were things... In any case, it became obvious, when we had our first argument, that she was in fact responsible for my entrapment, and all of this.” He was very pale as he spoke. Eliza could see the others were getting more and more uncomfortable.
They don’t know if they can trust me,
she thought. “Then suddenly she seemed to get tired of me,” finished the General. “I’ve barely seen her since. Others have come, and the surroundings are always changing.”

“It was the same for all of us,” piped up Cherry Swanson. “When we first get brought here we’re like her favorite pet for a while, and then she just forgets about us and gets someone else.”

“We’re the lucky ones,” added General Malone. “Some disappear, and we’ve seen her hang...well, it’s nothing for a child to hear. Not all of her ‘pets’ survive, let’s say.”

They were all eager to tell their stories now, how they had been brought here by force, how a beautiful woman had befriended them but later turned on them. It emerged that they were all famous, which was why they looked so familiar to Eliza. The blond man with the chiseled jaw was an actor. Besides the general, the actor, and Cherry Swanson, there was a prima ballerina, a charismatic young magician once known for fantastic stunts in public places, a top jockey, and a contortionist from the Republic of Central Di Shang Circus Troupe. Nia had her television, when she wanted it, and was clearly having her agents, the Cra, snatch up celebrities she found herself taken with to keep her company in her Arctic prison. It was too bizarre and awful for words. Eliza wondered if the Mancers knew about it.

“We don’t even know where we are,” said Cherry. “We’ve all tried to run off, but even if we go in different directions, as far as we can, we all end up back in the same place somehow. So we’ve sort of stopped trying. It doesn’t make any sense. And she...she must be a witch of some kind. Have you seen her?”

“We’re in the Arctic, aye,” said Eliza. “All this is just Illusion. You’ve been taken prisoner by the Xia Sorceress. She’s trapped and she’s bored. That’s why she had you brought here, I spec.”

The seven celebrities stared at Eliza in horror.

“How do you know?” asked the blond actor. “You’re just a kid. Look, this is probably just another game of hers,” he added to the others.

“I just know,” said Eliza. It would be too difficult to explain, and too unbelievable if she told them that she was a Sorceress too. “It doesnay matter if you believe me or nay. But
I
dinnay plan on being stuck here forever. If you help me find my da, aye, I’ll help you get home too.”

Her own brash confidence surprised her. The actor still looked skeptical, but the general was on his feet and at her side in an instant.

“I’m in,” he said. “It may be a trap or some game she’s playing but I’ll take the chance. Anything’s better than another day just sitting around. I feel like I’ve been here for a hundred years. How long ago did the war end, kid?”

“About ten years ago,” said Eliza. The group drew in a gasp.

“I
told
you so,” said the contortionist, a little smugly.

“I thought it might have been even longer,” said the ballerina glumly. “That means I’ve only been here three years.”

“So, you say your father is trapped here somewhere? Big Sorma guy, that right?” said the general.

Eliza nodded.

“Strange we’ve never seen him. But then, we never see
her
anymore, either,” he said. “What’s his name?”

“Rom Tok,” said Eliza.

The general turned to the group and divided them efficiently into pairs, his manner all at once that of someone used to being in command. “We stay in twos,” he said. “She may change the city into something else, in which case we just find someplace central to meet up in one hour. For as long as it looks like this, Cherry and Mala, you take the hill, around the mansion. Don’t go in too close, and holler if you get into trouble. Jarron and Geb, you go left, between the hill and the water. Dag and Karan, go right. Me and the kid’ll take the waterfront. Got it? One hour, back here, or someplace central if it changes before that.”

Everybody agreed and peeled off in different directions. Eliza glanced back at that solitary figure on the balcony above the city, still watching them.

~

For a little while, Eliza was suffused with a teetering, treacherous hope. General Malone was not just a grown-up, he was a
war hero.
It was not all up to her anymore;
General Malone
would find her father,
General Malone
would get them home. He inspired this kind of confidence in people; he always had. But as they went up and down the waterfront, her spirits sank rapidly. The waterfront was lined with oddly stacked crystal structures with maze-like interiors, rather as if several houses had been shuffled together and their parts all mixed up. Stairways made impossible turns, furniture hung upside down, hallways sloped sharply. In the bay, painted boats shaped like birds were skimming along the water, trailing fluffy white clouds behind them. Eliza was painfully conscious that she wouldn’t find her father until Nia decided she was to find him. The general might be a war hero but he had been here for
ten years.
He had no idea how to escape.

“This is quite something,” commented the general, waving a hand at the strange, sparkling buildings that made up the city. “Usually we’re in a smaller space, or someplace less...elaborate, in any case. Never seen anything like this. Recently, we spent...I don’t know, weeks, months, in a
restaurant,
which wasn’t bad because the fridges were stocked. It looked over a botanical garden, but when we went out into the garden...one or two steps and we were back at the front door of the restaurant. I wondered if she was watching somewhere and having a laugh at all of us taking turns trying to run out into the garden. I think the longest we ever stayed in one place was an aquarium. There was no way out of that dang place! It had a café, but after we’d finished all the pastries we had to start killing off fish. We got to the point where we had to slaughter and eat a penguin, by the Ancients! Now, I’ve had all kinds of survival training, but when the ground under your feet can change to something else in the blink of an eye it’s a whole different game. This is something, though, isn’t it?”

“Pretty amazing,” agreed Eliza forlornly, and then it struck her: Nia was showing off. This was all a performance, a display, and Eliza was the audience. There was no point at all in looking for her father. He was close, heartbreakingly close, but unreachable. If Nia wanted to impress Eliza, then Eliza would have to be impressed. With a great effort she put her father out of her mind. Further along the street there was a stairway that wound upwards and ended at a doorway hanging in the sky. She headed up it.

“Where are you going?” asked General Malone.

“Just taking in the view,” she called down. “It’s prize up here! You should see how many boats there are out on the water now.” Indeed, it looked as if the colourful bird-boats were assembling an army to invade the city.

She tried the door at the top. It opened, and a glass bridge arced out before her. The general watched from below. There was no railing and the bridge was terribly narrow and slippery, but Eliza was not afraid of heights. She went straight across it, through another door, and down another set of steps, back to where the general was waiting.