The Unmaking (12 page)

Nia laughed again. “I couldn’t stop thinking how clever you’d been. Just a little girl really, not even able to use your Magic, and yet you escaped from
me
. And look at you now, so much stronger and more confident! Oh, I know better than to underestimate you, Smidgen, I’ve learned my lesson. It’s left me with a difficult decision to make. I could come for you first and take your power the way I always intended, but then my enemies would have time to get ready for me and I do prefer to keep the element of surprise on my side. So I settled on the second option – crushing them all as quickly as possible and then coming back for you when I’m done. But starting with revenge meant that I had to come up with something to keep
you
entertained and out of the way in the meantime. You see, I’ve been
terribly
busy since we last saw each other! So many things to prepare and the timing had to be perfect.”

Eliza drew her dagger and waited. She didn’t trust her own voice, she didn’t trust what words might come out of her now. She was feeling that familiar, awful, irresistible tug, the helpless desire to be embraced by Nia, to do as she said, to be as she wished. It took all her strength not to drop the dagger and run to fall at her feet.

“I intend to be merciful towards two of my enemies,” continued Nia, “and give them quick deaths. For the other two, I have something more elaborate in mind, something along the lines of eternal torment. Nothing so easy as oblivion. And then
you,
my lovely Eliza, will live on in me always! It’s going to be very jolly. I should be getting on with it but I got a bit sidetracked here. The Library of the Mancers! I know the place will be crawling with every kind of horrible fiend once the word is out, so I thought I should get what I can while this place still exists. Watch this!” She tossed the book she’d been holding over her shoulder and it landed with a
thunk
. She picked up another book, opened it wide so Eliza could see, and ran her fingers across the pages. The pages flew aside rapidly and as her fingers passed over them the ancient ink disappeared, leaving them blank. Foss had taught Eliza such a deep reverence for the books here that to see them drained in this way was like a knife to the heart.

“You cannay,” she gasped, relieved for a moment that Foss couldn’t see what was happening in his cherished Library.

“For
millennia
the Mancer Library has been revered in both worlds as the greatest Library ever to have existed,” said Nia cheerfully. “Even the Faeries coveted it! And now...most of it is
here
.” She touched her temple with her fingers and tossed the empty book with the others. “Smidgen, are you all right? You don’t look very well.”

Eliza was not feeling very well either. She steadied herself with a hand on the half-hunter’s shaggy arm. The destruction happening here, the erasing of thousands of years of lore and history, was unthinkable.

“Are you frightened?” asked Nia sympathetically. “Fear is so unpleasant, isn’t it? I believe it’s the worst sensation there is and it’s best to banish it altogether. If you fear nothing, you’re truly free. As long as you’re afraid, everything
requires
courage,
and courage is an exhausting thing to maintain.”

Eliza gripped her dagger tighter with her right hand.

“Get on with it, aye,” she said. “Whatever you’re going to try to do to me, stop talking and just do it.”

Nia laughed aloud at that. “Quite the teenage attitude you’ve developed,” she said incredulously. “Well, Smidgen, if you’re so impatient, I won’t bore you any longer. I c
ould
just turn you to stone like the Mancers or shut you up in a barrier while I take care of my other business, but I have far too much respect for you to do anything so prosaic. Instead, I’ve spent a great deal of time and energy making something very special just for you, something to challenge that sharp little brain of yours. Would you like to see it?”

“Show me,” said Eliza.

Nia tipped her head back and opened her mouth wide. Suddenly it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. A dark shape was crawling out of Nia’s mouth. It grew larger as it emerged, expanding and stretching, massive limbs reaching for the ground. It kept coming from somewhere inside her, a mass of darkness and flame, until it landed on smoking hooves, towering over Eliza. She took in curling horns, a myriad of spiked arms, the powerful thighs and hooves of a horse. Charred flesh flamed and smouldered around a colossal skeleton broken in too many places to count. Its eye-sockets burned in a face like molten rock and its immense wings were black and veined with fire. The hideous thing let out a roar that left cracks in the walls and showcased the bright white of its ribcage between the broken, burnt flesh. Then it lunged at Eliza. A part of Eliza that was faster than sight or sound spoke a barrier spell. It was a feeble barrier and the spiked fists scraped along it and tore it open but it gave Eliza just enough time to dodge its grasp and drive her dagger into its side. Lava poured out over her dagger. Before she could cry out for Charlie to stop, the half-hunter drove both his swords into the beast and made for its throat with his teeth. He emitted a strangled airless howl as lava poured down his face and the thing drove its razor- sharp spikes into his chest. The half-hunter crashed to the ground while Nia applauded from her vantage point on the pile of books. Eliza pulled her dagger out of the beast’s side, stumbling back, lungs bursting. The monstrous thing left its two foes on the floor and bounded to a tall window at the back of the Library, crashing through it and taking flight, black wings beating hard and trailing sparks behind him. Once he was gone, Eliza found herself able to take a breath. It was like emerging from the sea after diving too deep. She couldn’t gulp the air back fast enough.

“Isn’t he
horrible!”
exclaimed Nia, delighted. “I don’t like to brag, but I am
brilliant
, aren’t I? Do you know where he’s going now, Smidgen?”

And Eliza knew, with a heart-plunging-into-the-stomach kind of knowing, that everything was about to get even worse.

“He’ll stop in a few towns on the way and smash everyone in sight to bits,” said Nia cheerfully, “just to cause a bit of a sensation. I want people to know I’m back, you see, and this is the sort of thing they expect from me. But those destructive little jaunts will just be detours. He’s going to the desert, to find your lovely mother. He’s drawn to her, like a magnet to metal, and his one desire in this world is to tear her limb from limb.”

Eliza felt a pounding behind her temples. Nia was watching her with a curious little smile. She crawled across the floor to where the wounded half-hunter lay panting in weak gasps.

“Are you badly hurt?” she asked.

He struggled back into human form, and Eliza saw the nature of the wound on his chest. He was not bleeding in the ordinary way. He was leaking a sort of shimmering interplay of dark and light, his true form.

“Oh, Charlie,” she whispered, her heart contracting painfully.

Nia rolled her eyes and, bored now her creature was gone, picked up another book.

“I’ll be all right,” Charlie managed to say.

Eliza nodded. There was no time to waste. She had to go after the thing, but it was obvious Charlie was too badly hurt to carry her or engage in any kind of further battle. She took the potion Swarn had given her out of her pocket.

“Drink this,” she said, putting it to his lips.

“You might need it,” he said faintly, turning his head aside. “It’s really nay...that bad, Eliza.”

“Stop it.” She forced the mouthpiece between his lips and poured the thick mixture into his throat. He coughed and sputtered, but swallowed most of it.

“Disgusting,” he gasped when it was done. “Like kissing a giant.”

“Now you’ve got to get out of here,” she said urgently. “Go, Charlie. Please.”

“I willnay...” he began, and rolled onto his side.

“She’s nay going to hurt me right now,” said Eliza. “I’ll get one of the dragons, aye. But you have to go first. Please.”

“Dinnay go after it on your own, Eliza,” said Charlie weakly, getting to his knees. “Get help. Get Swarn.”

“Yes. And you fly clear, hide somewhere.” Her voice cracked with desperation.

“Poor Smidgen,” commented Nia. “Everything always seems so complicated for you. Too many attachments, that’s your real problem. It makes you such an easy target.”

Charlie began to change again as the shadow and light leaked from him. Wings strained from his back and his face lengthened into a great beak as he became a gryphon again. He limped across the battlefield of scattered books for the broken window, then looked back at Eliza over his shoulder. Nia was busy emptying another book and ignored them. She tossed it aside.
Thunk.

Eliza gave a last look at Foss, frozen at the side of the room with his arms up in defense, and a powerful surge of anger pulsed through her, banishing all else.

“I’m going to kill that thing,” she told Nia. “And then I’ll come back for you.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t
kill
it, if I were you,” said Nia breezily, picking up another book. Eliza lingered by the hole in the wall long enough to see Charlie take to the air, then turned and ran.

“Good luck, Smidgen!” Nia called after her.

Chapter

~7~

S
he took the stairs three at a time
and burst out into the grounds. If she was right and the Emmisariae had already left, perhaps to seek her out in the desert, there might not be a dragon for her to escape on, but with the help of Swarn’s potion Charlie would at least be able to fly to safety. She held the crystal around her neck in her fist and muttered as she ran, “Kyreth, help me, help me, help me!” Light poured out of it between her fingers. It became so hot she had to let go of it. It slowly dimmed and cooled again. There was no sign that her call had been heard.

She knew the dragons were kept in caverns beneath the Inner Sanctum and so she entered it a second time. There were several chambers branching off from the main hall, many of which were the private chambers of the manipulators of earth. Above one narrow doorway the characters were carved into the marble:
Hall of the Dragon
. Eliza entered the room. It was bare and plain but for a single pentagonal flagstone on the floor, which bore a mosaic dragon. Eliza knelt before it and tried to think what to do. She knew a few simple opening spells, but she doubted they would be much good in a place as deeply enchanted as the Mancer Citadel. She tried muttering them anyway. As she had expected, the dragon flagstone did not budge. She laid her hands on it and tried to use force but that was equally useless. A sense of her own powerlessness began to creep over her. She shook it away. Now was not the time to lose confidence. She knew another way into the caverns. She had gotten lost in the dungeons with Nell a long time ago. They had smelled the dragons down there.

Eliza ran across the grounds back to the north wing, wondering if Nia was watching her. As soon as she entered the dungeons she was assailed by the abominable stench of the Cra. She could hear their sickening hissing and lip-smacking. They were still held by the Mancers’ barriers but they knew something was happening. She was glad of the darkness, glad to be spared the sight of them at least. Keeping one hand to the cold wall she ran through the maze of corridors, trying to remember her way. She was too frantic to manage a seeking spell or a light and had been going in circles for a while before she felt a gust of cool air and realized one of the larger caverns must be nearby. Once she found it, it was easy – a straight run back towards the Inner Sanctum underground. Halfway there the cavern forked in two and she went to the left, slowing down at the smell of sulfur.

Eliza tightened her grip on the hilt of her dagger. She knew very little about dragons, in fact. She knew they were highly intelligent and deadly. She knew they were impervious to most kinds of simple Magic. She knew they lived a very long time and were not easily mastered. The Mancer dragons were not as vicious as the wild dragons of the cliffs of Batt that obeyed Swarn but their loyalty was to the Mancers and she did not know how they would react to her. The dragon claw that served her as a dagger should, according to Swarn, enable her to command dragons, but she had never put this to the test.

She could feel their hot breath and hear the scraping of their metallic scales as they moved in the darkness. The sulfur of their breath stung her nostrils. She did not know the language of dragons, so she spoke in the Language of First Days and hoped they understood.

“Great beings,” she began nervously, “I am the ward of the Mancers. I have –” and then she bumped up against something hard and screamed, leaping back. It was as if she’d run into the wall, but it wasn’t a wall. She reached out and touched it. It was stone, a tall figure; she felt an arm, a hand. Her heart sank. She moved about the cavern slowly, feeling for more statues, and she found them. Five. The Emmisariae. They must have been planning to go the desert to find her when Nia froze them thus. But where was the Supreme Mancer? Had he heard her plea for help?

“Great Dragon,” she said again in a high, thin voice. She could feel one of the massive beasts very nearby. “If you are willing to take me where I need to go, come with me to the Door.”