Shade and Sorceress (19 page)

“Quiet,” said Charlie crossly. “Dinnay be rude.”

“The wall moves,” hissed Eliza. As she spoke she felt the ground shifting under her feet as well. She bent to touch it and found that it too was covered with fur and gave slightly beneath her touch, like flesh.

“What is this?” she asked in a low voice.

“It’s good with sickness, aye,” said Charlie. “And It will help Nell because It’s kind. I’d heard It was around here, but I had to look a while to find It.”

“What’s it called?” asked Eliza.

“I dinnay know. It doesnay talk, and nobody has tried to give It a name that might nay be right. Help me get Nell inside.”

Near the back of the cave the fur grew thick and soft, and they laid Nell there as if in a bed.

“Now we need to get out,” said Charlie.

“Why?”

“Lah, because we’re nay sick.”

“We cannay
leave
her here.”

“That’s how it works, Eliza. Come on. Leave the book with her – it’ll be safer here, aye.”

Eliza rummaged in her satchel for the Book of Barriers and laid it down next to Nell. Reluctantly she followed Charlie out of the cave and then watched in horror as the dark opening closed over her best friend. She started to run back in but Charlie stopped her.

“She’s close to dead,” he said. “If we pulled her out now...lah, I think It’s our only chance.”

The rock closed with a grinding sound and left no mark at all.

“You’d better be right,” said Eliza in a small voice, staring at the smooth rock face that had swallowed her best friend.

~

Eliza and Charlie waited by the vanished cave as it grew dark. The rock felt like ice against her back and the air chilled her to the bone. Three half moons performed a slow circling dance across the black canopy of the sky and every now and then a red comet flashed and vanished. To the south, suspended just above the horizon, a sea of lights flickered and moved, throwing up ever-changing images. One moment the twinkling points of light formed spires and towers and great bridges over billowing gold waterfalls, a city of stars, and the next moment the city was swept away by rippling strips of luminescence that flowed like rivers and then surged up into a forest of sweeping, wavering trees before collapsing again into frothing waves of light and sparkling fountains.

“What’s that?” asked Eliza, pointing at the moving lights.

“The hanging gardens of the Sparkling Deluder,” said Charlie.

“What’s a sparkly deluder?”

“One of the Four Immortal Powers of Tian Xia, aye. They’re the children of the Ancients, supposedly. The ice plains of the Horogarth are in the north, the hanging gardens of the Sparkling Deluder in the south, the Realm of the Faeries to the west and the Dragon Isles to the east.”

“Oh.” Eliza tried to sound casual. “Lah, this sparkling deluder...is he...it...one of the Xia Sorceress’s enemies? I spec you know who they are, nay?”

“I’m nay stupid, Eliza,” said Charlie.

Her stomach dropped.

“I nary said you were,” she said. “You know what, we left all the food in the forest. I’m hungry.”

“You were trying to run away from me back there,” he said. He didn’t sound angry. He was staring up at the night sky with an expression that was almost forlorn. “But you’re lucky you didnay get far. You’d both be dead by now if I’d nay found you.”

“I dinnay know if lucky is the word I’d use for this,” said Eliza.

“I know what you want to do, aye. You think you can find the Triumvira and get them to help you.”

“The Triumvira?”

“The three beings that banished the Sorceress from Tian Xia.”

“I didnay know that’s what they were called,” said Eliza.

“It’s a looped idea,” he said flatly. “They’re no likelier to help you than the Mancers. Less so, actually. Even if you could find them, which you cannay.”

Eliza had no retort. She felt the futility of her situation like a great wave threatening to capsize her tiny boat of hope. A little boat about to be wrecked on the shores of an unfamiliar, unforgiving world.

“It’s funny, you nay getting sick at all from the Crossing,” mused Charlie. “I thought the Shang Sorceress was supposed to belong to Di Shang, but you must really be a Tian Xia worlder. Or both. The first time I crossed, I thought I was going to explode. It was horrible, aye. I turned into everything I could think of, one after the other, trying to find something that wouldnay feel the pain so intensely. That’s when I learned that every living thing feels pain, and it’s awful no matter what you are. Every crossing gets easier, though.”

“When was the first time you crossed over?” asked Eliza, letting him change the subject. She didn’t want to talk about why her plan wouldn’t work, either.

“Lah...six or seven hundred years ago. It was on a whim, aye. It had nary occurred to me that there would be anything much worth seeing or doing in Di Shang, but I was bored and thought I’d have a look. I crossed over with a Giant who’d got it into his head that he was going to become King of Di Shang. Giants are always planning on becoming king of somewhere. Whoever the Shang Sorceress was at the time, she banished him right back where he’d come from. But nobody noticed me and I found I liked being human. I began to make the journey quite a lot, after that.”

“How
old
are you, Charlie?”

He shrugged. “Not sure. Old enough that I dinnay remember a time when it didnay feel like I’d just been around forever.”

It was odd, thought Eliza, that even knowing what he really was, it still felt so natural to talk to him as if he was just Charlie, the boy she had played with these past few weeks in the Mancer Citadel.

“I wonder where the Mancers are now,” she said, shivering.

“They’re prolly doing a seeking spell or waiting for the Mancers in the Citadel to check the Vindensphere and send word. Either way it’ll take them a little time, but then they’ll know where we are. So we’d better hope Nell doesnay take too long to get better.”

“Will this cave really work?”

“I hope so, aye,” said Charlie, with real feeling. “I’d feel bad if something happened to her. She’s just a girl.” He glanced at Eliza. “So are you, for that matter. I thought...lah, you’re nay quite what I expected from the Shang Sorceress.”

She didn’t ask him what he had expected. Somebody who could do Magic, no doubt. Instead she asked abruptly, “Charlie, why are you working for the Xia Sorceress?”

“I owe her a favor,” he answered tersely.

“What do you mean? What kind of favor?”

“It’s complicated,” he said.

“It’s just, you dinnay seem...I mean, she’s evil!”

“Evil depends on your point of view, aye. The Mancers want to keep all Tian Xia worlders out of Di Shang, separating the worlds forever. The end of Tian Di, in other words. Not everybody likes that idea. I like being able to inhabit both worlds, so it makes sense to side with the being most likely to overthrow the Mancers. And like I said, I owe her.”

“But if all Tian Xia worlders could cross into Di Shang, humans would be slaves again!” said Eliza. The staple of Di Shang history education was the horror of slavery in the Early Days. “The Mancers are
protecting
humans.”

“Lah, I’m nay human,” said Charlie. “What’s that to me?”

“But dinnay you care?”

“Look, someone is always enslaving or oppressing someone else,” said Charlie. “The Mancers know that. And humans are in on it too. Humans enslave animals, not to mention eating them. Humans oppress other humans, too. Do you want to tell me that slavery doesnay exist in Di Shang? Have you ever
been
to Scarpatha?”

“No,” said Eliza hesitantly. “But the Scarpathians are nay slaves. Anyway, lah, they sided with the Xia Sorceress in the war. Against other humans.”

“And why do you think they did that?” said Charlie. “Seems to me that wherever you look, there’s the powerful stepping all over the powerless. I just want my own freedom. I’ve nary been one for big causes.”

Charlie’s expression of amorality depressed her, but Eliza was becoming too cold and weary to argue about it. Her teeth had started to chatter.

“It’s too cold to be human tonight,” said Charlie. “I’m going back to wolf. I’ll keep you warm if you trust me enough to get close.”

Eliza nodded her head, and Charlie became a wolf again. She curled against his warm body and slept in restless fits and starts until the dawn.

~

Eliza dreamed she was in the Arctic. Bright ice plains stretched as far as the eye could see and the wind and snow whipped about her. She was entirely alone. She tried to walk, but her legs were rooted to the spot. Then the white tiger she had seen in the Vindensphere appeared before her, seated just a few feet away and staring at her. She stared back. There was something so familiar in its steady gaze. It tugged at something deep inside her, buried and secret.

“I told you to bring the book,” said the tiger. “Don’t you want your father to live?”

Eliza tried to speak. She opened her mouth but no words came. She realized with a terrible panic that she didn’t know any words at all. She had no language. She stared imploringly at the tiger.

“I’m not known for my patience, you know,” said the tiger. It stood up and came towards her with the fearsome grace of all the great cats. It gave her hand a sniff and then licked it with its enormous rough tongue. She could see its teeth – teeth made for tearing flesh like hers. It rubbed its big head against her arm, and its fur was so soft, she wanted to bury herself in that fur, wrap it around her, she wanted to crawl inside the tiger and not have to be Eliza anymore, Eliza alone and afraid. She would just be the tiger, fearless and beautiful and sure.

~

She woke with the light, terribly hungry, leaning against the warm body of the wolf. The lurid sky, rust-coloured overhead, shocked her fully awake before she remembered where she was. Her hurt arm was throbbing badly from the previous day’s exertions. The sun, fat and pale, was rising in the east and the hanging gardens of the Sparkling Deluder were faded in the southern sky. She leaped to her feet and searched the cliff face, but there was no sign of the cave from yesterday, no sign of Nell.

“Where is she?” she cried, waking the wolf, who immediately became Charlie again. “What’s happened to the cave? I’ve let my best friend be eaten!”

“She was really sick,” said Charlie. “It might take a while.” He squinted around at the bleak landscape. “We cannay wait here. We’re too easy to find.”

“I’m nay leaving her,” protested Eliza, but she knew he was right. “We can hide, but it has to be somewhere close. And not in that forest.”

“I’ll take you to the Temple of the Nameless Birth,” said Charlie. “It’s nay far. We flew over the temples when we arrived. The Faithful live there and worship the Ancients. They’ll shelter you and give you something to eat, aye. You’re on your own when we get there, though – if I change shape they’ll think I’m some kind of demon and I’m not keen on being subjected to a bunch of spell-casting and potion-tossing.” He hesitated and then added, “If the Oracle of the Ancients is there, you can even ask her for help. She’ll say no, and then we’ll go back to Di Shang.”

“The Oracle of the Ancients?” asked Eliza.

“She’s the one who formed the Triumvira,” said Charlie, not meeting her eyes. “The Faithful think that the Ancients speak through her. Actually a lot of beings think that and seek her out for answers. She’s a big deal in Tian Xia. I’ll come straight back and keep an eye out for Nell.”

Eliza gaped at Charlie. “Is this some kind of trick?” she asked.

Charlie shrugged uncomfortably. “I didnay know you when I agreed to all this. I figured you were some powerful Sorceress. It seems only fair...to give you a shot, at least. Are you coming?”

He led her up the narrow trail to the top of the cliff. Eliza looked across the arid plains at the red domes in the distance and felt hope quickening within her again.

“You’ll take me there?” she asked.

Charlie did not reply, and when she looked at him she saw he had become a donkey.

~ Chapter 11 ~

The donkey took her back
towards the Crossing along the bottoms of dried-out gorges, out of plain view. It was a long, hot, uncomfortable ride, and she was so hungry that her stomach was cramping. The air had an acrid sharpness to it that left her throat raw, as if she’d been screaming. When the donkey emerged from a scorched ravine they were on the outskirts of the temple complex. They passed between the fields along narrow dirt paths, and the black-robed figures Eliza had last seen from above stopped their work to watch the donkey and the girl go by in silence. They wore hoods and scarves so that only their large, pale, unblinking eyes were visible, and those eyes followed Eliza’s progress towards the temples. These must be the Faithful, as Charlie had called them. Eliza looked back at them curiously, noting that the bare trees growing in tidy rows were being tapped for sap. A strong, sweet smell came from the buckets at the base of the trees. There were smaller quantities of other crops in the fields, some of which looked familiar, like peppers and eggplant, and others entirely alien – fleshy yellow-white pods almost as big as a human head and bushes bearing shiny round clusters of reddish nuts.