Shade and Sorceress (23 page)

Swarn took some herbs from one of the hanging baskets and tossed them into the bubbling cauldron. From another basket she took out two rough white bowls, ladled some of the boiling liquid into them and handed them to the girls.

“This will steady you,” she said shortly. “Most beings find that facing a dragon leaves them a bit shaky.”

They hesitated a moment, but there was no way to avoid drinking it without seeming rude. The drink was bitter but they both began to feel calmer as they sipped at it. Swarn began to add various other ingredients from different baskets to the pot: dried fungus and fresh greens and colourful, richly scented spices, as well as whole birds and fish.

“You are wearing the robes of the Faithful,” she commented to Eliza as she moved among the hanging baskets and buckets. “Did they give you shelter?”

“Yes,” said Eliza, looking down at her damp, mud-spattered robe. “I was looking for the Oracle but I spec she wasnay there.”

“And then you must have come through the Ravening Forest,” Swarn continued. “How is it that you were not eaten by the trees?”

“We went very quickly, aye,” said Nell.

Swarn laughed at this answer, then broke off abruptly. She narrowed her eyes and sniffed the air. Her head jerked sideways and she reached into her pocket. She began to speak swiftly through clenched teeth in the Language of First Days. As she spoke the room darkened and trembled and the flames in the fire shot up. Eliza and Nell clung to each other in alarm. Swarn strode across the room to the only narrow window, threw it open, and tossed some kind of pale powder outside. Then she reached for something. The fire went back to normal and when she turned back towards them she held a small bird in her hand, flapping feebly.

“I believe I have answered my own question,” she said dryly. With her other hand she reached into a basket and came out with a thin thread, which she tied deftly to the foot of the bird. The other end she tied to the iron poker propped up by a forked stick next to the fire. The bird flapped to the ground and hopped around the poker anxiously. All this Eliza and Nell watched in bewilderment. It came clear only when Swarn asked them, “How did you come to be in the company of a Shade?”

“Oh! What have you
done
to him?” asked Eliza, horrified. “Why cannay he change?”

“I’ve stopped him changing,” said Swarn. “He can live out a bird’s life and die one too. Shades are untrustworthy. Not one thing, nor another. I won’t abide being spied on.”

The bird looked at Eliza with its tiny black eyes and let out a plaintive little cheep. Eliza looked back at it helplessly.

“He was helping us...” she began.

“I think I can figure it out for myself,” said Swarn impatiently. “But have you considered, little girl, what the Xia Sorceress wants with you?”

“She wants something I have,” said Eliza, and then a chill of horror struck her all at once. “My bag!” she cried, scrambling to her feet. “I dropped it when the dragon took us! I have to go back!”

“I’ll have your things by morning,” said Swarn firmly. “Nothing can be taken from my Marsh without me knowing of it.”

She ladled some more of the steaming mixture from the cauldron into their bowls.

“I hadn’t counted on company tonight, so there isn’t much,” she said shortly, though in fact there was plenty. Swarn noticed Nell examining the bowl and said, “Dragon bone. Same as this entire house. You won’t be troubled by dragons or any other magical being in this Marsh unless I decide you’re to be troubled. But it appears you’re quite troubled enough. If you think you’ll find help here in Tian Xia, any being willing to go to Di Shang and pick a fight with the Sorceress Nia, you are mistaken.”

“What did you call her?” asked Eliza. The bird had hopped onto her knee and was looking up at her, its tiny head cocked on one side.

“Her name,” said Swarn curtly. “Nia, she was called once.”

“Do you
know
her?”

“I did. More than I’d like. And well enough to know you’d best steer clear of her. She’d make very short work of the likes of you. You can sleep by the fire; it will burn all night. Tomorrow I’ll have your belongings for you and you’ll turn around and go back where you came from. Only way you’ll live out your meagre human lives. Now eat.”

They drank the soup back hungrily. Swarn sat cross-legged and straight-backed, staring deep into the leaping green flames of the fire. Her face was still as a mask and the firelight played across it.

Nell mustered her courage and asked, “How is it you speak Kallanese?”

Swarn looked up from the flames as if she had forgotten they were there.

“I speak a good many languages,” was all she said.

“Lah, are you a witch?” Nell pressed on.

For a moment or two it seemed Swarn would not answer. Then her still face broke into a wry smile and she said, “So I am. Swarn the Marsh Witch, some call me, though I go by many names.”

Nell and Eliza glanced at each other. They were both thinking the same thing. A witch who was giving them food and shelter could not be all bad. If only they could persuade her,
she
could summon the Triumvira at the Hall of the Ancients for them.

“Sleep,” Swarn commanded, as if she could sense their desire to speak more.

Though still filthy, their clothes had dried before the fire. They lay down on the mats and Nell was snoring softly within minutes. Eliza’s mind was so full and busy that she felt sure she wouldn’t sleep at all. She lay awake by the flickering green fire that did not die, and eventually her thoughts blurred into dreams.

~

Eliza lay in the snow reaching for her broken staff. Every limb ached with the cold, every breath of icy air was like a dagger in her chest. She couldn’t reach the broken pieces. The wind was white and biting. Through it came the tiger, bending over her.

“Don’t imagine you are fooling me, Eliza,” said the tiger. Its breath was warm in her ear. “I know where you are. I know what you’re doing. But you’re wasting precious time: yours, mine, and your father’s. The witch will not help you. None will help you, because they fear me. I only want the book, but if I am made to wait much longer, my temper may get the better of me.”

The tiger backed away and bared its teeth in a growl.

I’m on my way, Eliza tried to say, but the words froze in her throat. Her mouth and throat were full of ice; she couldn’t breathe. She struggled vainly as the tiger loped away, and woke up gasping. Swarn was gone. She had placed coarse blankets over Eliza and Nell. Eliza pulled the blanket around her tightly and drifted back into anxious, fitful sleep.

~

Eliza and Nell woke at the same moment with the bang of the door. It was barely light. Swarn was standing over them, her face like thunder. She held Eliza’s staff and the barrier star in one hand, the Book of Barriers in the other.

“What are you?” Swarn spat.

“What do you mean?” Eliza squeaked, terrified.

“You claim to be the Shang Sorceress but you have no power that I can detect and you have no Guide. You bear with you items you have stolen from the Mancers, items of great power pertaining to barriers. You have befriended a Shade and you speak of the Xia Sorceress. Are you taking these things to her? Tell me why I should not strike you all dead this very instant.”

“I dinnay
want
to give her the book,” cried Eliza, pinned to the floor by Swarn’s terrible gaze. “I know she’s evil! That’s why I came here, that’s why I need help, aye. The Triumvira defeated her before. If you help me summon them...”

“Idiot!” Swarn hissed at her. “It was all they could do to cast her out and they are done with her,
done.
What do they care for your father?”

Eliza and Nell cowered together in the face of her fury. When she spoke again her voice was soft: “My question now is...do I cast you out to be eaten by dragons, or do I have the Mancers come and fetch you?”

“She killed my ma,” said Eliza. Saying it out loud, her anger swelled again, dwarfing her fear. “I’ll nay let her do the same to my da. He’s all I’ve got! He’s the only one who...” She trailed off. Swarn’s face had changed at the mention of Eliza’s mother. She looked at the staff in her hand.

“Who is your mother, then, child?”

“Her name was Rea,” said Eliza. “I dinnay remember her. I was too small when she died.”

“Your father raised you?”

“Aye.”

“And who is he?”

“His name is Rom Tok.”

Swarn nodded slowly. “How did the Mancers find you?” she asked.

“They came to my home a few weeks ago and took me away. How do you know they
found
me?”

Swarn paced back and forth before the fire for a moment, still holding Eliza’s things.

“I made a promise long ago,” she said. “One that I intend to break now. If you are who you claim to be, Eliza, this is not the first time you have been in this house.”

Eliza was too puzzled to respond. She looked at Nell, then back at Swarn. Swarn smiled. It was not the same wolfish grin they had seen before. This was a sad, distant sort of smile, and it fell quickly from her lined face. She said, “You were born here.”

Though it was only a few seconds, it felt as if a long time passed before anybody spoke again. Swarn placed the Book of Barriers and the barrier star in one of her baskets and propped Eliza’s staff against the wall with her spears. Then she sat down on the floor next to them. She smelled of leather and sweat and smoke.

Nell broke the silence, finding words before Eliza did. “How could she have been
born
here? She’s nay even from this world!”

“Dragons are impervious to most Magic,” said Swarn. “Did you know this?”

Both girls shook their heads.

“It’s true,” said Swarn. “That is why I have built my house of dragon bone. No spell can find me here. Rea was my friend, my pupil. When she was pregnant with you, Eliza, she came here to hide. She considered leaving you here, in fact, and I offered to raise you myself. But she thought she could keep you and your father a secret from the Mancers in Di Shang. I told her it was impossible, but Rea was very stubborn.”

“You knew my ma?” whispered Eliza, hardly able to believe it.

“She sought me out when she was not much older than you are now. She had heard of me, and she wanted to learn those things the Mancers could not or would not teach her. She had a remarkable gift for Magic. I taught her witch-lore, and how to forge and wield her own weapons. The Mancers never knew, of course. She is one of a very few beings to have slain a dragon. Anyone who has slain a dragon may command them. It is a great power to possess. It was not long before she had learned all I could teach her, but she remained a dear friend. I delivered you, Eliza, in this very house, by this same fire.”

Eliza didn’t know what to say. She gaped at the witch.

“Before she left, she made me promise that I would help her daughter if ever she needed it,” continued Swarn. “I never saw her again. And now the day has come when her daughter comes to me and asks for my help. But I will break my promise to Rea. I will not help you to endanger the worlds.”

“I dinnay want to endanger
anything,”
said Eliza. “I just want to help my da! If you summon the Triumvira for us, maybe they would agree to help. The Xia Sorceress is their enemy, nay?”

Swarn looked thoughtful. Then she said, “Listen to me, little Sorceress. Do you know what it means to be a Sorceress?”

Eliza thought of the teardrop containing the two girls, the statue in the Temple of the Nameless Birth of one woman splitting into two.
Did
she know? She shook her head.

“The human Sorceress is a paradox in both worlds – a brief life combined with a most formidable power, a
deep
connection to the Magic of Making. She lives less than a century and her power is passed on through a single daughter. But Nia, as we called her then...she didn’t fancy having children or dying so quickly the way the others had done. She was strong and found a way to live forever. She obeyed no authority, cared not what damage she did. As she became more powerful, she became more dangerous. The Triumvira banished her, the Mancers imprisoned her, and since then her only thought is vengeance. Within the barriers that hold her, her power is absolute, and I promise you the Triumvira will not enter that place, nor will any other being in Tian Xia. She should be left there, no matter how she tries to goad her enemies into coming within reach of her power. You may be Rea’s child, but I reckon you’ve no more than a thimble-full of Magic in you, no training at all, and but a few years’ knowledge of the worlds. If you go anywhere near her she will make use of you as she pleases. She has no honour, is bound by no promises, feels no mercy. Let the Mancers take care of you, child. You have such a short life – live it with joy and do not cut it even shorter. Your father is probably already dead.”

Eliza had been readying to speak but this last choked her voice off. Her eyes filled with tears.