Shade and Sorceress

by Catherine Egan

  Swarn’s face twisted painfully, and tears froze in the corners of her eyes at the mention of Eliza’s mother. Nell had stopped crying and was looking from the witch to Eliza with a desperate slow-waking hope.

  “You promised my ma,” Eliza pressed on, the words pouring out of her now. “You told her you would help me, aye, but now you’re going to kill me on a mountain. What would she think if she could see you? Abandoning her husband, murdering her daughter! I can save him. I know I can.”

  It happened so quickly that to Eliza and Nell it was just a blur. Swarn spun away and arrows were flying from her bow upwards. The gleaming dragons of the Mancers, who had been almost upon them, were veering to avoid the deadly arrows. Swarn leaped onto her own dragon and gave Eliza one dark, fierce stare.

  “Let the worlds rot then,” she said. “Go.”

  Swarn’s huge rust-red dragon with its battered wings and scarred body lunged into the air to face the smaller green-gold dragons of the Mancers. A spear dove into the throat of one dragon, and then another. Dragon blood drenched the snow as the gryphon took flight with Eliza and Nell clinging to his back.

  ~

  The gryphon flew south over the Irahok mountains and then over the sprawling, turreted fortresses of the Giants, which smoked and flamed from ceaseless battle in the plains. He flew without pause as the moons made their dancing journey across the sky and the hanging gardens of the Sparkling Deluder brightened and then faded. The sun rose and cast its red light over the unwelcoming landscape. In the distance Eliza saw the Temples of the Faithful, great red mounds on the horizon, and beyond them, the black cliffs around the lake of the Crossing. The green plains became barren earth riddled with dry gorges. The gryphon flew straight for the cliff and the Steps opened before them. Down he flew, towards the lake, landing clumsily at the bottom. He lay there panting, his great eagle head resting on the black stone. Dizzy, parched and exhausted, the girls climbed off and fell, their legs too cramped to stand on. Eliza dropped her satchel and staff and for a brief moment pressed her face to the stone.

  “Eliza!” cried Nell. She lifted her head.

  The ghostly boat was taking shape on the lake, sailing towards them, and sauntering down the Steps with hate-filled eyes was the King of the Faeries.

  “Hurry,” gasped Eliza, struggling to get up. In a flash the King was at her side. He stepped on her arm, pinning her, and flung his hand towards the gryphon. A golden net burst out of his palm, enmeshing the exhausted creature entirely. Between the King of the Faeries’ legs, Eliza saw Nell’s white face staring at her. She was untying Eliza’s staff from the satchel.

  “Swarn has much to answer for,” said the King of the Faeries, stepping harder on Eliza’s arm, making her cry out. From his belt he drew a tiny, jeweled dagger. Nell got unsteadily to her feet and swung the staff at the King of the Faeries’ head as hard and fast as she could, but it was not fast enough. Without turning or flinching he reached behind him, catching the staff in his free hand and wrenching it from her. In one fluid motion he used it to strike her to the ground. In the same moment Eliza took hold of her dragon claw and drove it hard into the foot on her arm. The King roared, dropping her staff, and kicked her in the face with his other foot. Everything was black for a moment. Eliza tasted her own blood, thick and salty, filling her mouth. She forced her eyes open. Splintered through tears of agony she saw the Faithful pouring down the steps. The King of the Faeries spun to face them, meeting their angry voices with his own. Eliza crawled forwards with the dragon claw, bright with the King’s blood, and tore open the golden net that held the gryphon.

  “Come on, Charlie,” she said, tugging at him. Nell grabbed the satchel and staff and staggered towards the boat as the Faithful spilled around the King, surrounding him. The three battered travelers boarded the ship.

  “And for passage?” asked the Boatman. Charlie was still in gryphon form, collapsed on the deck. He couldn’t help, and they didn’t have much time. She would have to give the dragon claw.

  Nell understood instantly what she was thinking. “You might need it,” she said.

  “We dinnay have anything else,” said Eliza helplessly.

  “Charlie said it didnay have to be a thing,” said Nell. “It can be something else, nay?”

  “Indeed,” said the Boatman. “Hope, the ability to laugh or dream, love, memories, all of these are things of great value that I will accept as payment.”

  “Memories,” said Nell. “You could have one of my memories.”

  The Boatman regarded her for a moment. Eliza saw that the King of the Faeries was driving back the Faithful. They were backing up the steps reluctantly. Quickly, she thought, quickly.

  “Your memories of Tian Xia,” said the Boatman.

  “Done,” said Nell without hesitating.

  The King of the Faeries turned and cast his golden net towards them, but the boat had moved away from the stone, the Crossing had begun, and the net melted to nothing over their heads. All the way back Nell wept, knowing she would remember none of it.

  ~

  Eliza dreamt and woke. The mist closed over them and she stared into the white blindness. She heard Nell whimper, felt some movement as Nell or Charlie changed position, but they did not speak. They were weary, but above all terribly hungry and thirsty. Eliza’s thoughts were vague, nebulous things, shadowy fears like a baby might have, unformed.

  “Where do you go?” the Boatman whispered in her ear.

  “Home,” said Eliza, flinching away from him. The word was a dry croak.

  The mist lifted slowly and the boat pulled into a dark cavern. Far overhead was a circle of light. The three passengers disembarked, weak-limbed and trembling. The boat melted into the dark behind them.

  “Eliza?” Nell’s voice rasped, barely audible. “Where are we?”

  “Almost home,” said Eliza, though she couldn’t be sure if this was true.

  Nell’s eyes were wide and frightened and full of questions she could not give voice to. “What’s happening?” she managed to say.

  “I’ll explain later,” said Eliza. She asked the gryphon gently, “Can you get us out of here, Charlie?”

  He raised his head ever so slightly.

  “Come on,” said Eliza to Nell. “You need to get on his back.”

  “By the Ancients,” Nell murmured, looking at the gryphon. “What...?” But she didn’t finish the question. She climbed onto his back with Eliza.

  The gryphon was breathing in short, strained pants, but he managed to take off with the two girls sprawled on his back, spiraling upwards so the light overhead grew wider and brighter. They flew out of the top of a volcano and over the sea, into the beautiful blue sky of their own world. In the distance, the archipelago shimmered green, like dropped emeralds on the bright water.

  PART 3:

  The Sorceress

  ~

  ~ Chapter 16 ~

  Kyreth sat at his desk, waiting. When the expected knock came he drew a symbol in the air with his finger. A door appeared and opened. Ka entered, his robe dark with dragon’s blood.

  “Your Eminence knows what has transpired,” said the manipulator of fire, bowing.

  “What of the Warrior Witch?” demanded Kyreth.

  “She slew two of the dragons and injured the other three but made no attempt on our lives. Her purpose was to prevent us from pursuing the girl. We let her live, thinking it best to consult you before taking further action.”

  “Did she return the barrier star?”

  “She did not. She claims it as a gift from the girl.”

  Kyreth stood.

  “Eliza is already on her way to the Arctic. Find her and bring her back. Destroy the Shade.”

  “It is done,” said Ka. “But what of the Triumvira? They would have killed her. They were most unruly and disrespectful of Your Eminence’s authority...”

  Kyreth cut him off. “Do not tarry any longer. I will see to our relations with the Triumvira in person.”

 
; Ka bowed deeply and left the room.

  ~

  The gryphon began to lose altitude as soon as he emerged from the mouth of the volcano. He landed hard on a wedge of rock sticking up out of the sea. As soon as the two girls had climbed off his back, he crawled to the water’s edge, and there he began a slow, stuttering transformation. Before it had always seemed to happen in a flash, but now they saw his beak lengthen into the nose of a dolphin while his wings clung to his back and lifted into a dorsal fin, his feathers and fur smoothed into slick grey skin. He slithered into the water and disappeared. Nell and Eliza lay on the rock. A long chain of volcanic islands surged up out of the sea around them. These volcanoes had been visible from Holburg on clear days, a dark sickle in the far-off sea, sometimes smoking.

  “Was that real?” asked Nell at last.

  “He’s a Shade, remember,” said Eliza. “He can change.”

  “Is he coming back?” asked Nell.

  “I dinnay know,” said Eliza.

  Neither one of them could have said how much time passed before Charlie crawled out of the sea, morphing back into a gryphon with a beak full of fish. They fell on the fish and ate them raw, relishing in particular the eyeballs, which contained water. They sucked the bones of the fish clean, leaving nothing edible.

  When their energy was restored somewhat, Nell said, “What’s happening? Are we in Tian Xia?” She squinted towards the archipelago, knowing they were not.

  “We were,” said Eliza. “You traded your memory of it for passage back, Nell. You saved us.”

  Nell’s violet eyes widened and her lips parted slightly.

  “It’s a long story, aye,” Eliza said. “I told the Boatman to take us home. This must be the closest Crossing to Holburg. We need to find a safer place than this to talk about everything. The Mancers and maybe others will still be looking for us.” She thought about how she had stabbed the King of the Faeries with her dragon claw and a cool thread of fear rippled through her.

  “Is Holburg nay the first place they’d look?” demanded Nell.

  “We should go quickly, then,” said Eliza. “We need food and supplies before carrying on.”

  “Carrying on to where?” asked Nell.

  “I’ll explain everything when we’re safe, aye,” said Eliza, though she thought she would never truly feel safe again. “Let’s go.”

  ~

  The gryphon flew north towards the archipelago, keeping low over the sea as they approached Holburg so as not to be seen from the town. When he landed on the southern cliffs, Eliza was nearly overcome with emotion. She longed to run into the town, to go back to her father’s house. But it wasn’t safe to show herself, and he wouldn’t be there in any case.

  “I’ll get supplies,” Nell volunteered.

  “Go through the caves and keep out of sight, just in case,” said Eliza. “I’ll need warm clothes as well as food.”

  The gryphon turned back into a pale, limp Charlie. “Bring some cookies, if you can, aye,” he said.

  Nell laughed slightly and nodded, then turned and trotted off in the direction of the cave opening. Charlie and Eliza rested by the Lookout Tree. She listened to the familiar surf crashing against the rocks. A few tears rolled down her cheeks, but she wiped them away before Charlie noticed. Here she had been safe and happy, though it seemed another lifetime already. With her father missing, Holburg was not her home anymore.

  Nell returned some hours later as the sun was going down to find Eliza and Charlie sleeping soundly.

  “Wake up, you two,” she said, nudging Eliza with her foot. Eliza opened her eyes and saw Nell was laden with bags.

  “I had to sneak in the back, aye,” she said, her face flushed with excitement. “No one saw me. My parents were watching tv and didnay hear a thing. There are men guarding your house and mine, Eliza! They’re nay from the archipelago, that’s sure. They looked like military men or something, with uniforms. But they were chatting up Hettie Aldrom in the street so it was easy for me to get past them. Look, I’ve got water and food and warm clothes!”

  “Water,” said Eliza immediately.

  “I mean, Hettie Aldrom. She’s nay so very pretty,” Nell went on, unpacking the supplies she had brought.

  They drank their fill and ate tuna sandwiches with mayonnaise, crisp fresh apples, and all the cookies they could stuff themselves with. When they were satisfied, Nell said, “Lah, time to tell me everything.”

  So Eliza told her, with Charlie interjecting details and asides, what had happened since their arrival in Tian Xia, and how in leaving Nell had given up her memories. Nell’s shoulders sagged when they reached that part.

  “I should have thought of something specific,” she said mournfully. “I should have offered my memories of...oh anything other than that! The time I won the archipelegan science fair, or even the time Mentor Frist sneezed in class and snot shot out of both his nostrils and hit the blackboard! I would have been sorry to lose that one too, but to not remember Tian Xia...!”

  “Thank you for doing it, Nell,” said Eliza. “I dinnay know how else we would have escaped. You thought so quickly. I couldnay think at all, I was so scared.”

  Nell gave an unhappy sigh.

  “So what now?”

  Eliza looked at Charlie. “Lah, you’ve been more than fair to me. I had my chance to ask the Triumvira for help, and they nearly killed me. You were right, aye. I’ll go with you to the Arctic.”

  Charlie looked down and fiddled with his shoelaces.

  “Look,” he said, “I know the Sorceress, a little. Maybe you should just go back to the Mancers. They did save your life, after all.”

  Eliza gaped at him. “But, my da,” she said at last.

  “Last thing I remember you were all about persuading Eliza to run away from the Mancers,” said Nell suspiciously. “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is, I just dinnay think you should go to the Arctic,” said Charlie fiercely, looking up to meet Eliza’s eyes. “When I made my deal with the Sorceress, I thought...lah, I thought you were a Sorceress, I didnay think you were just a girl, and...and I didnay know you. But I’ve changed my mind, aye. I’m nay taking you there.”

  “But what will happen to you if I dinnay go?” asked Eliza. “It’s your mission to get me there!”

  Charlie shrugged. “She cannay get out of her prison. She can only send minions after me. I’d be alright.”

  “Charlie...” said Eliza, putting a hand on his arm.

  “I can take you back to the Citadel. Both of you. I should nary have...I just didnay know...” He broke off and stared at the ground.

  Eliza shook her head. “No. The Mancers willnay help me. The Triumvira willnay help me. I know it’s a terrible risk but there’s no other way. If she cannay get out of her prison, I can try to make the trade from outside it. You have to take me, Charlie.”

  “I dinnay want to see anything bad happen to you,” he muttered.

  “She has nothing to gain by hurting me or my da!” insisted Eliza. “Everyone knows I cannay really do any Magic! Dinnay you think there’s a chance she’ll take the book and let us go?”

  “Of course there’s a chance,” said Charlie. “But there’s a chance she willnay, too. She’s...unpredictable.”

  “Can either of you think of any other way I’ve got even a chance to free my da?”

  Charlie and Nell were silent.

  “Then it’s decided. And if you’ll nay take me, Charlie, I’ll find another way to get there. I’ll walk the whole way if I have to.”

  Charlie nodded his head slowly. “I’ll take you, aye,” he conceded.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” asked Nell.

  “Oh Nell...” said Eliza, and broke off, unsure how to say it. Nell understood just by looking at her and immediately protested.

  “I’m coming with you, Eliza! I’m nay just leaving you to go face the Xia Sorceress all by yourself!”

  “It’s too dangerous, Nell,” said Eliza. “And Char
lie will fly faster with just one passenger.”

  “No! I want to help you.”

  “There’s nothing to help with. I’ll just give her the book and hope for the best, aye. I’m nay putting your life at risk too.”

  “You cannay leave me behind!”

  But Eliza had gotten a fixed, stony look on her face, and she would not budge.

  It was night now, the sky clear and full of stars. They had not bathed since leaving Swarn’s house in the Dead Marsh and Eliza and Nell could still smell that awful swamp, the Wakabu-kraw, on their clothes. So they walked along the cliff to where it crumbled into a slope and a ragged trail led down to the water’s edge. Here they stripped down and splashed into the dark water, bright phosphorescence sparking and dancing around them. Not so long ago, sneaking out here at night to swim among the glittering phosphorescence had constituted a great adventure for Nell and Eliza, but greater events had overtaken them and now it was a simple matter of getting clean. They took their time washing off in the cool salt water, then put on some of the clothes Nell had brought from her house. Nell was taller than Eliza and the clothes were a bit big on her but it felt good to be wearing something clean. They found Charlie dozing under the Lookout Tree again. Eliza was so tired that as soon as she lay down a dreamless sleep swallowed her whole. She did not wake until just before dawn. Charlie was shaking her by the shoulder.

  “We should go before the whole town wakes up, aye,” he said gently. “If you still want to go, that is.”

  Eliza nodded her head blearily. Nell woke too and looked at them as if she was about to cry.

  “I want to come with you,” she said in a small voice. Eliza hugged her tightly. Though neither of them said it out loud, they both wondered if they would ever see each other again.

  “We’ll be back soon,” said Eliza, trying to believe it.

  “I know,” said Nell. “Good luck.”

  Charlie became a gryphon again and Eliza climbed onto his back. He took the bags of food and water and clothes in his talons and took off into the faded pre-dawn sky. Nell remained alone on the cliff’s edge, watching her dearest friend become smaller and smaller until she was just a speck over the still dark water, and then she couldn’t see her at all any more. She turned and made her way slowly home across the island.