Shade and Sorceress (2 page)

They roared through the empty streets on their little scooters to the square, where they drew their guns and clustered together. Whatever meagre defence the tiny police force of Holburg could put up was, at that moment, clearly futile. But they stood their ground.

Five enormous, gold-green dragons sprawled, gleaming, around the statue of the first president of the Republic, Ernest Noxon. Their flame-coloured, reptilian eyes surveyed the little group of police officers with utter disinterest. Smoke curled from their nostrils, and their chins rested slothfully on powerful black-clawed forelimbs. Standing in a row before the dragons as if waiting to be greeted were five tall, slender beings with shining skin and eyes like suns. They wore billowing white robes trimmed with gold, and their fair hair fell about their shoulders. One of them began to walk towards Ander, indifferent to the guns trained on him. The brilliance of those eyes forced Ander to look away. Up close, the being stood a full head and shoulders over the six-foot-three chief of police.

He spoke in accented Kallanese, the official language of the Republic. He had a rich, sonorous voice that Ander felt deep in his bones.

“I apologize for our unannounced arrival, Mister Brady. We five are the Emissariae of His Eminence the Supreme Mancer. I am Ka, manipulator of fire. My colleagues: Anargul, manipulator of wood, Obrad, manipulator of earth, Trahaearn, manipulator of metal, and Aysu, manipulator of water.”

“You’re Mancers,” said Ander, flooded with wonder and relief. “They’re Mancers, aye!” he said to his officers, who were momentarily too stunned to react. Then they holstered their guns and began to shout the news all at once.

At the exuberant cries of the police, doors and windows were being opened again in the streets and telephones were ringing all over town. Within minutes, the streets around the square were full of people curious to see what a Mancer looked like. Each of the Mancers had an emblem on their robe over the heart. The speaker, Ka, bore the image of a red bird, Anargul a blue-green serpent, Obrad a yellow human figure, Trahaearn a white bear, and Aysu a black crab.

Ka, the manipulator of fire, observed the crowd forming and then said to Ander, “I would like to speak with you privately.” As Ander tried to think of where they could go and how they would get there, the Mancer’s voice came again, this time from inside his head:
We are looking for Eliza Tok
. Ander stared in disbelief at the Mancer. His face was grave and his lips did not move as he continued to speak in Ander’s mind.
There is no need to speak out loud. Answer me with your thoughts. Where is the girl Eliza Tok?

I dinnay know her, Ander thought. Then he remembered that Tok was a Sorma name and that there was a Sorma fellow who lived just outside town and kept bees or some such thing. Was his name Tok? He couldn’t remember.

Take us to the beekeeper, then,
replied the Mancer in Ander’s head. Ander shivered and his eyes itched. He didn’t want the Mancer in his head. He stepped away and said, “Aye, the beekeeper,” out loud. The Mancer Ka gave him a sharp look, and at that moment the mayor arrived in her car.

Leaving the dragons waiting in the square where children gawked a safe distance away, the five Mancers were escorted by the mayor, the police force, and a large group of townsfolk to Rom Tok’s house.

They found him in his garden on his knees in the dirt, ruefully looking at the tatters of lettuce and ruined tomatoes rabbits had left behind. He was a big man, dark-eyed and black-skinned, with strong, capable hands and a shock of black hair that stood straight up. Smile lines were worn deep around his mouth and eyes. He looked up at the crowd with mild surprise, but when he saw the Mancers among them he was on his feet in an instant, casting his eyes down.

“No,” he said, backing away from them towards the door of the house. “No.”

“This
is he?” said Obrad, manipulator of earth, in disbelief.

Ka nodded to Aysu, manipulator of water. She was the most diplomatic, the best at dealing with other beings and humans in particular. Ka’s ascendancy was in the summer, but he found it uncomfortable acting as leader of the group. Aysu’s ascendancy was in the winter, and it seemed to Ka that they all relaxed when she and the powerful manipulators of water took the lead. Though it was her weakest season now and the journey had been hard for her, she approached Rom, kindly dimming her eyes.

“You’ve been expecting us,” she said, her voice high and melodic.

He shook his head.

“You know that we have been looking for you for many years,” said Aysu, and she laid a hand on his shoulder. “It is very lucky for you, your daughter, and all your kind that we have found you.”

Rom didn’t answer, but he flinched slightly at her touch.

“You may think you are protecting your daughter,” said the Mancer. “But you are leaving her open to great danger, along with all of Di Shang. The Crossing is unguarded still. You know this.”

“She is not what you think,” said Rom hoarsely. “She doesn’t have her mother’s gift.”

Obrad lost patience and stepped forward. “This is unheard of! We have come for her and we will not leave this place without her. Will you tell us where she is?”

Again, Rom uttered simply, through clenched teeth, “No.”

“Then we will find her ourselves,” said Obrad.

~

On maps of the archipelago Holburg looked like an upside-down comma. The cliffs in the south were the thickest part of the comma, a long broad wedge of land surging high up out of the sea. The northern part of the island was lower ground, a sliver that stretched out around the bright harbour. Holburg was one of the smallest of the inhabited islands in the archipelago, and its only town was Holburg Town. The island was thickly wooded in the north and also riddled with caves from the war. The citizens of the island had prepared themselves for a possible attack by creating these underground warrens in which to hide. The attack never came; now the caves were mainly used by children, who dared one another to go deeper into the tunnels, and young lovers who wanted to hide from prying eyes. Given the danger of a collapse, entering the caves was strictly forbidden, which naturally made them all the more appealing to the island children. Nell and Eliza knew every inch of this underground world and could find their way from one end of the island to the other through the maze of narrow passages and dark, low rooms hacked out of the ground. The southernmost opening was near the cliffs, beneath a rocky outcrop. As they climbed into the cool, dark tunnel, feeling instantly the relief of the shade, Eliza whispered, “I didnay bring a flashlight.” They always whispered in the caves.

“Neither did I,” Nell whispered back. “I thought we were just swimming today. Lah, if there’s something
really
going on, maybe nobody will notice we were nay at school and we’ll nay get in trouble.”

At a brisk pace it was half an hour to Sunset Hill on the south side of the harbour, overlooking the town. Going through the caves in total darkness, it took rather longer. They felt their way along the walls, whispering theories about what was going on, how they might have to rescue Roje Gerombe, Nell’s latest crush, and whether or not they would try to save Mentor Frist’s life if he ended up in mortal danger. Eliza felt they should, but Nell was undecided.

Eliza and Nell had been inseparable ever since Eliza and her father had come to the island three years ago. Each girl secretly longed to be more like the other, and a friendship between them sprang up immediately and naturally. Nell was pretty and self-assured, with chestnut hair that fell arrow-straight down her back, large violet eyes and a smooth, honey-coloured complexion. She was the picture of enchanting innocence, though most on Holburg knew better by now. She had lived in the same house on the island since she was born, with a father
and
a mother and a great crowd of noisy brothers. Eliza loved nothing more than to have supper at Nell’s house, pretending to be a part of this boisterous family, even as she felt a twinge of guilt for leaving her father to eat his supper alone.

As Nell saw it, her own life was painfully dull compared to Eliza’s. Eliza had traveled all over Di Shang, and even better, her father was Sorma, which Nell found so incredibly glamorous that she could hardly speak around him. The Sorma were nomadic desert people, reputed to be great healers and good with animals. Eliza and her father had not lived with the Sorma since Eliza’s infancy, however. Rom Tok said it was because he didn’t like the desert, but Nell and Eliza had come up with various other theories, the most convincing of which was that because Eliza’s mother had not been Sorma her father had been cast out of the tribe. If there was anyone who fascinated Nell even more than Eliza’s father, it was Eliza’s mother. First of all, she was dead, which in Nell’s opinion made her infinitely more interesting than anybody living. Second, they knew next to nothing about her and so were free to make up whatever they chose. Eliza barely remembered her mother, who had died of pneumonia when Eliza was just two years old. She had only one photograph of her. It was her most prized possession and she had showed it to Nell many times. In the photograph a red-haired woman with hazel-green eyes and a narrow face stared at the camera as if she’d just been asked an unexpected question.

For as long as Eliza could remember, she and her father had moved from place to place, never staying put for long. He had been a veterinarian in various bleak, far-flung towns, mostly indistinguishable from one another, a rancher for one sun-scorched year in the plains of Huir-Kosta, and a trapper for many months in the snowy, inhospitable Karbek Mountains. The closest they had lived to the desert was in the town of Quan, on the outskirts of the Great Sand Sea, where he had trained horses for a season.

Eliza was nine years old when they first came to Holburg. She was much darker than the island children, and her features were rather too severe for a child, with a pointed chin and a sharp little beak of a nose, big black eyes and heavy eyebrows. She was small for her age, all sharp elbows and knees, with hair that would neither lie down flat nor curl nicely, but whose disorderly tendrils sprouted from her head in total defiance of both fashion and gravity. She had a big crooked smile just like her father’s, but she was accustomed to solitude and wary of strangers and so she struck the islanders at first as a prickly, unfriendly little girl. In all those years moving from one isolated, sparsely populated place to another, she had never made close friends among the children her age who ran about, dirty and rough, in little bands. She had never grown attached to any place, because she knew her father was a nomad at heart and they would not stay long.

She could not keep herself from falling in love with Holburg, though. They could pick mangos and bananas straight from the trees. The water was warm year-round, full of leaping dolphins and bright, darting schools of fish, and in the winter they could see the spouts of whales passing through the archipelago. And there was Nell, her first real friend. Together they invented secret languages, played pranks on the Mentors at school, built hide-outs in the caves, and had “sleepovers” during which they did not sleep at all but stayed up whispering ‘til sunrise. Three years on, Eliza looked people in the eyes, chatted breezily in island slang, smiled easily and often. Her father saw this, and so, although he worried, they didn’t leave Holburg. Sometimes Eliza would ask him anxiously if they were really going to stay, and he would say “for now.” He couldn’t make any promises.

~

Ka and Aysu waited in the mayor’s office. The secretary had been told to bring them tea but had run home in terror instead. Rom Tok was with them, looking at the carpet, and so was the mayor, who hadn’t the faintest idea how to accommodate these most eminent guests. The four of them waited in silence until Obrad, Anargul and Trahaearn returned from their sweep of the island.

“No sign of the girl,” said Obrad, with a bitter glance at Rom, who did not look up. “The police have gone through the school and the homes in the town. It appears she is not on the island. A friend of hers is also missing.”

“Is the friend relevant?” asked Aysu wearily.

“No,” said Obrad.

“There is absolutely no way she could have left the island,” the mayor insisted.

They all looked at Rom. He remained resolutely silent. Ka made a brief attempt at Deep Listening to hear his thoughts, but Rom was expecting it and his mind was firmly shut. Ka could try to force it but didn’t like to do so yet.

“The caves!” cried the mayor suddenly. “They must be hiding in the caves!”

Ka didn’t need to Listen to Rom’s thoughts to know that he had been keeping that piece of information buried deep.

“Bring her here,” he said.

~

Eliza and Nell crawled out of the cave onto Sunset Hill, blinking at the brightness. Lying down flat on a ridge overlooking the town, they saw the five giant, winged creatures in the square. Nell could not tear her eyes from them, but Eliza noticed two police officers climbing up the hill towards the cave opening and tugged urgently on her friend’s sleeve. After a quick, whispered consultation, they ran to where the trees were thickest and made their way down towards the town.

They came out of the trees by Ty March’s house and followed a route through back gardens and alleyways. They reached the bakery through one of the alleys and entered the store through the back. There was nobody in the back room baking, so Eliza and Nell filled their pockets with misshapen or overdone cookies from the discard tray, which they usually came to claim after school, before peering out into the front of the shop. The baker and his teenage daughter were both standing outside the shop, which faced onto the square. They looked as if they were ready to dash back inside at any moment. Eliza and Nell hid behind the bread racks and peered out the window. The winged creatures in the square could only be dragons.