“Is it perhaps only fear, or weariness, Spellmaster, that makes you think so?” Aysu suggested softly. “You did not sleep last night. All the manipulators of water were disturbed.”
“Forgive me,” he said humbly. “I became overanxious. It is not only due to my examination of the holes. My trances have been full of disturbing images. Disaster. Is no one else seeing such things?”
“No, Spellmaster. You are the first to say so.”
“Then perhaps it is nothing,” said Foss, relieved. “If something were truly amiss, you too would have sensed it.”
“Perhaps not,” said Aysu thoughtfully. “The barriers are your design. It may be that you are more sensitive to the damage being done to them. It should be looked into further. I will inform his Eminence.”
“Thank you,” said Foss. He rose to go but Aysu made a gesture inviting him to sit again.
“Spellmaster, you know that in seven years, I will pass on.”
“Yes. You will be missed.”
“You are very kind to say so. The matter of my successor is not yet decided.”
“No. You will appoint a successor with Kyreth’s approval three years before your passing.”
“For many years, it was common knowledge that you were favoured. You are the Spellmaster; your knowledge is unparalleled and your power respected by all.”
“I thank you. But circumstances have changed. I understand well that it is not for me to become an Emmisarius. I am content.”
“Good. The matter is quite out of my hands, Foss. But you still have my respect. That is what I wished to tell you.”
“I am most grateful,” Foss said, moved. “Convey my greetings to his Eminence when you speak to him.”
“I will do so.”
~~~
After they had eaten breakfast, Eliza said to Swarn, “Tell me about Making.”
Swarn gave Eliza a look of such scorching intensity, it felt almost like the gaze of a Mancer. “An odd request from a girl who can barely conjure,” she said.
“I dinnay mean teach me how to do it,” said Eliza, irritated. “I mean tell me about it, lah. What is it, exactly? I know the Ancients Made Tian Di, but do other beings have the power to Make?”
“It is exactly what it sounds like – the creation of something that did not exist before. As you say, it is the power of the Ancients and I could not teach it to you even if I were mad enough to wish to. Why are you asking me this, Eliza?”
“I had a dream, aye. Or...lots of dreams, praps. Ravens kept saying Making to me, over and over again. It seemed to go on all night.”
Swarn stood up in one fluid motion and paced in a circle around the small earth hut. “That is very strange,” she said at last.
“Aye,” said Eliza dryly. “What do you think it means?”
Swarn shook her head.
“I don’t know. Making lies at the root of all Magic. What we call Magic is, in fact, the residue of the Ancients in their creation, for no being can separate itself from what it Makes. The Magic of Making, the power of the Ancients, is still in the earth and the air and the sky and our own blood and breath. We call upon it for all our lesser Magic.”
“So no beings since the Ancients have actually Made anything?” Eliza asked.
“Some have,” said Swarn. “We have only myths and stories to go by. The story of Making that is most widely believed harks from the Middle Days. There was a wizard who lived with the Immortal Dragons in the East. He was called the Great Dragon Mage. It is said that he quarreled with the Lord Dragon and stole from them the sacred flame that was the source of their power. He fled the Dragon Isles and came to Tian Di, where he used the sacred flame to Make the mortal dragons. They were his creatures, bound to him. They served him and did his bidding. But as they procreated and their numbers grew, their power became equal to and then greater than his. They drew upon his life force, his essence, to increase their own strength. Though he tried, he could not sever the link between them and was absorbed by them entirely. I do not know if this story is true but it is certain that there were no mortal dragons before the Middle Days, and since those days the Immortal Dragons have not been seen in Tian Di.” There was a strange gleam in Swarn’s eyes as she spoke. She seemed to be looking at something far beyond the small, dark room. “There are some other stories in the Mancer Library I expect,” she finished. “You would be better asking them to tell you about Making. I have told you all I know now.”
“Something is happening,” said Eliza, frowning at the fire. “I cannay ignore these visions and dreams, the ravens following us all the way to the Crossing. They’re trying to tell me something, aye, or they’re trying to harm me, I dinnay know which. But I cannay just wait for it to come clear. I need to find out.”
“And how do you propose to do so, Eliza?”
Eliza looked up at the witch and for a moment Swarn thought she saw, for the first time, some slight resemblance to Rea.
“I want to speak to the Oracle of the Ancients,” said Eliza.
Turning away from Eliza and from that flash of her old friend, her love, Swarn said curtly, “We will leave at once.”
~~~
Swarn and her dragons turned back towards the Dead Marsh while Rhianu welcomed Eliza at the Temple of the Nameless Birth. The first time they met they had been unable to communicate but Eliza was now able to speak haltingly in the Language of First Days. It was not a language that lent itself to conversation, however, so much as to proclamations and flowery inquiries.
“Your hospitality is an ocean of dandelions,” said Eliza, then frowned and bit her lip. That was certainly not the correct phrase.
Rhianu laughed and embraced her, replying, “We are honoured and humbled that the Shang Sorceress should again grace our inadequate hallways with the soles of her blessed feet.”
Like all the Faithful, Rhianu wore a long black robe. Her head and face were covered with a beaded hood and scarf so that only her pale, lidless eyes were visible. The red beads on her hood indicated rank. She was a priestess of the Ancients and loyal servant of the Oracle. The Faithful believed that the Ancients had written the story of the worlds in signs, that the future was laid out already and would come to pass as They had ordained. They believed also that the Oracle was the messenger of the Ancients, through whom the Ancients communicated with the beings they had left behind. Whether indeed the Ancients spoke to or through her, nobody in Tian Xia questioned that the Oracle knew and could see things that no other being in the worlds could. Eliza had met the current Oracle before, but she had been in danger of being killed at the time and would not have known what to ask at any rate. It was time they met again.
The main temple was a giant dome of red earth, honeycombed with vividly painted chambers and corridors. Wooden walkways and stairways snaked all around the outside of it. As they made their way up one of these stairways, Eliza could look out over the tops of all the smaller red earth temples branching off from this one to the black cliffs that encircled the lake of the Crossing. The Crossing was both the centre of Tian Xia and its edge.
“I pray to the Ancients that you prosper in the light of day and by the shadow of night,” said Eliza, which was the closest thing she knew to saying, How are you?
“Your kindness is to me like a boundless sea of persimmon petals,” said Rhianu pointedly, for that was the phrase Eliza had been looking for to match with hospitality.
“Lah, yes! Persimmon petals!” exclaimed Eliza. They ducked into a narrow entryway and Rhianu led Eliza down the hallway to the central spiral staircase, which formed the spine of the structure. Rhianu had not asked and likely would not ask Eliza why she had come but Eliza thought she should explain. It was not easy and she was not helped either by the dizzying descent down the spiraling staircase, where she could only ever see the dark tip of Rhianu’s hood ahead of her as she vanished around the curve.
“In ancient days I came here to meditate upon the Great Truth,” began Eliza. Of course, it wasn’t corr
ect to say ancient days but she didn’t know how else to express before now. “The Faithful welcomed me with persimmon petals.” She heard Rhianu snort ahead of her. She was making a horrible muddle of it. “Now I come to this sacred place to...respect...honour, and I am inadequate, a wish deep as the ocean and wide as the sky to consult the Great Oracle of the Ancients with my...question.”
Rhianu was silent in response to this. Eliza followed her the rest of the way down the stairs. They stopped in a small chamber for Eliza to leave her weapon and put on the robes of the Faithful. Then they continued along a sloping, unlit passageway so narrow that the walls on either side brushed against her shoulders. Eliza could not see Rhianu ahead of her in the darkness but followed the gentle slap of her footsteps and the steady intake and release of her breath.
The footsteps stopped and there was a slight rustle of clothing. Eliza stood still in the dark. Rhianu began to croon something in the Language of First Days. It sounded like The greatest secrets of your servants are ever protected but the words for protect and remember were rather similar, as were the words for secret and truth, so it was hard for Eliza to be sure. Then Rhianu stood and took Eliza by the hand, pulling her down towards the floor. Eliza felt along the flagstones with her hands for the one that had fallen away. She reached through the gap until her fingers touched the rope ladder.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Rhianu’s footsteps retreated back the way they had come. Eliza felt a clammy ripple of fear creep along her skin. She had been here before and the Oracle had not come that time. She was not much looking forward to what might be simply a long, pointless wait in the dark, alone. But she climbed down the ladder and stood in the darkness. The ground was packed earth, the walls cold stone. The last time she had come here, she had been entirely powerless, with the Mancers hunting her. So much had changed since then.
By measuring it out in paces, she found the centre of the octagonal room and sat down cross-legged there. She stared into the darkness, thinking about the ravens and what she would ask the Oracle. Her concentration was occasionally interrupted by unwanted thoughts, such as what might be looking at her now in the dark or how outraged Charlie had been at the idea of her marrying Obrad. She tried to shut that memory out, as it just confused her. She was the Shang Sorceress, not a schoolgirl. She had more important things to think about, she told herself scoldingly.
As it turned out, she had a great deal of time to think. When she began to be terribly hungry, the flagstone above was lifted quietly and a dark package sailed down, landing at her feet with a thud. Then the opening was closed up again. She undid the package. There was bread, cheese, dry fruit and a flask of water inside it. When she was tired, she stretched herself out on the earthen floor and slept.
Calculating by her meals and the times she slept, three days passed in silence and darkness. The difference between sleeping and waking began to close. She sat upright in a sort of half-dream for hours at a time. Her body ached with stillness. She had almost forgotten what she was doing there when on the third day a blaze of light startled her, the walls groaned, and there before her was the Oracle of the Ancients.
“Oh,” said the Oracle, recognition dawning in her cold crystal eyes. “It’s you.”
~~~
Foss had not slept in three nights when it happened. A few days earlier, he had shown the Emmisariae and Kyreth his replicas of the barriers. Foss had hoped that the Supreme Mancer or the powerful Emmisariae would be able to see clearly the answer that eluded him but they were as baffled as he was. Whatever reservations the other Mancers had about him, no one doubted that he had the sharpest mind regarding Deep Mathematics. Kyreth pardoned him from the work in the Inner Sanctum and asked that he focus entirely on solving the riddle posed by the Xia Sorceress’s holes. He had spent the past three days and three nights on the brink of understanding and yet it never quite came together. There was a pattern, but it was a pattern that simply didn’t make sense. She had understood their pattern, the orbits and rotations of the barriers, that much was clear. She had solved the puzzle and so she knew there was no way out. She continued making the holes in an elaborate pattern of her own and yet the pattern revealed nothing. Foss paced and racked his brain and did not sleep. No solution presented itself.
And then one morning she struck.
It was a great blow to the barriers. Every Mancer in the Citadel rocketed from their sleep. The gong sounded twice, summoning them to the Inner Sanctum. Only Foss did not obey. Shaking, he breathed out a replica of the barriers as they were now.
Some terrible force had radiated out from within the prison, striking the barriers in nine places. The barriers were far too strong and complex for any amount of force to break them all. But she struck now with nine blows so powerful and so precise that they altered the motion of the barriers. Orbits changed. Rotations reversed. Another nine blows came and he felt it like a violent kick to his heart.
The Mancers ran to the Inner Sanctum. Kyreth stood in the centre of the main hall, shouting out commands with his Emmisariae around him. They bent all their concentration to the barriers. But there was no time. Mancer Magic was slow and whatever was happening now, it was happening very quickly.
Foss, in the Library, knew it was too late. Another nine blows struck and they all felt it. Everything was changing position. For a brief moment, as he watched his replica, his horror was surpassed by a profound delight. This was miraculous. It was beautiful. It was pure genius and he would never have imagined it possible. As the barriers spun and shifted, her pattern came clear. It was simply unstoppable. Foss strode across the Library, threw open the window, and called a small bright bird to him. It sat alertly in his palm and he spoke to it briefly in the Language of First Days. Then it swooped off in the direction of the dark wood in the northwest corner of the grounds. Time was short. He turned to watch it happen. He could not resist. The barriers spun, and for a mere few seconds all of the holes came into line, creating a circular passage, six feet in diameter, out of her prison and into the world.
~~~
The Oracle came towards Eliza on her eight golden spider’s legs, her upper body tattooed with the elaborate characters of the Language of First Days, her crystal eyes severe.
“I have questions,” said Eliza, forcing herself to meet the Oracle’s eyes.
“Ask them,” replied the Oracle. Her tone was light and mocking.
Eliza held up her right palm, with the tattoo of the dagger pointing down.
“What does the dagger signify?”
The Oracle tilted her head back as if listening to something.
“Struggle,” she said after a pause. “Violence.”
“Why does it point towards me?”
The Oracle’s eyes were alert with interest. “Sacrifice,” she said, as if it pleased her. “Victory will only come at a price for you.”
She couldn’t help herself. She asked, “What price?”
The Oracle waited for a moment and then bared her tiny pointed teeth in a chilling smile. “You will cut out your own heart.”
Eliza stared at the Oracle, radiant and haughty, moving to and fro slightly on her golden-furred legs. A deep shudder took hold of her. The Oracle was watching her hungrily, as if eager for her tears. Eliza knew that once a question had been answered, there was no point asking for clarification. She should not have asked such a thing in the first place. She forced her spine straight, drove her chin up, pushed aside all the new questions that clamoured within her, the panicked chorus of when and why and spare me, to ask the question she had come here to ask.
“What are the ravens to me?” she asked shakily.
“That which you seek,” said the Oracle with a disappointed scowl. “That which you fear.”
It was a pointless riddle of an answer. Eliza pressed on, “Are the ravens my Guide?”
“Only if you follow them,” said the Oracle.
“What are the ravens trying to tell me?”
“A warni
ng,” said the Oracle.
“What is the warning?”
“She is coming,” cawed the Oracle in the voice of a raven. “Making.” She looked confused by this and annoyed with Eliza for bringing forth so baffling an answer.
“Who is she?” asked Eliza, her heart tightening in her chest as she neared the point of it all. “Is it Nia?”
“Yes,” said the Oracle, her expression darkening. She fixed her eyes intently on Eliza, waiting for more, for this concerned her also.
“When is she coming?” asked Eliza.
The Oracle’s eyes widened with fear. She whispered, “Now.”
~~~
The Mancers stood dumbfounded in the Inner Sanctum, uncertain of what had happened. They had all felt the gap in the barriers. Now it was gone, the barriers continuing in their new and uncontrolled movement.
Kyreth spoke in a terrible voice. “Emmisariae, go now to the Great Sand Sea. Find Eliza and bring her here. The rest of you must do your utmost to strengthen the barriers around the Citadel and prepare some defense. I will consult the Scrolls.”
They all obeyed him and he went quickly to his study. Now there was much to do. Getting Eliza here was the most important thing. Why had he let her leave? He would also need to call upon the Triumvira of Tian Xia for assistance, and he would need to do it immediately. There was no time to waste.
In his study he did not sit down but said to the Scrolls, “Is the Sorceress Nia free of the barriers?”
A single gold character appeared on each of the Scrolls: Yes.
“Where is she now?” he demanded.
Here. It was written over and over again.
His heart froze. “In the Citadel?”
Yes.
“How?” It came out a shallow gasp.
Magic.
He would need to convey this to the Emmisariae without delay. They must not bring Eliza here. They must take her to Tian Xia and put her under the protection of the Triumvira. But so transfixed was he by the horror of the moment that he did not act immediately and found himself asking instead, “What does she intend?”
The Unmaking: The Last Days of Tian Di, Book Two Page 7