Shade and Sorceress

by Catherine Egan

  They stopped only once. They ate most of the food Rhianu had given them and drank almost all of the water, too thirsty to ration it, while Charlie disappeared for a short time. As they rested, the tree wraiths set up their whispering and began to tumble and roll over the girls in a tizzy of excitement. By the time the trees were beginning to wake and creak and bend, the wolf had returned, presumably having found food and water of his own. They continued their race through the Ravening Forest, shedding tree wraiths as they went.

  As the hours of tension and discomfort passed, Eliza found herself half-dozing on the wolf’s back. She imagined that she was in the bumpy four-wheel-drive her father had bought in Quan, driving out of town after the bandit lootings. There were no roads as such in that part of the world, but somehow he had driven all the way to the Interior Provinces in that falling-apart jeep. He had frequently had to do repairs himself while she lay in the backseat shaded by towels he’d hung over the windows, sleeping and waking, occasionally peering out at the unchanging landscape.

  “‘Tis not much farther,” she heard her father say, and then there was a moment of rushing lightness before all the breath was knocked out of her with a terrible blow. She heard Nell screaming something. Pain shot through her back and arm and she realized she was on the ground. The wolf had wheeled around, Nell still clinging to his back. A smoky wisp fell from its tree onto Eliza’s shoulder and whispered won’t you come in. The wolf gave a low growl and the wraith rolled away.

  “Are you all right?” asked Nell, kneeling at Eliza’s side and touching her shoulder gently. “Can you stand?”

  Eliza groaned with the pain but she managed to stand up. She rolled her shoulder. It hurt, but nothing seemed to be broken.

  “We should stop, aye,” said Nell. She turned to the wolf. “We have to stop.”

  But the wolf did not become Charlie.

  “It’s nay safe to keep stopping,” said Eliza. “This forest...the trees would eat us, I think.”

  Nell looked around at the trees rather indignantly and Eliza pulled herself slowly back onto the wolf’s back.

  ~

  The sun had set and the last light was fading fast when the trees began to thin. The ground became wetter and the wolf manoeuvred carefully, avoiding the soggiest spots. It was impossible to keep going at any speed in this boggy terrain. Soon the remaining trees were black and dead, and a great expanse spread out before them, a marsh dark with bracken and the occasional dead tree, with mossy ridges they could walk along. The wolf padded slowly, carefully, to an earthy hillock where they could take shelter under the bracken. Eliza saw no sign of Mancers in the dimming sky. They climbed off the wolf’s back wearily, groaning with the pain of moving their stiff limbs.

  “Thank you,” Eliza said to him. She hoped her voice and her expression could convey the real depth of gratitude she felt but was too worn out to put into words. Eliza and Nell shared what little food and water they had left and the wolf padded off to lap at a muddy stream.

  “Why dinnay you change back to Charlie?” Nell asked as the wolf returned, his head hanging low. “I want to know where we are.”

  “He’s prolly too tired,” said Eliza. She patted his neck. “He’s had the hardest day of all, aye.”

  The wolf lay down, and the two girls curled against him for warmth like little wolf cubs.

  ~

  They woke up hungry, with nothing to eat. The wolf became Charlie almost as soon as he woke.

  “What a day!” he complained, stretching. “All my muscles hurt!”

  “You were prize,” said Eliza.

  “Hold that thought,” he said, beaming at the compliment, “and start a fire, aye. I’ll get us some breakfast.”

  He took off into the air as a hawk.

  “It must be so prize to be able to do that,” said Nell enviously.

  Eliza and Nell gathered all the dry twigs and branches they could find, no easy task in a bog. They got thoroughly filthy and soaked in the process, for every false step plunged them thigh deep in mud. But even once they had all the fuel necessary for a respectable fire, they had no way of lighting it. They sat rubbing sticks together until their hands were sore and the twigs broken, to no avail. Charlie returned with two dead birds, one in his beak and one in his claws, and dropped them next to the pile of wood. He turned into a boy again, an expression of intense distaste on his face.

  “I’ve eaten some mice,” he said. “I have to say, humans eat much better, but at least I’m full. The birds are for you two. You’ll need to pluck them.”

  The birds looked much smaller once they’d been plucked. Charlie turned into a lizard-like creature no bigger than a dog and spat flames onto the stack of kindling. Immediately a warm blaze set up. He became Charlie again, looking rather smug.

  “Lah, so he’s useful,” said Nell grudgingly. “What kind of animal was that?”

  “Foot dragon,” said Charlie cheerfully. “They live in tunnels underground. Very annoying if you happen to step on one.”

  Eliza and her father had frequently cooked small animals over an open fire, so she showed Nell how to cook the birds on a spit. The meat was tough but edible, and they were so hungry they hardly cared what it tasted like.

  “No Mancers overhead,” Nell commented, chewing vigorously. “Why did you say they’d nay follow us here?”

  “Dragons from the Cliffs of Batt frequent the Dead Marsh,” said Charlie. “They’re much fiercer than Mancer dragons. Also bigger.”

  “Then why are we here?” asked Eliza, looking up in alarm. The sky was empty.

  “Lah, it’s one place we’ll be safe from the Mancers,” reasoned Charlie. “The cliff dragons are nay looking for us. The Mancers are. I’d say our odds are better here.”

  “Okay,” agreed Eliza. “We’ll go through the marsh. But what if we see one of these dragons?”

  “As long as we see them before they see us, we can keep out of sight,” said Charlie. “We’ll have to go on foot, aye.”

  “Can you nay just become an even bigger and fiercer dragon than them?” asked Nell.

  Charlie shook his head and laughed. “The only dragons bigger and fiercer than these ones are the Immortal Dragons in the east, if they really exist. And I cannay become any of the Immortals. I’ve tried.”

  Eliza could see the faint outline of mountains on the northern horizon, across the marsh. She shivered and hugged herself.

  ~

  It was several hours of slow progress through the marsh before they saw a dragon. Eliza used her staff to test the ground for the driest patches they could walk along. They had eaten roasted frogs for lunch and both Eliza and Nell were feeling a bit queasy when they spotted it. It was at least twice the size of the Mancers’ dragons, a great black shape in the sky letting loose with an awful, bone-piercing cry. They made quickly for a patch of bracken and huddled together, hearts pounding. When it had passed out of sight they moved on, none of them speaking. As the day grew later they saw more of the terrible creatures, and the sky began to fill with those nightmarish cries. They were tired and made more false steps now, getting very wet and muddy indeed.

  “It’s going to take days at this rate,” muttered Charlie. Eliza’s heart sank. The notion of walking slowly through this bleak terrain, eating frogs and mice and keeping a lookout for dragons, for days, was too distressing to contemplate. Fixing her gaze on her feet, she tested the ground ahead with the point of her staff. The sun was setting, painting the sky and the marsh alike a vivid blood-red. When she heard a sharp intake of breath from both Nell and Charlie she looked up.

  A dragon directly overhead was poised, its great dark head pointing down towards them. It opened its mouth wide in a shattering scream that drew others towards it. Then it dove straight for them. Eliza and Nell were rooted to the spot. Charlie became a dragon himself, soaring up to meet it. They clashed in the sky in a ball of greenish flame, with the metallic grinding sound of claws meeting scales. Another dragon swooped in and Charlie vanished.
The two dragons collided and separated, and then the first one dove after the small falling object Charlie had become. It wasn’t quite quick enough, and Charlie fell as a minnow into the bog. The dragon lost interest and turned its flaming eyes on the two girls.

  “Run,” whispered Nell, but neither of them moved. There was no point in running. The dragon landed, sinking a few feet into the bog, and extended its long neck towards them. Its head alone was the size of a truck. It was covered with dark red scales and its teeth, long as their limbs, were too many to count. It stared right at them with its awful lizard eyes, and smoke wafted from its leathery nostrils. They clung to each other wordlessly. It reached out a scaled black-taloned arm and the talons closed around them. There was an awful lurch as the dragon pulled itself up out of the bog and then they were in the air, nearly crushed together in the dragon’s great paw. Its huge wings beat the air with a steady schoom...schoom...schoom. Nell’s mouth was right against her ear, so even though her voice was faint and trembling Eliza had no trouble hearing her: “Do you think he’s going to eat us?”

  Eliza wished she could respond but she simply couldn’t make any words. If she tried to speak it would come out a panicked wail. Already the light was all but gone, and the sky was full of swooping, screeching dragons. From her strange vantage point in the grip of the dragon Eliza saw the hanging gardens of the Sparkling Deluder growing brighter and thought vaguely through her panic, That’s south. It was oddly comforting to know this. The dragon circled a dark little hut with smoke pouring from its chimney, cawing once. Then it landed and dropped the two girls in front of the house. They staggered and fell.

  A woman opened the door of the house and stepped out. She was dressed in wolf-skin boots and trousers, a fur vest, and had a cloak of black feathers over her shoulders. Something about the cloak made Eliza afraid of her. From a thick chain around her neck hung a heavy black claw, half the length of her arm: the claw of a dragon. Her white hair fell loose around her shoulders and her skin was dark and deeply lined. She looked at the two girls sprawled on her doorstep and then spoke to the dragon in a guttural language made up of sounds so entirely grating to the human ear that Nell actually covered her ears so as not to have to hear it. The dragon shrieked in response and took off into the sky. The woman looked at the girls again and said in clear Kallanese: “I am Swarn, and I wonder what you children are doing in my Marsh.”

  ~ Chapter 13 ~

  Eliza and Nell climbed shakily to their feet. They were covered in mud. Each waited for the other to speak first.

  “We were being chased,” Eliza said at last. She didn’t know who this woman was, but it wouldn’t do to reveal too much. “We got lost.”

  The woman gave a short, bark-like laugh, throwing her head back and revealing a flash of white teeth. “You’ll have to do a good sight better than that,” she said. “Two Di Shang girls, here of all places in the worlds? I believe you were chased, and there’s no doubt you’re lost, but you’re bringing me in at the end of the story.”

  Eliza simply didn’t have the energy to lie. She couldn’t think of anything, and she was afraid of this woman whom the dragons obeyed. So she told her, “An evil Sorceress snatched my da. We’re going to the Hall of the Ancients to summon the Triumvira and ask for their help, but the Mancers are chasing us.” When she said it out loud, it sounded simply ludicrous.

  “I only know of one who is called Sorceress nowadays,” said Swarn, her bemused expression unchanged. “But two human children have no business whatsoever dealing with her or tramping through my Marsh. What do the Mancers want with you?”

  “I’m...the Shang Sorceress,” faltered Eliza, terribly conscious of the fact that she was covered head to foot in mud and had just been gracelessly dropped to the ground by a dragon. “Sort of.”

  But Swarn didn’t laugh the way Eliza expected her to. She put her hands on her hips and looked Eliza over with a frown. “Has Di Shang come to that?” she said after a short pause, then jerked her chin at Nell. “And who are you? Do you not talk?”

  “I’m Nell,” said Nell, making it sound quite as important as being a Sorceress. “I’m her friend, aye.”

  Swarn grinned wolfishly and then turned and strode back into her house, calling over her shoulder, “Come in, Sorceress and Nell.”

  They followed her into the small, dark house. It was a single open room with walls of packed earth through which an occasional gleam of white showed. The ceiling was crisscrossed with large, oddly shaped beams that the girls quickly recognized as enormous bones. From heavy chains and iron hooks dangled tin buckets and wicker baskets full of dried herbs, shards of stone, bits of feather and bone and cloth, whole plucked birds and silvery fish, mysterious little paper packets and vials of powder. At the centre of the room a blackened pot was suspended over the hearth, a pit in the earth floor surrounded by stones. Something was bubbling in the pot. The flames in the hearth were white and green and gave off a peculiar but not unpleasant smell. Swarn gestured for them to seat themselves next to the fire on woven mats laid there for that purpose. In one corner of the room, a larger mat was rolled up against the wall, presumably where their host slept. Several long red spears leaned against the far wall, along with a quiver full of arrows and a wicked-looking black bow.

  Swarn took some herbs from one of the hanging baskets and tossed them into the bubbling cauldron. From another basket she took out two rough white bowls, ladled some of the boiling liquid into them and handed them to the girls.

  “This will steady you,” she said shortly. “Most beings find that facing a dragon leaves them a bit shaky.”

  They hesitated a moment, but there was no way to avoid drinking it without seeming rude. The drink was bitter but they both began to feel calmer as they sipped at it. Swarn began to add various other ingredients from different baskets to the pot: dried fungus and fresh greens and colourful, richly scented spices, as well as whole birds and fish.

  “You are wearing the robes of the Faithful,” she commented to Eliza as she moved among the hanging baskets and buckets. “Did they give you shelter?”

  “Yes,” said Eliza, looking down at her damp, mud-spattered robe. “I was looking for the Oracle but I spec she wasnay there.”

  “And then you must have come through the Ravening Forest,” Swarn continued. “How is it that you were not eaten by the trees?”

  “We went very quickly, aye,” said Nell.

  Swarn laughed at this answer, then broke off abruptly. She narrowed her eyes and sniffed the air. Her head jerked sideways and she reached into her pocket. She began to speak swiftly through clenched teeth in the Language of First Days. As she spoke the room darkened and trembled and the flames in the fire shot up. Eliza and Nell clung to each other in alarm. Swarn strode across the room to the only narrow window, threw it open, and tossed some kind of pale powder outside. Then she reached for something. The fire went back to normal and when she turned back towards them she held a small bird in her hand, flapping feebly.

  “I believe I have answered my own question,” she said dryly. With her other hand she reached into a basket and came out with a thin thread, which she tied deftly to the foot of the bird. The other end she tied to the iron poker propped up by a forked stick next to the fire. The bird flapped to the ground and hopped around the poker anxiously. All this Eliza and Nell watched in bewilderment. It came clear only when Swarn asked them, “How did you come to be in the company of a Shade?”

  “Oh! What have you done to him?” asked Eliza, horrified. “Why cannay he change?”

  “I’ve stopped him changing,” said Swarn. “He can live out a bird’s life and die one too. Shades are untrustworthy. Not one thing, nor another. I won’t abide being spied on.”

  The bird looked at Eliza with its tiny black eyes and let out a plaintive little cheep. Eliza looked back at it helplessly.

  “He was helping us...” she began.

  “I think I can figure it out for myself,” said Swarn impatiently. “But h
ave you considered, little girl, what the Xia Sorceress wants with you?”

  “She wants something I have,” said Eliza, and then a chill of horror struck her all at once. “My bag!” she cried, scrambling to her feet. “I dropped it when the dragon took us! I have to go back!”

  “I’ll have your things by morning,” said Swarn firmly. “Nothing can be taken from my Marsh without me knowing of it.”

  She ladled some more of the steaming mixture from the cauldron into their bowls.

  “I hadn’t counted on company tonight, so there isn’t much,” she said shortly, though in fact there was plenty. Swarn noticed Nell examining the bowl and said, “Dragon bone. Same as this entire house. You won’t be troubled by dragons or any other magical being in this Marsh unless I decide you’re to be troubled. But it appears you’re quite troubled enough. If you think you’ll find help here in Tian Xia, any being willing to go to Di Shang and pick a fight with the Sorceress Nia, you are mistaken.”

  “What did you call her?” asked Eliza. The bird had hopped onto her knee and was looking up at her, its tiny head cocked on one side.

  “Her name,” said Swarn curtly. “Nia, she was called once.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I did. More than I’d like. And well enough to know you’d best steer clear of her. She’d make very short work of the likes of you. You can sleep by the fire; it will burn all night. Tomorrow I’ll have your belongings for you and you’ll turn around and go back where you came from. Only way you’ll live out your meagre human lives. Now eat.”

  They drank the soup back hungrily. Swarn sat cross-legged and straight-backed, staring deep into the leaping green flames of the fire. Her face was still as a mask and the firelight played across it.

  Nell mustered her courage and asked, “How is it you speak Kallanese?”

  Swarn looked up from the flames as if she had forgotten they were there.

  “I speak a good many languages,” was all she said.