Shade and Sorceress (17 page)

“What did you bring
that
for?” Charlie asked as the Boatman recoiled, the veins in his neck bulging hideously.

“What is
that thing?
You care nothing for it,” the Boatman seethed. “Do you think to buy your passage so cheaply?”

“It’s gold,” protested Eliza. “And it has...Magic properties.”

“Gold! Magic! What do I care for gold or Magic when you care not for them? You would cast it into the sea as soon as keep it. It has no value.”

“It has to be something valuable to
you,”
said Charlie Ash impatiently.

“You nary said
that!”
cried Nell.

“How was I to know you’d think something worthless to you might pass as valuable?” he snorted. “You’ll have to give him something else.”

“But we dinnay have anything else,” said Eliza, horrified.

Nell rummaged frantically through the bag of food, then opened Eliza’s satchel, which still hung over her shoulder.

“What about this?” She pulled out the photograph of Eliza’s mother and held it out to her, her eyes apologetic. Eliza took it, misery twining about her heart.

“Ah!” The Boatman’s translucent skin flushed with blood. “There! A treasure! Enough for three.”

Friend or foe, Eliza’s mother seemed to be asking in the picture. This is the last I’ll ever see of her, thought Eliza. Her resolve hardened and she handed it to the Boatman. Her mother was gone, but her father was still alive. That was what mattered.

“Thank the Ancients,” breathed Charlie. “I was nay looking forward to being turned back.”

As the boat sailed into the mist Eliza saw the five Emissariae reach the shore, towering and blazing white before the dark line of trees. Their Magic could not reach her now. She took Nell’s hand.

“We did it,” she said to her friend.

Charlie Ash threw them a dubious look, then went to the side of the boat and watched the grey, lit sea as it raced beneath them.

~

One by one they dozed off on the deck, for it had been a long and eventful night in the Citadel and the movement of the boat made them even sleepier. When Eliza woke the mist had thickened. It hung about the boat like a white shroud. The Boatman was no more than a shimmering silhouette at the bow and the stern of the boat was lost in the mist altogether, as if it had been erased.

“Nell.” Eliza shook her friend awake. “Look.”

“Oh,” breathed Nell, sitting up and looking around. She gave a weak smile and shivered. “I used to worry I’d never get to leave Holburg, and now here I am on my way to another world! Not quite what I had in mind when I dreamed of traveling, but still.”

The Boatman remained at the helm, expressionless. Eliza noticed that although she could look at his hideous face, she couldn’t look closely at his eyes. She mentioned this to Nell and the two of them took turns trying, but no matter how they struggled their own eyes averted themselves from those of the Boatman, obeying some command greater than the will of their owners.

Gradually the fog thickened, obscuring the Boatman, obscuring the entire boat, until Eliza could no longer see her own hand held before her face. They sat in a tight cluster for fear of losing one another. The only sounds were the water rushing under the hull and, occasionally, the awful baying of the hounds of the Crossing, which made Eliza’s arm throb.

“How long d’you think we’ve been sailing?” asked Nell.

“I’ve no idea,” said Eliza.

“It doesnay usually take this long,” said Charlie Ash. “I think it must be you two slowing down the journey, aye. You dinnay belong in Tian Xia and you’ve no Magic to speed it along.”

“The journey gets longer and longer all the time,” came the Boatman’s terrible rasp from the mist. “Some say that one day the gulf will be too wide to cross at all.”

“What will happen to you then?” asked Eliza. It felt strange speaking to someone she couldn’t see.

“The gulf will swallow me forever,” he replied.

“Speaking of swallowing,” said Charlie, “I’m starving. Where’s that bag of food?”

It was difficult to put together sandwiches they could barely see, and there was a little bit of guesswork involved with the tins and jars Nell had stolen, but they managed well enough and ate their fill. After Nell and Eliza had finished, Charlie went right on, polishing off an apple, a banana, and a tin of something that turned out to be beans.

“Praps you’d best turn into a grasshopper before you eat all our supplies,” snarked Nell.

“I can find us more food when we get there,” he replied cheerfully. “One of my favorite things about being human is eating. Humans eat much better food than other creatures, aye. For most animals it’s just a matter of survival, but humans really put a lot of thought into making eating pleasurable. And talking, too. I love talking, aye. I have so much to say, but if I’m being a lemur or something, I cannay say any of it.”

“I still think I’d like you better as a grasshopper,” said Nell.

~

The fog closed around them like total blindness. They saw nothing at all for a time. Then it began to lift, pulling away slowly until the boat was visible again, and then the water around it. Eliza sat with her knees pulled up close to her chest and her good arm wrapped around them and tried not to think about what she was doing. Nell was sleeping again, with her head buried in her arms. Charlie Ash lay on his back, arms folded behind his head. His eyes were closed.

“Charlie,” she whispered, and his eyes opened.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just checking if you were awake. I cannay sleep.”

He rolled onto his side and regarded her calmly.

“You know what I hate?” he said.

“What?”

“When you’re trying to sleep but your mouth keeps filling up with saliva, and you have to keep swallowing it, but it keeps filling up again. That must bother humans.”

Eliza laughed in spite of herself.

“So be a cat, aye. I miss Smoky.”

“Oh, but then my ears itch.”

Eliza thought for a minute and then said, “Why did you decide to be so many different beings in the Citadel? A boy, a woman, a cat. Why not just one being?”

“To throw them off a bit. And lah, it gets boring being the same thing all the time,” he said. “I dinnay know how other creatures can stand it, day in day out, always being human or whatever.”

“But you’re the same thing all the time underneath, nay?” Eliza said. “I mean, whether you look like a woman or a boy or a cat, you’re still what you
are.”

“I spose,” he muttered, looking at her oddly.

“So, what are you, Charlie, when you’re nay looking like something else?”

He looked very uncomfortable and turned over on his other side so his back was to her. “Nothing,” he said. “I just pick a shape and that’s what I look like.”

“But there must be
something,
when you’re nay choosing to be anything in particular, a sort of original form, lah? Show me.”

“Why would I show you? And anyway, shouldnay you be thinking about your poor da and how his life’s in peril?”

“I dinnay even know your real name.”

Charlie snorted. “What real name? As long as I look like this, my name is Charlie.”

“But dinnay you have a name? For who you
really
are?”

“What for?”

“What
for?”
Eliza echoed. “Dinnay you have friends who know what you are? It would be strange for them to have to change what they call you whenever you change shape, aye.”

Charlie didn’t reply.

“What does the Xia Sorceress call you?” Eliza asked.

Still he said nothing.

“Must be lonely,” she murmured.

~

A breeze scattered the last shreds of mist. They were sailing in the middle of a vivid green sea or lake, ringed by what could only be the shadow of land, under a sepia-coloured sky. There was no sign of the shore they had come from.

“We’re here, nay?” said Eliza. “This is Tian Xia.”

“Home sweet home,” said Charlie, looking glumly at the horizon. “I prefer your world, aye. It’s...gentler.”

Eliza thought she understood already what he meant. There was something about the dark, distant hump of land encircling the lake that frightened her. It wasn’t a fear of anything so obvious as danger or even the great unknown into which she was plunging. Rather, the land itself somehow seemed malevolent, as if it was a live thing possessed of consciousness and knowledge, waiting for her. She wrapped her good arm tighter around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. The feeling only got stronger as they got closer to the shore and the shadow became more clearly a great wedge of dark cliff obscuring the world beyond it. Eliza hung on to herself as if for dear life. She felt the nearly uncontrollable urge to jump overboard and swim in the other direction. But there was no way back now. Where they had come from only the Boatman could take them back to.

Nell woke with a start, her face chalky white and shining with sweat.

“Are you all right?” asked Eliza.

Nell started to say something, but instead she just made a frightened little croaking noise and clutched at her throat.

“Nell, what’s wrong?” Eliza took her friend’s hand in her own, alarmed. Nell’s hand was like ice.

“I dinnay know,” gasped Nell. “I dinnay know.”

Then she doubled over and threw up violently on the deck. Eliza held her hair back, the way her father had done for her when she’d had the flu four years ago. When Nell had finished retching she sat up, shivering and wiping her mouth.

“What a waste of food,” she managed, her voice quaking.

“It’s the change, aye,” said Charlie. “I used to get it too, crossing over to the side I nay belonged to. The first time is the worst.” He looked at Eliza curiously. “You seem all right.”

Eliza didn’t feel ill, but she wouldn’t exactly say she was all right, either. She couldn’t bring herself to voice the mounting terror that nearly choked her when she dared look at the dark wall of rock they were sailing towards.

“Oh no.” Nell lurched towards the side of the boat, where she threw up again over the side. When she was finished, her knees gave way. She lay on the deck breathing laboriously, terribly white. The Boatman glanced over his shoulder and made a sound that might have been a chuckle.

“Not a good journey for a human,” he commented.

“I’m human,” said Eliza.

“Are you,” he shot back blankly. “But you belongs here, or you’d be feeling the sickness.”

“That’s true,” commented Charlie. “I only ever feel it going into your world, aye. Nary coming home.”

Eliza felt Nell’s forehead. It was burning hot, but her hands were still cold.

“What should we do?” she asked frantically. “Should we take her back?”

“No turning back ‘til we’ve reached the other side,” said the Boatman. “Have you passage for the journey back?”

Eliza stared at Charlie. “Passage for the journey back!” she said.
“How are we going to pay for the way back?”

“We’ll work it out,” he said. “It doesnay always have to be an object, it’s just easier that way. And look, she’ll be fine, aye. It’s not fun, the sickness, but nobody’s ever died from crossing over.”

“No human’s made the crossing since the Middle Days,” commented the Boatman. “It was a shorter journey, then.”

Nell said weakly, “That’s something to be proud of, lah.” She tried to smile at Eliza but it came out a wince.

“I’m telling you, it passes,” insisted Charlie.

Eliza hung on to Nell’s icy hand. For a time Nell retched intermittently where she lay, but then she grew very still and cold and silent. Her eyes hung half-closed, looking at nothing. Her breath came in short, agonized little gasps, and the long wait between each new breath nearly made Eliza’s heart stop. Eliza tried to reassure her but she couldn’t even tell if Nell could hear or see her anymore.

“We’re almost at the Steps,” said Charlie.

Eliza looked up, but she did not see any steps. What she had assumed to be a wall was in fact a huge black cliff that circumscribed the lake. Figures of magical beasts and beings had been half-carved into the rock, but left incomplete they gave the impression not of deliberate carvings but of beings struggling to emerge from the stone. Huge symbols whose meaning Eliza did not know had also been hacked into the upper reaches of the cliff. Though she could not read them, the sight of them struck her to the bone with a terror deeper than anything she had ever felt. It was not a fear
of
something but a dread that was its own entity. It took up residence within her and ruled her every thought. She could not, she would not, pass through that wall of rock.