Shade and Sorceress (8 page)

She wondered at her limbs, her agile hands. She touched her hair, her face. Something beat at her centre behind a cage of bone, keeping time, and time did not pause but roared on and on and on. She was hungry. She was lonely. She was cold. Next to her on the cold hard earth another girl stared about her. She knew that a piece of that girl’s life was inside her, gasping little knife-like breaths, and so she crawled towards her, longing,
return to me.
With a flash of long bright limbs the girl was gone, away from her. Lost, lost. Space and time held her fast, inescapable. In the darkness another figure came and stood over her, towering with eyes like stars and skin like dying fire, reaching out to her, his hands closing around her wrists like manacles.

It was Kyreth.

But he wasn’t holding her wrists. They were in his study. She was Eliza. She shivered and hugged herself, grateful to still be here in one piece.

He leaned towards her and she looked down at the marble desk, half-blinded by his dazzling gaze.

“What did you see?” he asked her, almost hungrily, she thought.

And she was afraid of him, so she said, “Nothing.”

~

Kyreth sat alone in his study, the book still open on the desk before him, thinking. She had seemed to go into the trance, but perhaps not. Perhaps she had seen something but not understood it. He was troubled that she was unable to perform even the most elementary spells. He had expected that her father’s blood might dilute her power, and of course she was much too old to be beginning, but he had assumed she would have s
ome
power, enough at least that the line might eventually grow strong again. He cursed Rea under his breath for her headstrong foolishness. Had it meant nothing to her to destroy the line from which she came?

He turned to the blank Scrolls on the wall behind him and said in the Language of First Days, “Was the spell worked here to rob her of her power?”

Characters wrote themselves swiftly down one of the Scrolls:
All she was born with she possesses still.

“Was she born with power?” Kyreth asked dryly.

The Scroll flickered and changed.
She is the Shang Sorceress, Last in the Line.

Last. Kyreth was not frequently afraid but a cold fear now uncoiled in his chest.

“She is the last?” he repeated slowly.

Three Scrolls showed the same thing:
She is the last.

What could that mean but her death too soon? But the future was yet unmade and prophecies were uncertain at best. He would accept this as a warning.

“Can she be taught?” he asked.

She can learn,
was the reply.

“Is she in danger?”

Danger is her destiny,
said one Scroll.
She will know it as a sister,
said another.

“Our enemy, the intruder, does it still walk among us?”

All the Scrolls together wrote,
It walks, it talks, seen but unknown.

Kyreth sat back in his chair. As long as she wore the barrier star the girl was safe, but he was uneasy. Somehow that fiend in the Arctic had worked Magic
here,
in his own Citadel, and he did not know what. Even imprisoned by the powerful barriers of the Mancers she was strong and she was dangerous. He knew she would not rest until she had taken vengeance on them all.

~

As soon as Kyreth dismissed her, Eliza ran out into the grounds. She found Charlie picking pears in the orchard. Approaching him, she felt suddenly shy. What if he went back to school and complained to all his friends about how this dull girl had followed him around during the summer? But when he saw her he broke into a big grin and she relaxed, smiling back. Who else was there for him to hang around with, anyway, she thought. He tossed her a pear and she caught it and took a bite. It was perfectly ripe and sweet.

“Where’ve you been all day?” asked Charlie.

“Having lessons. Magic lessons.” She felt foolish saying it. Charlie raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“Lah, what do you think all that mess we heard yesterday meant?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“Who knows!” said Charlie, aiming carefully and then pelting the core of his pear up among the tree branches. Three large scarlet birds took off from the tree, cawing in outraged voices.

“Dinnay do that!” cried Eliza. Charlie looked at her, perplexed. “You should nay throw things at birds,” she finished feebly.

Charlie seemed to take this in. “What do you care?” he said finally, not in a nasty way, but as if he was genuinely curious.

“It just...it scares ‘em,” said Eliza.

“Oh.” Charlie frowned but didn’t argue. Then he gestured at her pendant. “Lah, you have to wear that everyplace? For protection or something?”

Eliza nodded. “Do you think...the Xia Sorceress must be
after
me, nay? Though they nary call her that here...I dinnay know what I’m supposed to call her.”

Charlie laughed. “It makes her sound like an equal to the Shang Sorceress, nay? They dinnay like to think there’s any connection, I spec.”

Eliza remembered the other girl she’d seen, or rather
felt,
when Kyreth was reading to her, that sense that a part of her was running away.
“Is
there a connection?” she asked.

Charlie shrugged again. “I dinnay know – there are nay any other Sorceresses, are there?”

“Are there nay? I dinnay know anything about it. I’d only ever heard of the Xia Sorceress. I’d nary heard of any Shang Sorceress before this.”

“Mancers like their secrets, my ma says,” said Charlie, a little impatiently. “I spec you and your kind are one of those secrets. Lah, d’ye want to have a contest?”

Eliza sighed and dropped the subject.

“What kind of a contest?”

“A tree-climbing contest, aye. Nay with these trees – with the big ones by the lake. See who can get to the top faster. But we have to pick trees of more or less equal difficulty.”

Eliza accepted instantly, knowing she would win. She might not be able to do Magic but if there was one thing she was really good at it was climbing trees.

~

Eliza’s lesson with Foss the following morning was farcical. She could not move objects, large or small, with Magic. She could not tell which objects were enchanted and which were not. She could not even smell the difference between powdered dragon’s blood and ground chili pepper. Though Foss begged her
not
to be discouraged, he was becoming increasingly and obviously so. Eliza felt quite sorry for him and tried her best to follow his instructions, but to no avail. Her mother had sat in this very chair, perhaps, floating pencils with ease, she thought to herself. Kyreth and Foss had known her better than Eliza ever would. Eliza was grateful, at least, to know the truth and to have this glimpse into her mother’s life. But the Mancers had to realize
she
was not a Sorceress, and she resolved to tell Kyreth again that afternoon that she wanted to go home. This time she would be firm about it.

But when Missus Ash took her to Kyreth’s study after lunch, she forgot the little speech she had prepared. She would not need it after all, it seemed. Rising from the chair by the desk and turning to face her with a wobbly smile was her father.

~ Chapter 5 ~

Eliza hurled herself
into his arms. He held her tight, stroking her hair, and she pressed her face against the rough fabric of his jacket, breathing in the familiar smell of him and struggling to swallow the sob that rose up through her chest like a giant bubble. Once she thought she had control of herself, she drew back, but he held tight to her hands as if he was afraid she would disappear again if he let go of her.

“I’m going home!” she cried, but she saw in his face and in Kyreth’s that she was wrong. Whatever he was here for, it was not to take her home. She could see he was struggling for the words to tell her so.

“Why can I nay leave?” she asked, frantic, angry. She looked at Kyreth. “You’ve all seen that I cannay do magic! What good is it, my being here?”

“Are you unhappy here?” asked the Supreme Mancer in a low voice, puzzled. “Have we not made you comfortable and welcome?”

“I’m
nay
a Sorceress!” Eliza half-shouted at him. “Is it nay obvious? I want to go
home,
to be with my da! I have to go to
school.”

Kyreth rose suddenly, frightening her into silence.

“I do not wish you sorrow, but for you to leave this place is out of the question. You and your father may spend this afternoon together. You are excused from our afternoon session.”

He gave Rom a long look then, and Eliza wondered what they had been talking about before she arrived. But it didn’t matter. He was here now and she was awash in relief and gratitude and anger and love – a great, confused mass of emotion. She couldn’t really believe that he would leave without her. They went out into the grounds together, hand in hand.

“Eliza, I am sorry,” her father said slowly, with effort. He spoke to her in the Sorma dialect she had grown up with, a vowelly, melodic language that she thought of as theirs alone, since she had not yet met anyone else who spoke it. “I should have told you. It was...I was wrong to think you were better off not knowing.”

“Aye, you were,” said Eliza, answering him in archipelegan Kallanese. The words came out hard and clipped even as she clung to his hand. “You should’ve told me.”

“It’s difficult to know
when
is the right time,” he said. “When you were small, you were too young to know everything. And as you got older...well, the longer I hadn’t told you, the more difficult it became.”

“You should have told me,” Eliza repeated, switching to the Sorma dialect now. She looked up at him and felt the anger beginning to drain out of her. He was here, he was here – that was all that mattered.

“Forgive me,” he said simply.

She didn’t trust herself to speak, but she squeezed his hand ferociously.

“I’ve brought some of your things,” he said. “Missus Ash, the woman, took them to your room. Some clothes and schoolbooks.”

“So I really have to stay?” Her voice sounded very small and far away to her. “For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is why we always moved so much,” she said. “You were afraid they might be looking?”

Her father nodded.

“But
why?
If the Mancers are good, why did Ma try to hide me from them? Why did you?”

She thought she knew the answer to this. She thought it had to do with that inscription under all the portraits of the Sorceresses:
Killed in battle.
But she wanted to hear it from her father.

Rom shook his head. “Eliza, I don’t know. I followed her wishes, but she never gave me reasons.”

“So you just did what she said without ever asking why?”

“I never said I didn’t ask. I said she didn’t tell me.” Her father gave a wry smile here and shrugged his big shoulders. “If you had known your mother you might understand. Whether she shared them with me or not, I knew her reasons were sound.”

“And that’s why I’ve never met my grandparents, or any of the Sorma,” Eliza continued. “You wanted to stay away from obvious places.”

“Yes. But this might be for the best, Eliza. I can only guess she wanted to spare you the hardship of
her
destiny, but times have changed. The war is over, and it must be clear to the Mancers that you don’t share your mother’s gift. I think they mean you well. We might be able to convince them eventually to allow you more freedom. You can finally meet my people. Your people, too.” He stroked her hair and smiled. “No more running around and hiding.”

“I liked hiding,” said Eliza rather forlornly, and her father laughed.

They walked for a while among the sweet-smelling orchards. She kept an eye out for Charlie, eager to show off her brave, handsome father, but he was nowhere to be seen. She wanted to show her father the portraits of the Shang Sorceresses, but without Charlie it took a great deal of confused wandering through the east wing before they found the right hall. She dragged her father by the hand as he gazed about him wonderingly, until they stood in front of the portrait of Rea. He looked up at the glaring figure of his wife for a long time, in silence.

“I know how she really died,” said Eliza at last, and he put his arm around her. Now, when they were quiet and serious, she told him about the pendant she had to wear, and the siren that had gone off when she first arrived, and how the Mancers thought the Xia Sorceress was looking for her.

Her father listened carefully to everything she said, his brow furrowed.

“The Supreme Mancer told me a little of that,” he said after a pause. He took her by the shoulders firmly then, bending over and looking straight into her eyes. “I didn’t want any of this for you, Eliza. Neither did your mother. But it’s happened now, and we just have to be strong and deal with it. And the truth is, they’re probably right that you’re safer with them. I don’t understand them and I don’t much like them, but I know they want no harm to come to you, and they have the power to keep you safe. More than I do.” He looked as if it pained him to say this last. Eliza leaned into him, not really believing it.