The Unmaking: The Last Days of Tian Di, Book Two

by Egan, Catherine

  The boat came closer, solidifying into a long sloop with a single mast and sail. For a moment Eliza felt a little surge of hope, until she saw the Boatman at the bow. Translucent flesh stretched over knotted muscle and flowing blood; he was not easy to look at. She glimpsed a ghastly, mocking grin on his face. As always, Eliza could not meet his eyes, did not even know if he had eyes, so powerful was the Magic that kept her from looking at them.

  “Dinnay you think she’s getting better at it, lah?” Charlie asked the Boatman. “I thought that was quite convincing.”

  “Command me, will you, would-be Sorceress?” jeered the Boatman, as he did every time, ignoring Charlie. “Think you I need no payment? If you wish passage, how will you pay?”

  “I willnay pay,” said Eliza crossly.

  The Boat began to fade.

  “Stay,” Eliza commanded, which worked, but it didn’t mean the Boatman would take them. Half-faded, he waited for the inevitable next step in this dance of theirs.

  “Try again,” Charlie said encouragingly.

  “I cannay,” said Eliza. Her limbs felt like wet noodles, she was damp with sweat from the flight down the vent, and she didn’t have the energy to do it again. She sat cross-legged on the hard, hot rock and squeezed her eyes shut, reaching down into herself for the gift her mother’s old friend and teacher Swarn had given her. When she spoke again, it was not with her own voice but with the command of the Warrior Witch, “Bring me the Sorceress, Boatman.”

  The boat came clear again, and the Boatman stepped aside with a nasty smile, indicating that Eliza could board.

  “And how will you pay for your passage, Shade?” sneered the Boatman.

  “Dinnay pester Swarn. You know I’m included,” said Charlie. The Boatman let him on as well.

  “Lah, you dinnay have to give us a hard time,” Charlie added. “You know we’re going to get across anyway.”

  “I will not be commanded,” said the Boatman harshly, “by those with no power to command.”

  Eliza half wanted to apologize, for she thought it must be very annoying indeed for the ancient Boatman to have a girl like herself trying to boss him around. Instead she turned her back on him, breathing deeply as the boat sailed fast away from the rock and the black pool and Di Shang.

  ~~~

  At sundown, Foss stood in the Library and inhaled. As his breath entered him he let the image in his mind filter into the air in his lungs. Then he exhaled slowly and a milky haze came out of his mouth, forming a square-foot replica of the Arctic barriers. He felt a surge of pride and joy when he saw it. It was an unsolvable puzzle in constant motion. He rotated the replica into the position it had been in when the Sorceress completed the most recent hole and froze it. He was impressed by her speed and precision. Because of the constant motion of the barriers, she had to move with them and work quickly in order to complete the shape she wanted. She did not allow for any careless rips or jagged edges. Each hole was a perfect circle, six feet in diameter. There were a great many of these holes but not enough of them to compromise the barriers as a whole. Each hole penetrated a single layer only. He left the replica frozen and with his breath created another, freezing this one where the previous hole had been made. The first one was bored through the centre of a giant sphere, which spun in a difficult-to-decipher orbit through the mass of barriers, then spun up to the top and rolled in a shrinking spiral over the top of the barriers before falling back to the centre. The second hole was through a flat, hard sheet that moved, along with several hundred others, very quickly back and forth across the bottom layer of barriers, intermittently rising up a few layers when a gap allowed it. These looked a bit like flying piano keys under invisible fingers. Foss looked carefully from one replica to the other but he could not work out a relation between the two holes.

  He had two years’ worth of charts marking out the trajectory of the barriers and the holes the Sorceress had made. Regular study of these charts had never revealed any logic or pattern to the holes. But his trance this morning had disturbed him. It may have been no more than a personal warning regarding Kyreth but the fear had been somehow greater than that. The charts were not three-dimensional and did not simulate the motion of the barriers. Perhaps in looking at complete moving replicas of the barriers, he would see something he had missed. It was not likely that the Sorceress was acting without a purpose. Breathing deeply, he brought forth another, then another. The sun set and he felt the pull to rest but he was too intent upon his task to obey it. It was the season of his ascendancy and he was strong enough to continue working his Magic through the night. The ghostly replicas filled the long passageways between the bookshelves, hundreds of them hovering at chest height in the air. Once he was finished he walked from the first to the last, examining each one closely. He set them into orbit and they began to spin and swirl and shift. Again, he went from one to the next and though he could not pin it down something unsettled him. There was a method to her assault on the barriers; he felt more and more certain. This was no game, no accident, no mere distraction. There was another puzzle now embedded in the puzzle he had made. She was cleverer than he was. She had understood perfectly the Deep Math of her prison. She was toying with it now in ways he did not understand and the fate of the worlds depended on his understanding. When dawn came he felt it like a tap on the shoulder and startled. He had no time to retire to his chamber, so he sat on the floor of the Library amid the barrier replicas and fell too quickly and uncontrolled into his trance.

  The world was a ruin. The black crab leaped among the battered rocks and the sky crumbled overtop of them. Fire fell like rain.

  ~~~

  Eliza looked up at the tatters of red cloud swirling in the sepia-coloured sky, that pitiless, unfriendly Tian Xia sky she had come to know so well. She was watching for something she did not see. Then she spotted it, falling fast towards her, a ball of light. In one fluid motion she pulled her bow taut and raised it to the sky, letting her Deep Knowing guide her arms and calculate the speed at which the object fell. She released the bow and the dark arrow shot through the ball of light, exploding it into a shower of sparks.

  “The aim is good,” said Swarn, who was standing back and watching with her arms folded. “But you lack force in all you do. You are precise, but weak.”

  They were standing in the middle of the dark marsh dotted with skeletal bracken. Swarn’s house was a little hump in the distance, not really recognizable as a house at all from where they stood.

  “It takes everything I’ve got just to fix on the right spot, aye,” said Eliza. She wondered if Swarn could tell she was wearing a bra. She wondered if Swarn was wearing a bra. It seemed unlikely somehow. Definitely not a bra with lace flowers on the straps.

  “Then you practice. Grow stronger. The aim should be easy by now, it should require nothing of you. When you face an opponent, you cannot just tap it between the eyes. You need to go right through the skull.”

  Eliza grimaced a little at that. Swarn bent and snatched up one of her long red spears. In her arm, lean and brown and muscled, it seemed to weigh nothing. She tossed it to Eliza effortlessly but Eliza knew enough to brace herself. The spear was enchanted iron and very heavy. Catching it nearly knocked her over.

  “You are using your physical strength again,” said Swarn impatiently. “You are a fourteen-year-old human child, Eliza! There are few beings as physically weak as you are. But you are not only a girl. You are the spear. You are the air. You are the ground. Are you not?”

  Eliza inhaled slowly and raised the spear over her shoulder.

  “Let it flow, let it flow,” chanted Swarn. It was a feeling Eliza loved – when she could muster it. She felt like rushing water, a force of nature, and the spear in her grasp was subject to this force, a twig in a torrent. She could exert on it the same power as the sun did over the planets. It would follow its course, unresisting.

  “Take care,” warned Swarn. She read Eliza’s feelings well, for Eliza was tempted to unl
eash this power she felt, to send the spear as far as it would go. But that was not the purpose of the exercise. She caught a flash from the corner of her eye and pivoted, hurling the spear straight through the ball of light. The spear plunged into the marsh several meters away, dripping fire.

  “Better,” said Swarn. “Much better.”

  Now that it was done, Eliza felt drained and weary. “I need to rest,” she said.

  Swarn shook her head.

  “You do not push yourself hard enough, Eliza. How will you get stronger if you stop whenever you are tired? Here.”

  She tossed Eliza another spear and this time Eliza caught it easily, but the surge of power faded fast. She saw the ball of light too late this time and tried to throw the spear, but her aim was poor and her strength gave out. The spear made an ungainly crash to the swampy ground just a few feet away. Eliza’s knees buckled and she sat in the mud. Swarn looked at her as if she was an insect.

  “I’m nay as strong as my ma,” said Eliza rather angrily, because she knew that was what Swarn was thinking.

  “That is not the issue,” said Swarn. “You barely try.”

  “I am trying.” Eliza could have wept with frustration. Whenever she left Tian Xia she was amazed at how much she had learned from Swarn, what leaps forward her Magic had made. But while she was here she felt only the exhaustion and misery of training under someone who seemed to have no experience of pain, hunger or weariness. She forced herself to her feet again.

  “I’m ready, aye,” she said.

  Swarn threw her another spear and it knocked her over into the mud.

  ~~~

  At first, Swarn had taught her potions. Foss had books of potions and endless jars of supplies in the Mancer Library, but Swarn was a witch and she knew of potions no book told of; she needed no reminding of the materials or enchantments necessary. She and Eliza had hiked great distances through the Dead Marsh, even into the Ravening Forest and the Irahok Mountains, to find the right herbs or stones or creatures. There were no jars of tidy powders and dried herbs. Eliza learned herself how to cut open a frog or a foot-dragon and take the parts she needed, how to find the right roots and dry them in the sun, how to recognize different types of volcanic rock or obtain the saliva of certain cliff-dwelling birds. There was a great deal of clambering about with nets and baskets and it reminded her a bit of playing with Nell on Holburg when they were children, although this was much more strenuous and dangerous. As they searched for their ingredients, Swarn told Eliza all about the mystical properties of the thing they sought and what other materials might serve in their place in an emergency. She came to understand, on these long rambles, the underlying theory of potion-making. Now, if Swarn told her “invisibility” or “confusion” or “forgetfulness” or “rage,” Eliza could set out with her equipment and find the necessary ingredients, prepare them and mix them in a potion that would do the job, if clumsily. Some time later, Foss had decided to teach Eliza a few potions. She had been so efficient, so confident, so expert, that he had just watched her carefully and then moved on to something else. They had never returned to potions and she wondered if he guessed where she had learned so much.

  After potions, Swarn had taught her to forge weapons. For this they had gone to the cliffs of Batt, where dragons nested, and Swarn had showed Eliza a pool of white-green flame in a dark cave whose walls were carved with ancient runes. Here Swarn had given shape to Eliza’s dragon claw, forging a dagger from it, showing her how certain spells combined with mystical elements could be used to mold the most indestructible materials. Together they had made a spear out of spells, layer upon layer, a spear that would fly true and break whatever Magic stood in its way. It took such a spear to kill a dragon, Swarn had explained, or to drive through a barrier. They made swords and spears and knives and arrows. It was sweaty and confusing work, not nearly as enjoyable as looking for things to put in a potion. Eliza had expected to continue with forging spells this time around but suddenly Swarn had decided to teach her to use these weapons. Eliza was thrilled – at first. Now the day was only half-over and she was worn out. It was the most difficult thing they had done yet, by far, and she couldn’t help thinking that perhaps she was not ready for it.

  After piercing balls of flame with arrows and spears, they went on to dueling with enchanted swords. Eliza’s sword had a will of its own and she had to impose her will over it. Tired as she was, she found the sword controlled her more than she it and that she was darting and dodging to accommodate its movements. Swarn was most dissatisfied and lectured her about balance. When the sun was sinking down towards the horizon and the red clouds had faded to dark grey, they turned and trudged back to the hut.

  They had left Charlie sleeping by the fire that morning but he was gone now. Though he didn’t stray far, he tended to stay out of Swarn’s way. Indirectly, he was the cause of the quarrel between Swarn’s sister Audra and the Sorceress Nia that had ended with Audra being killed more than half a century ago. Though he could hardly be blamed for it, he knew well enough that Swarn didn’t like the sight of him. Swarn told Eliza every time that she would happily send a dragon to meet her at the Crossing but the truth was Eliza liked to have her friend with her. The dragons were loyal only to Swarn. She had profound respect for Swarn but the witch had three times come close to killing Eliza early on in their relationship. Eliza felt better knowing Charlie was nearby.

  It was part of Swarn’s peculiar regimen of training that Eliza became a sort of servant when she stayed there. She swept the earth floor of the hut, maintained the enchantments on the fire, walked an hour and back every morning to the spring for fresh water, cooked their meals and rinsed the dishes. Now Eliza chopped marsh vegetables on a rough, worn strip of wood while Swarn sat, back straight and legs crossed, hands on her knees, staring into the green fire in the hearth at the centre of the room. A large black cauldron hung over the fire, rigged from the ceiling by chains. Eliza winched it up close to the ceiling so it was out of the way and set up a short iron stand for the frying pan. The frying pan was black and battered but still serviceable. Eliza stirred the vegetables and herbs together with some oil and a handful of dried marsh minnows in the pan. The mixture began to sizzle.

  “How is your mother?” asked Swarn. She was not looking at Eliza.

  “Same as usual, I spec,” said Eliza carefully. When Swarn did not reply, she added, “You should come visit her sometime, aye.”

  “No,” said Swarn, her voice harsh.

  “You’d be welcome,” said Eliza.

  “No,” Swarn said again, nearly whispering this time. “I could not bear it.”

  “Praps it’s easier for me, because I dinnay remember her the way she was before,” said Eliza.

  Swarn cut her off. “Tomorrow we will practice deflecting barriers.”

  “Barriers?” Eliza was startled. “What for?”

  Swarn said nothing in reply to this.

  “My dagger can cut through barriers,” said Eliza. “Why do I need to deflect them?”

  “Suppose you were held by a barrier that prevented you from moving your arms,” said Swarn crisply. “How would you reach your dagger?”

  Eliza paused and let this sink in. She could not think why Swarn would suggest such a thing. First and most obviously, she was not ready. It took Magic far greater than what she could yet perform to deflect the spell of another. But stranger than that, barriers were Mancer Magic, and the Mancers were Eliza’s sworn protectors.

  “Do you really think the Mancers are some kind of threat to me?” she asked at last. She asked this not out of concern, but out of disbelief. Eliza felt sure Swarn was doing the Mancers a great injustice if she believed they might hurt their own Sorceress-in-training.

  Swarn looked up from the fire, locking eyes with Eliza. Her brown eyes were almost lost in the wrinkled folds of her eyelids.

  “I do not believe the Mancers wish you harm. But they have their own agenda, and for your own sake it is best that you never b
e powerless among them.”

  The vegetable and minnow mix was smoking a little. Eliza let the subject drop and scraped a portion off for each of them, filling up the white dragon-bone bowls. The mix of roots and plants and dried fish was bland but surprisingly filling. They ate in silence, seated cross-legged on coarsely woven mats on the cold earth floor. When they had finished, Swarn handed her bowl rather imperiously to Eliza. She washed the dishes in the bucket of water reserved for that and set them aside on a mat to dry. She threw the dirty water outside, then took off her clothes and the new bra and washed herself in the doorway with a rough cloth and cold water. The night sky was full of the monstrous screaming shapes of dragons casting their great shadows over the moon. Her clothes were thick with mud and so she rinsed them off too and then hung them over the fence to dry. She wore the black tunic that was the costume of the Shang Sorceress mainly as a nightgown these days.

  When she came back inside, Swarn was already lying down with a rough blanket pulled around her, her shoulders rising and falling steadily with her breath. Eliza unrolled her own sleeping mat and lay down gingerly, sore and bruised from the day’s training.

  In her dreams the house was crowded with ravens. They were all jabbering at her, their nasty beaks snapping open and shut, and what she heard them saying was “Making, Making, Making.”

  Chapter

  ~5~

  After the day’s work in the Inner Sanctum was done, Foss went to Aysu’s chamber and requested an audience. They sat facing each other across the low stone table inlaid with ebony crabs.

  “I did not wish to trouble Kyreth with this, as it may be nothing,” said Foss. “But I believe the holes our enemy is making in the barriers may be more dangerous than we realize. I cannot decipher the pattern and yet there is a pattern, some kind of Deep Logic, I am certain. I catch hints of it, but cannot link it all together.”