The Unmaking (23 page)

Nia knelt on the ground and cupped her hands together. She whispered into a small opening between her thumbs. Eliza could not hear what she said and yet she felt it, a pure horror and a vengeful rage. She was half-relieved every time Uri Mon Lil’s concentration faltered and the spell spat them out. Then she would look into the wizard’s terrified, bewildered face and explain, as best she could, again and again and again. Nia’s hair began to
fade and whiten, thin lines spidered across her face, and always she remained in the same posture, whispering hoarsely. The inaudible words radiated an unendurable level of pain, wrath and fear.

Then Nia opened her hands and a rough ball of what looked like black metal lay cupped in her palms.
Kwellrahg
, she named it. She pressed it to her chest. Her flesh and bone opened up around it and closed over it.
Kwellrahg
, she said again, hoarsely, and the monster on the ground came to life, surging up and then crawling down her throat, shrinking as it did so, passing into her like a horrible shadow. When it was done she stood up unsteadily. Her face was drawn and hollow-eyed, her white hair lank and wet with sweat, but she was lit from within somehow with a pale light of triumph. With a shriveled, shaking hand she undid the locket around her neck, opened it, and looked into the tiny mirror. She breathed deeply as her youth and beauty were restored to her. Then she turned her head and looked, or so it seemed, straight at the girl and the wizard spying on her much later through the book. And she smiled.

Eliza lay in the snow by the burnt-out fire. She was soaked through with sweat that was fast becoming cold. She saw the dragons moving together on the opposite side of the bank in the dark. Shivering, she pulled herself together and rekindled the fire. Uri Mon Lil was sound asleep and she left him that way for a while. Her mind felt as if it had been shoveled out. It was a tremendous effort just to think.

Had Nia known they might be watching? If so, why had she left the Book of Barriers behind? Perhaps she had wanted Eliza to know what she now knew – Nia had Made the Kwellrahg, true, but she had Made it out of Rea’s flesh and bone, Rea’s terror and fury in defeat. It was possible that killing the Kwellrahg would hurt Nia in some way, though she couldn’t be certain. It was also possible that it would hurt Rea, or worse. Rea was weak and could not take much.

The military was hunting the monster right now under General Malone’s orders. She had to go to the desert; she had to stop them. But she felt helpless, too helpless to move. The day’s Magic had emptied her. She watched the stars and tended the fire until a faint light appeared on the horizon to the east and she ached with the desire for sleep. Uri Mon Lil was always very frightened when woken and she thought hazily that it must be awful not to know who or where one was. She left him with the book open before him and slept dreamlessly.

She woke when the sun was already high in the sky. Ka’s dragon was keeping the fire alive with his breath. She was terribly hungry but so worn out from the previous day’s Magic that it took her a long time to charm a single black trout to leap out into her hands.

After they had eaten, she brought Uri Mon Lil up to date. Panic was closing on her now. The Kwellrahg was bent on destroying her mother and so she had to protect her mother from it. But harming the thing could harm her mother. How could she fight a foe she couldn’t hurt?

“You say this is the Book of Barriers?” said Uri Mon Lil, flipping through the empty pages. “Pity there’s nothing in it. It feels as if it must have been powerful, once.”

“You can feel that?” asked Eliza, interested. “That’s more than I can. I spec you must be a prize strong wizard when you have your memory.”

“According to my book, I was,” agreed Uri Mon Lil. “But there’s no way of knowing how much of that was self-aggrandizement. I don’t know if I was the type of wizard to brag. I should hope not but there’s no way to be certain, is there?”

One of the ravens perched in the trees swooped low over Eliza’s head suddenly and landed next to her in the snow. She had almost forgotten about them. Uri Mon Lil paid no attention to it and continued chattering about what wizardry might do to one’s ego. Eliza looked at the bird and the bird looked back. There was something in those small black eyes that she recognized.

“There are rather a lot of those birds around here, aren’t there?” commented Uri Mon Lil, looking at the trees along the river, dark with ravens. He shuddered a little, for it was an unsettling sight.

Eliza reached for the bird, touched its feathers, its beak. For one giddy moment she felt herself within the bird, looking back at a puzzled, frightened girl. At the same moment, she and the bird spoke. In unison, they said, “The Sorma.” Then the bird took off and Eliza was returned to herself.

“That was odd,” said the wizard, frowning at her. But Eliza’s mind felt like a flower opening suddenly. A sense of what to do next began coming to her in fragments.

“Are you...all right?” asked Uri Mon Lil, looking carefully at Eliza and then anxiously consulting his book for anything on possession by ravens.

“We need a barrier spell,” said Eliza with sudden urgency. “And we can retrieve it from the memory of this book.”

“Oh good,” said the wizard brightly. “How will we do that?”

“With the same spell we used yesterday, aye,” said Eliza.

“Ah,” said the wizard. “And what spell would that be?”

“Dinnay worry,” said Eliza, taking the book from him impatiently. “We’re quite good at it together.”

“Oh, I’m so glad,” said the wizard. “What do we need a barrier
for
?”

Eliza ignored the question. There was too much to explain and he would forget it all soon in any case. “Something strong but simple will do, aye. It doesnay need to resist Magic, only physical forces like metal or fire. It needs to be large, though. We need to be able to cast it over a wide area, maybe multiple areas.”

“I see.”

“We can find the time when that spell was being written in the book,” said Eliza. “All the books could be restored that way! You said it felt powerful, aye.
They remember
what was in them once and this spell can reveal it.”

“And...”

“No time to explain anymore, Uri Mon Lil. We’ve probably only got twenty minutes left as it is. Take my hands.”

Chapter

~13~

T
he being holding a sword to her throat
was the loveliest being that Nell had ever laid eyes on. He was tall and slim, dressed in silk clothes and a feathered cape and soft leather boots. His hair and skin had a kind of inner luminescence, so that he seemed made of light rather than flesh. In symmetry and charm and beauty his face was too perfect to describe. He stood on the ground before her and yet there was something in his stance that made her think of flight, as if in fact he was lighter than air on his feet, unutterably graceful even without moving. At the same time there was a weight and a stillness to him, a sense of something ancient and unmoving. She was so taken aback, so enchanted by his appearance, that she forgot to be afraid of the point of his sword, which nearly grazed her throat.

“You must be a Faery,” she breathed.

He spoke again in the strange, beautiful language. When she did not reply, he said, “What are you?”

Although he was not speaking Kallanese, the intent behind his words was unmistakable. It was a strange sensation to hear entirely unfamiliar words and yet have no doubt as to their meaning.

“Nell,” she stammered. “I mean, that’s...Why can I understand you? Can you understand me?”

The Faery looked scornful. “You know what I am. Do you not know I have the power to understand you and to make myself understood when I wish to be?”

She was going to reply when something hurtled into the Faery through the open ceiling and he was knocked to the ground. Whatever had flown into him changed shape as it knocked him back and became a half-hunter, growling and slavering, short swords grasped in hairy fists. The Faery managed an elegant kick and a twist, bucking the half-hunter off him so it staggered backwards. Before it had time to leap at him again, a golden net burst from the Faery’s hand and ensnared the beast. Nell watched all this too stunned to move, but as the Faery drew his sword and made for the half-hunter, she came to her senses.

“Stop!” she shouted, throwing herself against the Faery with all her might.

For a moment they all froze, the half-hunter in the net, the Faery with his sword poised for a killing blow and holding Nell with his other arm. Then the Faery stepped back, keeping Nell at arm’s length.

“I have never heard of a nell,” he said coldly. “Why does your half-hunter attack me?”

“
You
attacked
me
,” said Nell. “Or, at least, you pointed your sword at me in a not very friendly way. And Nell is my name, aye.”

She knelt and untangled the net around the half-hunter.

“Is that you, Charlie?”

It was. The half-hunter became a rather sheepish-looking Charlie. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and smiled at her. Nell crushed him in a hug.

“I didnay expect you to get well so quickly!” she cried, looking him over for any signs of injury and finding none. “I wasnay sure you would get well at
all
. I thought you might be...lah, Charlie, you looked terrible, and there was something like smoke, but it wasnay smoke, just pouring out of you.” She found she was sobbing quite unexpectedly and wiped the tears hastily from her cheeks.

Ander Brady appeared at the opening Nell had come through. He held his jacket over his arm. His pajamas were wrinkled and filthy with marsh water. The Faery swiveled and pointed his sword at Ander.

“What’s this?” Ander asked, looking at the Faery in amazement.

“Are you also a nell?” the Faery demanded, beginning to feel outnumbered.

“I’m an Ander,” said Ander, frowning. “Look who’s better,” he added to Charlie.

“We’re Di Shang worlders,” explained Nell eagerly, letting go of Charlie. “At least, Ander and I are. Charlie is...something else, aye.” She was wracking her brains trying to decide if Faeries were good or not. They were the villains of human history but that was a long time ago. Eliza had only ever spoken of the King of the Faeries, who was an equivocal case but ostensibly allied with Swarn. They were certainly no friends of Nia, which surely put them all on the same side, or so she hoped.

“Di Shang worlders?” said the Faery wonderingly. “Human, then.” He bent to look more closely at Nell, examining every inch of her face with great studiousness. He reached out and pressed his fingers to her cheek, as if testing the texture of her skin, then took a strand of her hair between his fingers and rubbed it a little, drew it close to his face, and sniffed it. Nell stood very still and let him, though she wasn’t sure why.

“What are you
smelling
her for?” Charlie drawled, getting to his feet.

“You smell...very nice,” said the Faery, letting go of her hair and glaring at Charlie a little.

“That cannay be true,” laughed Nell. “We’ve just been in the Dead Marsh.”

“Did you see Eliza?” asked Charlie immediately.

“Who is this fellow?” Ander asked, pointing at the Faery.

“What are you doing in Tian Xia?” asked the Faery.

For a few minutes there was a great deal of talking all at once, and every now and then the Faery swished his sword in the air impatiently. Once Charlie had explained to Nell everything that had happened between his visit to Ariston Hebe with Eliza and his sudden appearance in her backyard in Holburg, Nell told him that Nia had already been to the marsh and slaughtered the dragons. The Faery interrupted her sharply.

“Is the Warrior Witch living?” he demanded.

“I spec so,” said Nell. “But I dinnay know.”

“And you are friends of hers?”

“Yes. Sort of...friends of a friend.”

The Faery paced a bit and then said to Charlie mistrustfully, “I have heard of beings like you, who can change shape without the use of Illusion or Glamour. In the stories the Faeries tell, such beings are spies and renegades, loyal to no one.”

“That’s fair,” Charlie conceded, at the same moment as Nell protested, “Charlie’s
very
loyal.”

“Listen, we’re looking for this witch because we need someone who can command the Boatman to take us back home, aye,” said Ander. “As Nell here tells it, only the great beings can do that. But if you’re a Faery, praps you can help us.”

“We
cannay
go back yet!” protested Nell. “We’ve got to find Swarn! And Eliza! And we have to help that poor dragon!”

“I am looking for the Warrior Witch also,” said the Faery. “My name is Jalo. I am the second son of Nikias. Word came to us in the Faery Realm that the Sorceress Nia had defeated the Mancers with a powerful Curse. His Majesty the King of the Faeries could not risk summoning his allies in the usual way, for such Magic would lead the Sorceress to us immediately. Our Kingdom is hidden and ten of us were sent in quiet and secrecy to bring the Oracle of the Ancients and the Warrior Witch Swarn to the safety of the Faery Realm. I found the body of the Oracle in a cavern below one of these temples. I fear the Sorceress may already have slain the Warrior Witch as well, if what you say is true.”