Shade and Sorceress (38 page)

Eliza felt quite relaxed after the luxurious meal. The room was comfortably warm and the snowflakes whirling past the window made her dizzy when she looked at them. She could see tiny, twinkling lights out there too, as if there were a little snow-covered town in the valley outside. Nia was smiling and radiant and when she tossed her hair Eliza caught the sweet, enticing scent of her perfume. An odd sort of haze was creeping over her. Her mind worked very slowly and her whole heart seemed to hang on Nia’s smile. The danger she was in felt like a half-remembered dream, not real at all.
It’s a spell, of course,
she told herself again, but knowing it didn’t change the strange sense of well-being. Even though she knew she should be terrified and angry, she didn’t really want to be.

“Were you really married to the King of the Faeries?” she asked.

“Long, long ago,” said Nia. She reached over and tucked a loose tendril of Eliza’s hair behind her ear, which seemed entirely natural. “I was very young, only a few years older than you at the time. Just old enough to know how enchanting that kind of youth and fragile mortality can be to the immortal, who has done and seen all there is. And of course, he was...well, he
is
very handsome, and so powerful, and he seemed to know everything.”

“You were in love with him,” said Eliza drowsily.

“Oh, yes. Passionately. With every fibre of my being.”

“Lah, how did you become enemies?”

“There was one thing I loved even more,” said Nia with a sad little smile.

“What?” Eliza asked.

“Freedom,” said Nia. “I lived with him in the Realm of the Faeries and he gave me immortality, eternal youth. But you see, the Faeries are Masters of Illusion. The sort of thing I can do,” and here she gestured at the room around them, “is nothing at all to their Illusions. I was powerless, entirely at his mercy. With eternity ahead of me I wanted to see more of the worlds, I wanted to experience
everything,
but he would not let me leave. He was afraid I wouldn’t come back. And so my marriage became a prison, and my beautiful, beloved husband my warden. I knew I had to free myself from his Illusions, and for that, I needed Faery Blood. Watch.”

Nia took the luminous vial from around her neck, unscrewed the top, and dipped her finger inside. She closed it again and touched the air above the table with her finger, which looked smudged with light. It was as if her mere touch tore a hole in the air. The wind came through, raw and cutting, and sharp crystals of icy snow, not at all like the large soft flakes drifting and whirling outside the window over the little lit town. Eliza scrambled up onto the chair and peered through the gap. It was no more than an inch wide and through it she saw only the white freezing wind. It was too cold to stay near the gap and so she shifted her chair further away from it. Nia laughed.

“The vial is enchanted, and so long as I wear it I can see through Illusion whenever I want to. It’s just a matter of
looking
properly. For the most part, I don’t want to see through it here, of course, because there’s nothing to see.”

“How did you get the blood?” asked Eliza. “Is it his?”

“Yes,” said Nia. “I gave him something to make him sleep deeply and took this vial of blood with a needle. When he woke he knew what I had done and he wouldn’t forgive me. I had to leave, or he might have killed me. I wasn’t as strong as I am now. My powers were still so new, and I was so young. So I fled, and my heart was broken. Oh, I’ve loved and lost since then, of course, but it never hurts as much as the first time. But then, there was never anybody like him, again.”

“He loves you, too,” said Eliza.

“He wanted to
possess
me,” said Nia viciously. “Knowing it had cost me the love of my life, I made the most of my freedom. But that’s what led to such trouble. You see, Smidgen, all this nonsense about how I wanted to rule the worlds is just that...nonsense. I have no interest in
ruling
anything. But nor do I want to
be
ruled, or kept out, or kept in, told what to do, what to be. And there have always been so many beings vying for power in the worlds that I had to become as strong as I could, just to resist the authority of others. It frightened them, how strong I became. It frightened the Oracle in particular. She hated me for rejecting her faith and it was easy for her to win Malferio and the Witch to her cause, for they each had their own reasons to hate me. I was banished from that world, and then I had to deal with the Mancers. I wasn’t setting out to wreak destruction in Di Shang specifically, but what did they expect me to do, get a job in an office somewhere? They have such absurd rules about the use of Magic in this world, and I simply ignored them.
They
waged war. I fought back, a war of independence if you will. But your world doesn’t interest me, Smidgen. I want to go back to Tian Xia, to do as I please, and teach a lesson to those who cast me out of my own home, my own world!”

Nia’s eyes were glittering with a terrible fire now and her fair skin almost glowed. Eliza felt quite sorry for her, for it did sound as if she’d been badly ganged up on.

“Why does Swarn hate you?” she asked. “She didnay seem so bad to me. Except when she was trying to kill me.”

Nia looked affectionately into Eliza’s face and gave a little laugh. “When I said the Oracle recruited Malferio and the Witch to banish me, I was referring to Swarn’s sister, Audra. The name means ‘whirlwind,’ and it suited her. She was wild as could be and wonderfully good company. She and I were very close at one time, and I learned a great many things about Magic from her. We fell out over something rather trivial. She had enslaved a Shade, whose will she had bound with Magic. I was unduly impressed by the thing at the time. I thought it would be rather useful to be able to call on it. The Shade agreed to serve me willingly if I broke Audra’s spell over it. So I did, and Audra was livid. That was the end of our friendship. When I discovered she was plotting against me with my husband and the Oracle I felt terribly betrayed. I confronted her, we fought, and I killed her. It was a mistake, however. Her sister, Swarn, who had until then refused to be involved in the matter, joined Malferio and the Oracle to form a new Triumvira. Her power was greater than her sister’s. They cast me out together.”

“The Shade, was it Charlie?” asked Eliza, amazed by this tale.

“Of course,” said Nia. “He left Tian Xia when I did, vowing never to go back, and he was very useful indeed until he decided to help
you.”

“Poor Charlie,” said Eliza. “I didnay know.” Her eyes strayed again to the vial around Nia’s neck.

“You’d never get it from me,” said Nia, very gently. “You know that.”

“I know,” said Eliza.

“Come here, Smidgen,” said Nia. The dinner table was gone. They were on a sofa before the fire. Eliza found herself in Nia’s arms, resting her head against her shoulder, breathing in the warmth and sweetness of her skin while Nia’s fingers traced through her hair, gently working out the tangles. She could not remember her mother holding her as a baby. Her experience of comfort had always been masculine, her father’s broad chest and strong arms, the smell of smoke and sweat. This feeling was entirely different, and intoxicating. Full of food and wine, in the arms of this woman, she felt soothed to a sort of half-sleep.

“It’s been a long day,” said Nia.

Indeed, it was hard to believe what had happened in a single day. The trek through the ice, the awful tension, the changing city, discovering her father and then her mother, her near escape and the despair that followed, all these things flowed through Eliza’s mind and she was relieved, at last, to have come to the end of her journey. She had done what she had set out to do. Her father was safe, and so was her mother. Charlie was all right. Nell was safe in Holburg. She would stay here, now, with the Sorceress. They would do the things Nia had said, like ride horses, and she would drink wine and coffee every day. There was no need to struggle anymore, no need to be afraid or lonely, no more moving from place to place, no more, nothing more. All her life had led her here.

Do you remember the room in the Temple of the Nameless Birth that my tiger showed you? asked Nia, just a murmur in Eliza’s mind. Do you remember the pictures on the wall there? And the statue?

Yes, said Eliza.

Do you know, Smidgen, (and now the Sorceress placed a sweet tingling kiss on her forehead that lulled her further), you and I are full of mysteries we hardly understand ourselves. I’ve been alive for centuries, and still there are these hidden depths, these secrets to myself I keep discovering. There is no end to it. Do you know why I could come to you as a tiger, before?

Why? Eliza felt as if she were asleep and awake at the same time, her body entirely and deeply at rest, her mind suspended in a sort of dream state and yet conscious of everything, the smell of the woman who held her, the sound of the fire crackling, the warmth of the room.

Because we are one, said Nia. Our lines were born together of the same teardrop and since then we’ve been apart, in different worlds but always longing to be together again. Because you are my other half, and I am yours, and the deep mysteries we have within us will fit together like a key into a lock and tell a story that is complete. It’s why I love you, Smidgen, and it’s why you’ll always love me even though I’ve hurt you so. This love isn’t something we can turn our backs on or walk away from, the way I did with Malferio. It goes too deep for that. We’re bound. If the bond between us were cut we would each be adrift and there would be no story, no sense to be made of what we are.

I know, said Eliza, and she did. She felt her eyes fill with tears, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. Nia caught them with her fingers, drying her face with her soft, gentle hands. And yet even though she was crying there was a sort of bliss to her tears, and to the deep throb of longing within her, and she knew that of all the beings in the worlds, Nia was the closest to herself, and the dearest to her.

And we
can
be one again, said Nia. You don’t have to be a little girl, powerless and afraid. You can be
me.
There is nobody stronger, nobody freer. Nobody could hurt us then, Smidgen. Nobody could stop us. We would be safe forever, and always free. Don’t you want that?

Yes, said the girl.

Then you need to let me in, sweet, said the Sorceress.

Yes, said the girl, and she felt something, a cold and shadowy hand encircling her heart. She tensed, and the Sorceress said, Shhh, shhh, it will only hurt for a moment.

And then it
did
hurt. Something was being touched that ought not to be. It was shut tight like a clam but something horribly cold and horribly sharp was prying at it, to open it, and if it was opened...and then the girl was afraid and she couldn’t remember anything but the pain was awful and absolutely wrong and she cried out and still a voice kept murmuring to her, hush hush, it will be all right, you have to let me in, but she knew that was a lie, that the most important thing in the world was to protect the little shut-tight clam within her and keep it away from the shadowy hand and the icy prying something.

“Stop!” she screamed. She struggled against tiny cold hands that gripped her insides, clawing and pulling and searching for that little clamshell she had withdrawn.

“Stop!”
she screamed again, but it didn’t stop. She knew she had to open that closed part of her just a bit, even though it was terribly dangerous, she had to because otherwise she would never be able to get those hands to go away. And so she opened it, like opening a fist, and something scorching surged through her. The little hands withdrew, burnt, and she was safe, she was safe, she was Eliza.

~

Shuddering and hugging herself, she opened her eyes. Nia was sitting back and sipping her wine. She gave Eliza an annoyed look.

“I thought you understood,” she said.

“You want to do to me what you did to my mother,” said Eliza, her voice shaking. “You want to finish it.”

“Well, of course, I
told
you that, didn’t I? Don’t look so betrayed.”

“You said we were going to ride horses,” wept Eliza, and as she said it she realized how foolish she sounded, how childish.

“Don’t be petulant, it isn’t attractive,” said Nia. “Now, listen, it’s no good
fighting
me. You can’t
stop
me; you
know
that. Your mother lasted ten years but you’re nowhere near as strong or as skilled as she was.”

Eliza thought of those little hands inside her and a great choking sob burst out of her.

“But you felt it, didn’t you, when you decided to fight me off...you felt the kind of power you have locked away inside you? Quite a job your mother did, bundling it away. Oh, Eliza, the Mancers have no idea what a treasure you are, what a complex maze of gifts and mysteries and abilities lie within you, waiting. They would have no idea how to teach you. You aren’t
like
them, not at all. You’re like
me,
my little darling.”

Eliza was too wracked with sobs now to make sense of what she was saying. Nia stroked her hair.

“Hush, Smidgen, sweet girl. We’re both tired. What a day it’s been! We need to rest. I’ll put you to bed, and I’ll be right here all night.”