Shade and Sorceress

by Catherine Egan

  “They have him,” said Foss. “Eliza Tok, you are safe at last.”

  ~ Chapter 8 ~

  The Citadel was dark and silent. Eliza and Nell opened the bedroom door and peered into the cavernous hallway. Eliza’s skin prickled and the sound of her own heartbeat thudded in her ears as they slipped out of the room and ran down the hall, their footsteps softened by the carpet. She had never explored the Citadel by night. By day, the hallways were dim and wide and empty, but now she felt a kind of presence, something tense and waiting. The walls of the Citadel, watching her. They took the stairs down to the bottom floor, clinging to the cool railing, and emerged into the grounds. The sky overhead was spangled with stars, so many that Eliza knew for certain they could not be anywhere near a city. The cool night breeze lapped against her face. Less fearful of making noise now that they were outside, they sprinted wildly across the grounds, as if they were fleeing some terrible danger. They ran until they reached the north wing and the unguarded, spiral stone stairway that led into the dungeons.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Nell, panting. Eliza shook her head but started down the stairs anyway.

  “What do you think he’ll look like?” asked Nell, hurrying behind her.

  “I dinnay know,” said Eliza. “I dinnay even know if he’s here.”

  “Where else would he be?”

  In fact, what will he look like was the very question that was haunting Eliza. A Shade, Kyreth had called him. Her friend Charlie, with his wicked smile and his dark eyebrows that turned up at the ends, wasn’t even real. Missus Ash, who had been a sort of mother to her since she’d come to the Citadel, wasn’t real either. That night when she’d returned to her room and seen the empty spot on the bed where Smoky was usually waiting for her in the evenings, she realized the cat, too, must have been one of the guises of the Shade. That was how he had gotten out of the room earlier. He had disappeared under the door as a spider, and a moment later Charlie had knocked on the door. She felt foolish now, remembering that they hadn’t heard him coming the way they had heard him going away. Her only three friends in the Citadel had turned out to be one and the same, and not a friend at all, but an enemy. He had been the messenger in the dungeons too, of course. The whole thing made Eliza feel queasy with misery and anger. Still, he would know what had happened to her father.

  As they crept through the dark maze of cells, they caught snatches of a faint melody. Cautious, they followed the sound. It became obviously singing, and then obviously Charlie’s voice singing. It was a popular holiday song with the words all changed, in the way children do with their friends at school. It was so like Charlie to be singing such a song that Eliza felt a sharp pang, and then anger again at his betrayal. The original song, which both Nell and Eliza knew well, was ordinarily sung during Winter Festival. It concerned a poor man given shelter and food by an elderly couple on a cold night and how he came back years later, a very rich man, to repay them for their kindness. Charlie’s lyrics to the same tune were quite different. They involved a lecherous, incontinent brute being naively cheered on by the deluded old couple and coming back years later to slaughter them in their beds.

  He stopped singing when they reached his tiny cell. They could not see him in the dark, but he said, “Eliza? Thank the Ancients! I wasnay sure you’d come.”

  “I know what you are,” she said, and it came out loaded with bitterness. She felt Nell take her good hand and give it a comforting squeeze.

  “Dinnay be angry. I was just doing what I promised her.”

  “Stop talking like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re an archipelegan boy. You’re nay from the archipelago. And you’re nay a boy neither.”

  “Lah, this is how I talk when I’m Charlie, though. I cannay change that now.”

  “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I was,” he said firmly. “I am. Aye, okay, I’m also a spy for the Xia Sorceress. She just wants this book, and she knew you’d bring it to her if she snatched your da, which I think is sweet, by the way. You know you cannay count on the Mancers. I can get you out of here and take you to the Arctic. I’m here to help you, Eliza.”

  “You’re nay on my side,” Eliza blazed at him. “You’re working for someone who snatched my da! She killed my ma! She prolly wants to kill me!”

  There was a short silence. Then Charlie said, “I dinnay ask you to trust me completely, but think about it, Eliza: If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it when you took off the barrier star to trick Foss.”

  It was true, Eliza pondered. If the Xia Sorceress had wanted him to, Charlie could have killed her easily then.

  “Lah, why does she want Eliza to bring her the book?” Nell demanded. “If she could sneak you in here, would it nay be easier for you to steal it and take it to her? Why involve Eliza and her da at all?”

  “She prolly thinks I’d cut a deal with the Mancers,” said Charlie thoughtfully. “Maybe I would have, too – I’m not very reliable, after all. She’s not big on trust, the Sorceress. But as long as she has your da, Eliza, she can be sure that you’ll do exactly what she wants. Look, I’m trapped in a barrier here, but it’s a pretty feeble one, aye. They dinnay think much of me, I spec. Are you going to break me out?”

  “We’re nay here to break you out,” said Nell. “We’re here for information.”

  “Because the Mancers will nay tell you the truth, lah?” said Charlie. “Listen, Eliza, she really will kill your da if you dinnay do what she says. And you’ll nay get out of here without me.”

  “How would you get us out?” asked Eliza. “Foss says that the Citadel has powerful barriers all around it. No one gets in or out without the Mancers lifting the barriers.”

  “That’s true,” said Charlie. “But there’s another way out, aye. Sort of a roundabout route, but still. You’ve seen it, Eliza.”

  For a moment Eliza was baffled. Then it hit her, and her injured arm gave a painful throb.

  “The Crossing,” she said.

  “No barriers there,” said Charlie cheerfully. “And from Tian Xia there are any number of ways back into Di Shang. We cross over from here, then cross back and come out somewhere completely different. But you’d nary make it without me. You’d nay last five minutes in Tian Xia. It’s a dangerous place, even for a would-be Sorceress.”

  “You’re looped if you think we’re helping you escape,” said Nell.

  And suddenly it was Missus Ash’s voice speaking to them in the dark: “Dinnay see that you’ve much of a choice, chicken. It’s me or let your da die, nay?”

  Eliza reeled backwards. “Stop it,” she yelped.

  “Sorry.” The voice was Charlie’s again. “I’m just saying.”

  “Dinnay listen to him,” said Nell. “Or...her. Or it. Everything it says is prolly a lie!”

  Eliza took Nell by the arm and pulled her out of the cell into the passageway.

  “Hey! Come back!” shouted Charlie, a note of desperation creeping into his voice.

  “I dinnay know what else to do,” Eliza whispered to Nell. “The Mancers are the only ones who can help me, but they’ll nay do it. Charlie’s right – they dinnay care about my da...”

  As she spoke, a thought crept up on her and froze her so she trailed off. She had been telling herself that only the Mancers, in all the world, were a match for the Xia Sorceress. And that was so. But she had other enemies – enemies who had defeated her before – enemies in the very place Charlie was offering to take them. Someone had defeated her and banished her from Tian Xia. Eliza’s blood chilled at the sheer impossibility of what she was contemplating.

  “There has to be some way...” Nell was saying. Trembling, Eliza turned and strode back into the cell.

  “Let’s say we agree to your plan, aye,” she said to Charlie. “How would we free you?”

  “Eliza!” cried Nell, following her.

  Eliza took hold of her hand and squeezed it hard. “Just trust me.�
�

  “Are you wearing the barrier star?” asked Charlie, evidently relieved.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We’re going to need a few things. The Mancers’ve nay noticed the Book of Barriers is missing, have they?”

  “I dinnay know,” said Eliza.

  “It’s lucky all this happened around sundown, aye. They’re so rigid in their little routines, they nary do anything after dark, have you noticed that? If they dinnay know it’s gone, it will still be in the crow’s nest, and we’ll need it. We’ll also need a day’s food and water, and something valuable for the Boatman.”

  “What boatman?” demanded Eliza.

  “At the Crossing,” said Charlie. “We’ll nay be given passage without something valuable to pay him with, and we cannay cross without the Boatman. Mancers rise with the sun so we’ve a few hours still, but it’s going to take time to get this barrier down, aye. You need to get everything here and be ready to run for the dark wood as soon as the barrier is broken. They’ll feel it when it breaks, and just because they dinnay like to work Magic at night doesnay mean they’ll nay do it. You’ll have to come along too, Nell. We cannay risk the Mancers Listening to your thoughts later and knowing exactly what we’re up to.”

  “Of course I’m coming,” said Nell indignantly. “I’d nay leave Eliza alone with you!”

  “Come on,” said Eliza to Nell. “Let’s get the book and some supplies.”

  “And something for the Boatman,” Charlie called after them.

  “Dinnay worry,” said Eliza. She had already decided the barrier star would serve as payment. It was gold and it was Magic and she already had it, which saved them having to steal anything. But if she was leaving the Citadel for good there was something else she didn’t want to leave behind.

  As soon as they emerged from the dungeons into the grounds, Nell said, “You cannay trust him, Eliza.”

  “I know that,” said Eliza. “But staying here is nay doing my da any good either. The Mancers’ll nay help me, but maybe there’s someone else who will. Someone in Tian Xia. Old enemies of the Xia Sorceress.”

  For possibly the first time in her life, Nell was speechless.

  “Charlie can get us across, aye,” said Eliza in a rush. Now that she was saying it out loud, it sounded beyond ridiculous, beyond impossible. “Then we...we escape and...look for help. I know how it sounds, but I cannay just stay here and do nothing.”

  “It’s a really terrible idea,” said Nell. “Pure loopiness, lah. Lunatic asylum looped. Ole Mister Tuff running around drunk in the square in his underpants looped.”

  Eliza felt her face harden. She stuck her chin out and opened her mouth. She wasn’t sure what was about to come out of it, but Nell added swiftly, “I dinnay have a better idea, though. I’m in.”

  “Then meet me back at the tree-fort. Can you get supplies?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “There’s something else I need.”

  They crossed the grounds and peeled off in different directions, Nell to the kitchens and Eliza to her bedroom. When she opened the door to her room she froze. Foss was sitting on her bed, his head bowed.

  “Eliza,” he said sadly.

  Her heart sank like a stone.

  “I have to,” she whispered. “Oh, Foss, please...I have to.”

  “Once she has you, she will not let you go,” he said. “She will not let your father go. She is not known for mercy or for keeping her word. She is evil and ruthless, Eliza. If you go anywhere near her she will destroy you, and in so doing she will destroy the line of the Shang Sorceress.”

  Eliza groped for words, some way to explain the necessity of it, how meaningless everything he said was to her. “She has my da,” she said.

  “You cannot save him,” he said.

  “But you’ll nay help me!” she half-shouted, then lowered her voice to a furious whisper. “I’m going to find someone who will help me! And you cannay stop me. I’ll kill you if you try to stop me!”

  Her anger suddenly was like a living thing inside her, a thing with teeth, a thing without fear. She would not allow him or anyone or anything to stand in her way, not now. At that moment, she believed she could tear the Citadel apart stone by stone, rip open the barrier between the worlds and step through, compel the Ancients themselves to help her cause. Foss looked at her and she met his eyes, staring straight into the light, but it did not blind her. Those great flaming discs did not frighten her or hold her at all. They stared at each other in silence for a whole minute, then two, then three. Foss broke his gaze first.

  “You should take these,” he said softly. From somewhere in his flowing robes he took out her staff and the black tunic and leggings of the Shang Sorceress. He held them out to her and Eliza took them, speechless.

  “I am bound to the Mancers and the will of the Mancers. Without them, my power is nothing. I am not an Emissarius and I cannot leave this place,” said Foss. “The consensus among the Mancers now is that you are just a girl whose inherited power has been too stifled and broken to ever manifest wholly. If that is so, then the line of the Shang Sorceress is finished, and you will perish on this journey, and I will never forgive myself. But perhaps you will prove us all wrong, Eliza Tok. I pray to the Ancients that it may be so.” He gave her a tender look. “How is your arm?”

  “It still hurts, aye,” said Eliza.

  Foss nodded sadly. He touched a hand to her cheek.

  “Did you know what I would see in the Vindensphere?” she asked suddenly.

  “Not what,” he said. “Only that there was something to see, and that you had a right to see it.” He paused. “I hope I did right.”

  “You did, aye,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He shook his head. “Do not thank me,” he said softly. “I am no use to you at all, Eliza. I would beg you not to go, but I think it would be futile.”

  She nodded her head. He held her gaze a little longer, then swept out of the room without another word.

  Eliza sank to the bed, her knees weak. She realized then what it had taken for her to stand up to him and meet his eyes. Going against Kyreth like this might be the end of him, she knew, but she couldn’t concern herself with that. All that mattered was helping her father. She took off her clothes and put on the tunic and leggings. She put her clothes and a change of clothes for Nell in the satchel her father had brought her. Then she reached under the mattress of her bed for the thing she had come for: her mother’s photograph. She slipped that into the satchel as well. She had become very good at doing things one-handed in the last several days, but tying the staff to the straps of the satchel was difficult, not least because her hand was trembling. At last she slung the bag diagonally across her chest. It was time to go get Charlie Ash, whoever or whatever he really was, out of the dungeons.

  ~

  Eliza met Nell back at the oak tree. The moon was still high in the sky.

  “I like your outfit,” said Nell, impressed. Her face was flushed with excitement. She had emptied out a large cloth bag of potatoes in the kitchen and filled it with an odd assortment of things she’d found there: fruit and bread and tins of food and cans of soda. She had also thought to bring cutlery.

  “I dinnay spose the Mancers drink soda,” she said thoughtfully. “Is that just for us? Do they eat at all?”

  “No idea,” said Eliza. “Get the book, will you? I cannay climb down with it.”

  Nell clambered up the tree and fetched the heavy tome from the crow’s nest, clutching it to her chest and climbing back down one-armed. They made their way back to the dungeons and followed Charlie’s singing through the dark winding corridors.

  “Let’s get me out of here, aye,” he said eagerly. “Show me the book.”

  Eliza hesitated and Charlie heaved an exasperated sigh.

  “I may not be as much on your side as you’d like, Eliza,” he said, “but I’m nay trying to trick you. Least, I’m nay trying to trick you now. She told me to bring you to the
Arctic and she’s nary someone I’d like to cross.”

  “Fine.” Eliza sat down close to the voice and bumped up against something. It wasn’t solid exactly, but she couldn’t press beyond it either. It was like the barrier Foss had put around the table as a demonstration on their first day, except this one didn’t fall apart quickly. “We dinnay have a light to read by, though,” she commented.

  “That’ll nay be any problem,” said Charlie. “Open the book.”

  Eliza did so. The letters within seemed to have been etched into the page with light and were easily visible in the dark.

  “I cannay read this,” she said.

  “Show me,” said Charlie, and she held the book up. By the light of the letters she could just make him out now, hunched uncomfortably within the invisible barrier.

  “They’ve nay given you much space,” she noted.

  He laughed. “They dinnay want me changing into anything big, aye,” he said. “This is no good. Show me the next page.”

  “Lah, I spec you can do Magic then,” said Nell coldly from just behind Eliza.

  “Nary a bit,” said Charlie. “But we have the Book of Barriers and a barrier star. Sometimes it’s just a matter of having the right tools, aye. The last resort of the desperate and powerless.”

  “But they said you can become anything,” Nell pressed on as Eliza slowly turned the next page for Charlie. “Why cannay you just become a Mancer?”

  “I can only look like a Mancer, aye,” said Charlie. “I cannay do any real Magic no matter what I look like.”

  “Lah, good,” said Nell. “What does it mean, anyway...a Shade?”

  “Just be quiet for a bit,” said Charlie impatiently. “I need to concentrate, aye. This could take a while.”

  Nell turned away, miffed. It did take a while. Fighting her weariness as the night wore on, Eliza turned the pages when Charlie asked her to and he scanned the book. It became clear that his own ability to read the Language of First Days was shaky at best, and so it was very slow going. Almost two hours passed before he found a suitable spell.