Bone, Fog, Ash & Star

by Catherine Egan

  “Well, that is a matter of some debate,” said Foss, suddenly animated. “Eliza has some rather odd theories about the Ancients that might interest you. I am of a more conventional mindset myself.”

  “I should love to hear your theories, witchlet!” cried Ferghal. “I had an Aunt Eliza, you know.”

  “Yes, you told us,” said Eliza quickly. She didn’t much want to discuss the Ancients with Ferghal, but he and Foss were already off again, with Foss expounding upon free will and the disappearance of the Ancients and Ferghal quite convinced that the Ancients were peering down upon humankind from behind the clouds, vastly entertained by what they saw.

  Once they had eaten the food and drunk the flat beer Ferghal had brought, they walked down the bluff to a cove where he had stashed a small fishing vessel. It looked badly in need of repair.

  “Is it really seaworthy?” Eliza asked doubtfully.

  “I thought it might not matter much, the two of you being what you are,” Ferghal said, leaping in, his white eyebrows waggling at her meaningfully. “You can plug the holes with Magic and command the sea to be calm should it get unruly and we shall be on our merry way. A bit of sunshine might be nice, if you could manage it.”

  “I cannay do that sort of thing!” said Eliza.

  “You can, I’ll bet,” said Ferghal to Foss. “Eyes like that and a wizardish look about you.”

  “He cannay do anything right now. He’s sick,” said Eliza. “We’re going to drown in this thing, aye.”

  “Nonsense,” said Ferghal. “She’s a fine boat and will bear up well with a little help from her Magical passengers. Come now.” He pushed the boat out into the water and held out a big hairy hand to Eliza. She forewent the hand and climbed into the boat. Foss tried to step in but his balance failed him and he swayed dangerously. Eliza leaped to her feet, but before she could do anything Ferghal had steadied him with an arm. He was strong and helped Foss into the boat with all the tenderness of a son helping his aged mother. Eliza began to warm to him.

  As luck would have it, the sky cleared and the sea calmed as they headed out of the harbour. The sun was warm on their faces.

  “Ah, well done, well done!” cried Ferghal, assuming Foss and Eliza were responsible for this change in the weather. Throughout the journey, Eliza bailed frantically with a little rusted bucket to keep the water from reaching above their ankles. Amazingly, the little boat’s engine held out.

  The sea remained calm throughout the day and the following night. By morning they could see the volcanic islands through which they would reach Tian Xia, small shadows on the horizon. Eliza was beginning to feel confident of their success when a raven on the prow of the boat cawed once, suddenly. She looked up. In the northern sky she saw five glimmering specks and her heart sank.

  “Foss,” she said softly, and touched his arm. Foss saw immediately what she was looking at.

  “They must have fixed the Vindensphere,” she said.

  “They haven’t seen us yet,” he said.

  “But they know where we are. We cannay hide out here at sea.”

  “Somebody looking for you?” asked Ferghal, shading his eyes.

  Eliza pointed. “They’ll spot us soon, aye.”

  “By the Ancients, this is so strange that I half wonder if I’m dreaming! What am I seeing?”

  “Mancers,” said Eliza unhappily. At this, Ferghal’s face split into a gaping open-mouthed cackle, his few teeth unnaturally long in his scarred gums.

  “The guardians of Di Shang!” he cackled. “Cofounders of the Republic! They aren’t as popular in Scarpatha, don’t you know.”

  All at once Eliza understood his accent and his odd way of talking.

  “Are you Scarpathian?” she asked, keeping an anxious eye on the horizon.

  “Dangerous to say so hereabouts, isn’t it!” he exclaimed. “Oh no, mustn’t admit to anything so nefarious as being from that cursed place. Crossed the ocean in a vessel not as seaworthy as this, little witchlet, with twenty others. Three of us left by the time we reached the shores of the Republic, land of plenty. Plenty of what, I wonder? What did I expect? Oh, but I was young and foolish then and such dreams I had. A funny thing, it is, this being human in the worlds. A great joke the mighty powers are having at our expense, it seems to me. Well, I like a good joke as well as any and so I play my part.”

  The glimmering specks were drawing closer. She could see their wings.

  “What are we going to do?” she cried.

  “You must hide under the boat,” said Ferghal.

  Foss and Eliza stared at him.

  “How will we breathe?” asked Eliza.

  “Magic!” suggested Ferghal, as if she was mad.

  “Praps,” she said doubtfully. Perhaps she could separate the oxygen from the water for both of them, but it seemed a very tricky sort of spell to work and she doubted she could maintain it for long.

  “Well, Magic or snorkels. Take your pick, witchlet.” Ferghal pulled open the rusty locker that ran the length of the boat. Inside was a harpoon that had not been used for a long time, a great tangle of wire and netting, two long battered oars, half a chewed flipper that looked as though a shark had gotten hold of it, and a single snorkel and mask.

  “We’ll have to share,” said Eliza. “Ferghal, turn the boat around. They’re going to speak to you, aye, and we’re putting our lives in your hands. Do you understand?”

  “Am I to speak with Mancers? I never imagined such a thing. Perhaps I will tell them what we think of them in fair Scarpatha.”

  “You’ll tell them no such thing. You will seem dull-witted and speak little. You will say that a being like them and a girl forced you to take them to a volcano and you left them there. All right?”

  “Ah! Clever, very clever. They will rush ahead in their pursuit, overtaking you. I see your plan. A being like them, you say…do you mean to say that our friend here is of that despotic tribe?”

  “I am a Mancer,” said Foss heavily. “Or I was. I do not know for certain what I am now, cut adrift.”

  “Foss, please. We have to get in the water. Will you be all right?”

  Foss smiled at her lovingly. “Poor Eliza,” he said. “You are too young to have cares such as these.”

  “I couldnay agree more,” she said, and fit the mask over her head. She put on her backpack with the Gehemmis inside. “We’ll take turns with the snorkel. Three breaths each and then pass. We’ll need to hold tight to each other and keep it out of view, aye, under the prow.” She gave Ferghal a desperate, pleading look. “You willnay give us up?”

  “On my life, dear witchlet! I will lie through my four teeth to the Mancers.” He was already turning the boat around, so that they were heading back in the direction they had been coming from. Eliza climbed over the bow and slipped into the water. It was very cold. “Come on, Foss!”

  Ferghal helped him to his feet and pushed him overboard with a great splash, holding fast to one of his arms.

  “I have never been in the sea!” said Foss, with a gasping sort of laugh. Eliza took his hand and fixed it around the painter that dangled in the water, linking her arm through his and getting a firm grip on the painter herself.

  “We need to be under the boat so we’re nay visible,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  Foss nodded. He looked grey-faced but strangely serene. Eliza counted: “One, two, three.”

  They both submerged themselves and slid under the boat. At first the snorkel filled with water, but Eliza managed to position herself so that the tip of it poked out of the water just beneath the prow, where it would not be easily visible. The boat was not going fast but nonetheless the water pulled against them, threatening to drag them right along the bottom of the boat into the engine. They clung to the painter and Eliza wished she had checked it more thoroughly for rot. She blew the water out of the snorkel and took in a breath. The bottom of the boat bumped against her stomach and legs, the water pouring through her clothes, and she saw nothing but a r
ushing greyness. She took in three deep breaths and then awkwardly took the snorkel out of her mouth and fumbled to find Foss’s mouth. His lips closed around it and she held her breath, waiting. She clung to the painter, her arm still locked through his, their bodies jostling together in the water. She wanted to tell Ferghal to slow the boat down, but then perhaps that would look suspicious. It seemed an age of struggling to stay in position, clinging to the painter and each other, breathing in turn, before the bright surface of the water suddenly darkened with the shadows of great dragon wings.

  ~~~

  Ferghal Murtagh had seen a great many things in his sixty-seven years of life. He had seen poverty, though he hadn’t known at the time that that was what he was seeing, because he had never known anything else. He had seen his little sister die in her bed of a brain fever. He had seen his father, a member of an illegal dissident organization, dragged out of the house, forced to his knees, and shot in the back of the head. He had seen his mother lying at a strange angle on the floor after drinking a bottle of rat poison. He had seen the inside of Scarpathian work camps, the terrible depths of the coal mines. He had seen the ruined, bombed-out cities attesting to the former glory of the country. And he had seen the sea, for days, on every side. He had seen clean and beautiful Kalla, and he had seen the wretched towns along the border, plagued by bandits. He had seen a man set himself on fire for a living and a woman who ate her own fingers she was so crazy. He’d watched the sun come up and set the snowy peaks of the Karbek mountains alight and he’d seen the most beautiful girl in the world laughing in the grass, her bare feet tangled with his, her long, dark hair hanging in her face. He’d seen beauty and horror and he thought he’d seen it all. But he’d never seen anything like the five green-gold dragons that descended now around his boat. They were much bigger than the boat, with terrible eyes and tongues like fire. The beings riding the dragons were indeed like the wizardish fellow he’d found in the lighthouse. But where that one was dull-coloured, with a muddy robe and burning orange eyes, these ones were so brilliant he could hardly look at them. Looking into their eyes was like trying to stare into the sun. Their skin shone gold and their robes and hair were white.

  The dragons landed screaming in the water, pulling their wings back and coasting the waves like colossal, unearthly swans. One of the Mancers leaped with tremendous agility from the back of the dragon and into the boat. Ferghal looked up in amazement at the being. Her voice was the sweetest voice he’d ever heard, high and fine, like a violin singing.

  “Excuse us for appearing like this, Ferghal Murtagh,” she said. “I am Anargul, manipulator of wood. Here with me is Ka, manipulator of fire, Trahaearn, manipulator of metal, Obrad, manipulator of earth, and Finnis, manipulator of water. Do you know why we are here?”

  Ferghal didn’t know much about Magic but he knew all about power and authority, and he had known how to lie with every fiber of his being ever since he was a very small boy. He knew how to lie so that while he was lying he believed every word. In another sort of life, he might have been a world-class actor. He trembled now from head to toe and his mouth gaped open in slow-witted amazement.

  “Oh the Ancients save me,” he babbled.

  Anargul looked around the boat and opened the locker.

  “They are gone,” she said to the others.

  “Gone where?” demanded Obrad. “How could they be gone? The Vindensphere showed them to us not seven hours ago, at sea!”

  “Do you know whom we are speaking of?” Anargul turned her terrible gaze onto Ferghal and he shielded his eyes with his hands, blinded.

  “Ancients save me!” he wept.

  “Hush,” Anargul bent down and laid a hand on his shoulder. My, but there was something uncanny about that touch, he thought. He peered at her bright face through his fingers. “You had passengers, Ferghal Murtagh. Where have they gone?”

  “Oh yes! Oh yes!” he cried. His chin was slick with tears and his hands shook. “A dark little witch and a bright one like you, they made me do it, they made me! Ah, Demons and Giants, I shall be killed, I shall never see my dear wife again!”

  “You will see your wife, Ferghal, and there will be no killing,” Anargul assured him. “But you must tell us where your passengers have gone.”

  He pointed, waving his finger in the direction of the volcanic islands, growing ever more visible by the early morning light. “Took them there!” he sobbed. “A volcano! They wanted to go to a volcano! Oh madness! Left them there, by the Ancients, oh I swear by all that’s mighty I meant no harm, I meant no harm!”

  Anargul stood in the rocking boat. The other Mancers sat straight on the backs of their coasting dragons and looked to the volcanoes.

  “There must be a way to the Crossing,” said Obrad.

  “Then we must hurry,” said Anargul. “Eliza has powerful friends there.”

  She leaped back to her dragon. Ka was watching Ferghal, still peering through his fingers, and he detected in the fellow’s teary eyes an intelligent, mischievous gleam. He knew, all at once, without searching the man’s mind, that he was lying. He looked at the empty boat, and then noticed that the painter at the bow was taut. A steady stream of bubbles was coming up from the side.

  “Come, Emmisariae!” said Anargul. Ka hesitated only a moment. An image of Aysu’s body on the Library floor flashed through his mind and he said nothing. The Mancers took to the air, leaving the little boat behind them.

  ~~~

  “She is resourceful, I will say that for her,” said Kyreth, watching the scene in the Vindensphere. “She has powerful friends, too. They will help her if she reaches Tian Xia, as it seems she will.”

  “Are you making more of that splendid concoction?” Malferio shifted uncomfortably on the divan. “I think it’s wearing off. I’ve got that pins and needles feeling and something smells rotten.”

  Kyreth seemed not to hear. Malferio groped at the ground around the divan and muttered, “Where’s my pipe. Dropped it.” He looked up at Kyreth again with a leer. “If they haven’t been able to catch her in Di Shang, they won’t fare any better in Tian Xia. She’s slipped through your fingers, it would appear. Blastedly clever, isn’t she?”

  Kyreth gave a thin smile. “I can only hope so,” he said.

  “Now you are making no sense,” said Malferio. “Here is the pipe. Completely empty! Are you making me some more?”

  “If the Emmisariae can bring her back then we will have an heir from her. If they cannot, if she eludes them, then perhaps she is capable of giving us even more than that.” He strode across the room and snatched the pipe out of Malferio’s hands, who wailed in protest. “The Faeries guard one of the Gehemmis. Where?”

  “The Gehemmis?” Malferio gaped. “You aren’t still hung up about those?”

  “I have more of this for you if you tell me,” said Kyreth, waving the pipe at him.

  “The Master of the Vaults keeps it hidden,” said Malferio. “Look, I don’t care, I have no reason to lie to you, but I never bothered

  myself about the Gehemmis. Will you give me more now?”

  “Guarded by what? Illusion?”

  Malferio grinned. “Enchantments too. Very deep. Your wife didn’t get far at all before the Master of the Vaults found her and Cursed her and sent her back to you, a gibbering lunatic.”

  Kyreth struck Malferio across the face. The Faery sprawled from the divan to the floor with a howl. Kyreth dropped the pipe so it clattered to the stone floor. With the Vindensphere in his hands he swept from the tower, the stones opening and closing for him.

  Malferio’s screams echoed in the lonely room, diving back down to attack him while the stones loomed and menaced.

  ~~~

  When the Emmisariae were nearly out of sight, mere glittering specks over the distant chain of volcanoes, Ferghal leaned over the prow of the boat and tugged on the painter. Eliza’s head and then Foss’s broke the surface of the water, each of them gasping in a grateful breath of air.

  �
��They’re gone?” Eliza managed.

  Ferghal thought Eliza and the sick Mancer looked very funny with their hair slicked around their dripping faces. He guffawed, and then said, “Yes, yes! Didn’t suspect a thing, not for a moment. They are rushing off to those volcanoes. Come now.”

  He took Eliza’s arm and hauled her on board with ease. “Aren’t you a little thing, though!” he said. “You weigh nothing at all. Could carry you round in my pocket.” He reached over with both arms, bracing himself with his legs, and hauled Foss into the boat with a grunt. “Him, now, there’s another story! Like he’s got bricks instead of guts inside.”

  Foss lay sprawled in an ungainly fashion in the bottom of the boat, drenched, his fair hair clinging to his scalp and face. Eliza felt a stabbing pain in her heart to see him so helpless and weak.

  “Thank you, Ferghal,” she said, not looking at Foss in case he felt ashamed. She wanted him to be able to preserve his dignity as much as possible. “I promise, we’ll think of something we can do for you to make this worthwhile.”

  “You need not think at all,” said Ferghal triumphantly. “For I have already thought of it! The Mancers seeking you seem to believe you are looking for a way to Tian Xia, the world of Magic and mystery, and indeed anyone asking passage to a chain of deserted volcanoes is up to something mighty strange, so I think they must be right. I have decided you will take me with you!”