The Unmaking (31 page)

“She can keep a person’s secrets, aye,” agreed Nell, not wanting to pry further, curious though she was.

Then Charlie leaned a bit closer to her and said, “I want to show you. So I dinnay have anything else to say on the Day of Regrets.”

Nell stared at him, unsure how to reply. One moment he was Charlie, so very familiar, the way he stood, the slant of his shoulders, the curve of his mouth and the way his eyebrows pointed up just slightly at the tips. And then he wasn’t Charlie anymore. He dissolved into a luminous wave entwined with its own shadow. It was light and darkness and everything in between, snaking towards her, and in it she could almost see something happening, but it was something beyond what she had words or thought for. It slipped around her neck and pressed itself to her cheek, and it was like touching something that cannot be touched – the way water would feel if it wasn’t wet, or fire if it wasn’t hot. It crossed her lips and she inhaled it. As it streamed into her lungs the world was briefly changed, everything was different, and she felt within herself infinite possibilities of life and being. Then she exhaled, and the wavering billow took shape, became Charlie again.

For a long moment he held her gaze and she found herself unable to look away or speak. Then they both became aware of footsteps approaching rapidly.

“Enjoying the water promenade, I see!” said Jalo cheerfully.

Nell forced herself to look away from Charlie to the Faery. He was dressed even more splendidly than before.

“The King has decreed that an elite squadron of the Faery Guard will escort the witch and the rest of you to Di Shang and the Mancer Citadel, leaving at dawn tomorrow. A place has been selected for the witch to prepare her Magic and I’ve taken her there.”

“Why tomorrow?” asked Nell. “We should go as soon as Swarn is ready!”

“I’m afraid there’s no question of leaving tonight,” said Jalo solemnly. “It is the Festival of Light, when we swear allegiance to the King, and
all
Faeries must be present. It only happens twice a year. I’m sure it will be interesting for you.”

Nell wanted to argue but sensed it would do no good. In any case, she was feeling disoriented. “Thank you,” was all she managed.

“My mother Tariro owns a number of the Faery Mines, of which I’m sure you’ve heard,” Jalo continued. “Perhaps you would enjoy a tour? They are quite spectacular, really.”

“We’d love to,” said Nell, looking at Charlie. He looked back at her a bit sadly.

“Sure,” he assented.

Chapter

~18~

R
ea woke up screaming.
Instantly she was in Rom’s arms, his mouth against her ear, his voice telling her,
It’s just a dream, it’s a bad dream
, his body strong and close. But this was no dream. She had lost herself and would never find herself again. All she had been, all she had loved and fought for, all she had known and believed had been taken from her. Her entire
life
, her
daughter
. That tremendous power she had relied on,
revelled
in, had proved in the end insufficient, buckling and breaking before a greater power. She knew the horror of defeat, of finding one’s strength wanting. She had seen it again in the Kwellrahg’s eyes, her own fear, her own rage, her own absolute helplessness. She remembered only this – that Nia had broken her, torn her away from herself, stripped her down to next to nothing. All that remained was this lost ghost of what she had been, and she would walk the world so, always. It was not enough to have so little of oneself. It was not enough on which to try to build a new self. It was not enough even to have the ones you loved around you still when the full richness of that love and all its history was lost to you. It was no dream, the thousands of losses, her
self
yanked out of her piece by piece. She screamed until her voice gave out. Ry made her drink some mixture she choked on, the Sorma gathered to sing to her, burning herbs around the tent, and Rom clung to her and rocked her back and forth – but it meant nothing at all. They could not help her. Nia had been stronger and Rea had lost the battle. She had lost everything.

~~~

When Eliza returned to the camp, a circle of five Sorma spirit-speakers were gathered around the Kwellrahg, just outside the barrier. Three of them sang in low voices while one kept up a steady drumbeat and another played a wooden flute – a soaring, brilliant sound that swooped and spun over the gentle voices and the deep rhythm of the drum. Ry had placed three bowls of herbs on the ground around the barrier and they were burning now, their fragrant smoke pouring over the beast, who twitched restlessly, angrily.

“You feel better,” said Lai when Eliza joined them. It was not a question so Eliza did not answer it. She felt the pull of the Kwellrahg, the nightmares and panics it sought to draw from her. She gave them up willingly, let the burden of fear fall from her. She remembered what Nia had said about fear. True freedom is the freedom from fear. Eliza had faced before the loss of all she loved, all she was, and now she would face it again. She knew what had to be done. She knew she might fail but that was barely the point. It was just a matter of doing, now.

“I’m ready,” she said, and stepped into the barrier. The air went out of her lungs.

~~~

Swarn had taught Eliza what the Sorma knew also – in battle, balance trumps strength. What she had understood as an idea, yet struggled to enact with her body, became now her physical nature. A profound change had taken place in the desert by the tree. She did not need to untangle its meaning yet. She knew simply that she could rely on her Magic, that it would not let her down.

The Kwellrahg lunged at her and she swung aside, letting it crash against the barrier. She drove her dagger into its side and withdrew it. The monster was slowed and disoriented by the herbs of the Sorma, its innate viciousness quelled somewhat by their music. It stumbled and roared but it could not strike her with its powerful spiked fists, it could not catch her. She circled it for hours, letting it fall again and again, jabbing it with her dagger and dancing out of its reach. Whenever her lungs began to ache she leaped out of the barrier to draw in a breath, for the Sperre-Tahore contained the Magic of the beast, including its ability to draw the oxygen out of the air around it.

She did not meet the force of the Kwellrahg with force of her own, but with her dagger pulled it in the same direction it was lunging, so its own momentum brought it crashing forward into the sand. She rallied. When it was losing its balance or staggering away, she used all the force she had to push it back. Again and again she drove it down to the ground, then let it rise again. The Kwellrahg grew ragged and weary and furious. The barrier was weakening but she spared no thought for that. Lava flowed from the beast’s many wounds. The vast dome of sky overhead faded to black and the stars appeared, countless numbers of them sprinkled across the darkness. She stumbled slightly in the sand and stepped outside the barriers quickly.

“I need to rest,” she said. The spirit speakers were waiting with a spiked harness. They went to work immediately. She watched for a moment, pitying the beast, as they skipped about it, quick on their feet, steady on the moving sand. It was not difficult for them to fix the harness around the Kwellrahg. The spikes carried a soothing drug that flowed when the harness remained loose. But they also held a pain-inducing poison that was activated by excess pressure. Any beast ensnared by the contraption learned quickly to obey the pull of the harness, to maintain the flow of the soothing drug and to avoid the poison.

Eliza walked a little ways in the dark and then sat down on the cooling sand. She closed her eyes and felt her mind take flight on dark wings. She flew with a great flock along a canyon by night. They were of one mind, turning and dipping together. It was electrifying, the power of her own wings bearing her up, her sheer lightness in the air. She had always been a passenger, too heavy for the sky, borne up by another. Now she truly understood the joy of flight. She swooped up along the great white wall of the Mancer Citadel and saw below the dead dragon in the grounds, a few of the Cra creeping this way and that. Somewhere here, her grandmother Selva was kept alive, in secret. This was something to do with the Gehemmis she had read about. The Mancers and their books, the Mancers and their secrets, the Mancers and their dominion over Di Shang – her grandmother and her mother and how many before them had sacrificed themselves to serve the Mancers. It was a noble heritage, Foss told her, but, dearly as she loved him, she could no longer agree. She veered away from the Citadel.

She wanted to find Charlie but encountered only fire and a terrible clashing sound when she sought him. Wings scorched, she flew back, then told herself,
No, I cannot be burned
. She flew through the fire into the deepest mist. There was nothing here.
But that’s not true
, she thought.
Something is here
. She flew into a tempest, where hail and wind assailed her, forced her back. But the storm was unreal. She drove through it into a wood full of snakes and thick webs and throttling vines. There was no up or down, no ground or sky, only the tangle of beast and branch and a slithering furious darkness that wrapped around her throat and squeezed-but she would not be strangled.
There is no Guardian here, and I will pass.
She found herself in a deep, mossy wood. Charlie and Nell were both there, asleep on beds of flowers, breathing softly. Swarn sat by a tree, her face buried in her hands. How had they all come to be in this place together? She wanted to go to them, ask them what had happened, but a wind came and caught her unguarded, swept her away. She fought it with all her might, blown across a landscape of strange, swirling rock formations to the wall of a great castle, where Nia stood alone, looking out into the night. The wind blew her into Nia’s oustretched hands.

“You’ve found your Guide,” said Nia, “and space won’t trap you now. But you’re not really
here,
Eliza. Can you feel this?” She snapped the wings of the bird and let it drop towards the ground, but there was no ground. Eliza plummeted and opened her eyes. The desert was dark and she could hear the furious roar of the Kwellrahg. She could still feel the broken wings on her back where there was nothing. She didn’t know what it meant but there was no time to think about it. First things first – the Kwellrahg. She had to get back to it.

~~~

They fought through the night and as the sun rose over the edge of the sandy horizon. Eliza held the reins to the Kwellrahg’s harness in one hand, her dagger in the other. As the day grew brighter the terrible beast regarded Eliza with flaming eyes, groaning pitifully as if to say,
Just let me be
. She felt all the forces of the universe aligned with her, flowing through her. She was not tired. She was not afraid. The barrier weakened and fell away. The Kwellrahg’s Magic was faltering too – the air around it was breathable, if thin. The Kwellrahg groaned deeply. She drove her dagger into it again and again, tears blurring her vision. She thought of the Cra, the countless numbers of them she had cut down with this very blade, the stink of their blood and the terrified screams of their deaths. She thought of Abimbola Broom. “I have two daughters,” he’d said, his face a desperate mask. And yet she had brought him to the Mancers to face punishment instead of to the Sorma for a chance at redemption. She remembered her grandmother. “No pity?” Where
was
her pity, then? She had been so sure, so righteous. Where had that righteousness come from? And where was it now? Her pity for the Kwellrahg washed through her, overwhelmed her. Distracted, distraught, she stumbled in the sand. A flash of fear cleared her mind and she readied herself for the blow the Kwellrahg would surely land.

But the Kwellrahg was hunched before her, silent, unmoving. All its will to fight had left it. She led it this way and that with the harness and it followed wearily. She forced it to climb the dunes after her, to crawl along the burning desert floor at whatever speed she determined. She brought it to lay on its belly before the Sorma.

“Now we will do what we can to ease its pain,” said her grandmother.

“Not yet,” said Eliza. “I’m not finished. I need the wizard.”

A bewildered Uri Mon Lil was brought to her.

“I do apologize –” he began, but Eliza cut him off with an exhausted smile.

“Dinnay apologize. Help me to rename this thing.”

“Ye-es,” he said hesitantly, his eyes fixing on hers. There was something so commanding in her gaze that he asked no more questions.

Eliza put her hands on either side of the Kwellrahg’s burning face. The sky went black with ravens and the air filled with the sound of beating wings. In this moving darkness she spoke to the Kwellrahg in the Language of First Days, while Uri Mon Lil knelt in the sand and gave all his own power to her task. It was not a spell or anything he understood. She was taking possession of the beast and he simply channeled his power into the tremendous Magic that flowed all about them. Sometimes the Kwellrahg snarled and tried to writhe out of her grasp, but mostly it lay very still and seemed to be listening. The sun completed its journey from east to west and disappeared from view. In the darkness the ravens rattled,
Name him Urkleis, name him, take him, name him, name him Urkleis.

It was like entering the earth, being buried alive in its hot centre. She had to wrestle a thing she could not get her hands on, a dark tangle. She saw it with her mind’s eye but could hardly move towards it. The thing wheeled about freely while she was trapped, her mouth and eyes stopped. Her fingers felt like mud; how could they grasp? She heard her own voice and the words she spoke somewhere else, somewhere on a sandy strip on the surface of a tiny world, but they were such small words and the universe was endless and empty and uncaring. The dark swirling thing she had to catch was falling away from her, fast, and she would be alone out here, utterly alone. She was afraid, she burst the solid mass around her and it became an avalanche, sweeping her away, to a place where she would spin forgotten forever. The wizard’s Magic held her as the avalanche poured over her and that voice of a girl kept speaking, determined. Now she could move, and she dove through empty black space after the thing she could feel but no longer see. It had eternity within which to flee her. The wizard’s Magic carried her like a current in space and she called the thing to her and it came, Nia’s spell, it slithered and mocked and bound her hands and filled up her ears with its gleeful clamour. It was stronger than her, stronger by far. It twisted about her and squeezed, like an anaconda.
See if you pop. See what comes out. See what you are made of, little girl
.