The Unmaking (17 page)

The dragon, with its mighty wings, was much faster than a gryphon. Still, it was dark by the time she caught sight of the command centre, a vast walled complex on a high plateau. She wished she’d had the foresight to mix up an invisibility potion while she’d been in the Citadel but it was too late now – she’d find no invisible eels to use in the wilds of Di Shang. She didn’t dare fly too close, so she instructed the dragon to land east of the command centre, in the wooded foothills. She would have to go quite a distance by foot but a dragon approaching would be too obvious and would almost certainly be viewed as an attack. They would see
her
coming, too, but might hold off firing on a girl. From the foothills, she jogged down into the valley and then half-scrambled up onto the broad plateau. Once on the plateau she could not escape being seen and the important thing was speed. She sprinted straight for the high concrete walls. She was surprised to feel, as she approached, that they were protected by enchantment. The Mancers must have done this to help protect the complex from a Tian Xia attack. This would require more effort than she had thought. She pressed her hand to the wall, knowing full well that somebody would be watching her do so. The barriers were fairly simple. She made the symbol with her hand to conjure a door and then
pushed.

She could feel the danger before she heard it and drew her dagger in a sweeping motion over her head, deflecting a hail of bullets. The wall groaned, a door opening into it. She created an empty space the size of a cupboard, stepped inside, and sealed herself in to catch her breath for a moment.

She didn’t want to just emerge on the other side, where no doubt they would be waiting for her. She would have to walk through the wall a little ways. She closed her eyes. The wall was concrete and she could separate its parts in her mind – gravel, broken stone, sand, cement (which was oxidized lime and clay), and water. She needed to separate them, but in a precise enough way that the wall didn’t just collapse on her. Her heart began to pound in her chest. She was not terribly good at separating elements and had certainly never done so while there was a risk of being crushed to death. She took a deep breath and let her Magic flow into the wall –
Undo, be pure, be what you were
– pulling element from element. For a moment, she was able to hold each part where she wanted and she felt space opening up before her – and then the fleeting thought,
Where’s the sand?
interrupted the flow. The entire structure began to crumble. Without thinking she jammed the elements back together. The wall closed on her, concrete filling her ears, fitting itself around her limbs and face, pressing tighter and tighter around her. She could not move her hands to make a door and in a moment it would crack her into slivers. With her last ounce of strength she pulled the elements around her apart again and leaped forward as the wall around her loosened. She tumbled out of the wall in a small avalanche of sand and pebbles and slimy clay and water, and was fired on immediately. She rolled aside, gasping a simple barrier spell against metal. It would do for bullets but her barriers never lasted more than a minute or two. She had barely a moment to take in where she was. There were soldiers on the wall above her and soldiers running towards her as well, fast dark shadows. She ran straight for a squat concrete building in front of her while the wall collapsed behind her. No time to find the door, she would have to make one – she made the sign and leaped through the wall of the building as it opened and shut behind her.

She landed in an empty hallway. A siren was blaring now, alerting everyone to her presence. This was not at all how she had intended to find General Malone. The best thing to do would be to hide and send a seeking spell, which would be less visible than her. There was a supply closet in the hallway, so she stepped inside it and shut the door. Ignoring the sound of heavy boots outside, she sat cross-legged and spoke the spells of Seeking. Great beings could work these spells across vast distances but as yet Eliza was only able to seek within a radius of a few hundred feet. If General Malone were not nearby, she would have to move and try again.

The military complex spent the rest of the night and the early hours of the morning in a state of high alert. Something had breached the walls. It was impervious to bullets. It had vanished. They did not know what it was, except that it looked like a girl, and they did not know what it intended. It had emerged from the main wall and disappeared for ten or fifteen minutes inside the mess hall. Then it had suddenly emerged again and run into the armory. This had everybody most anxious. A sweep by Special Forces showed there was indeed a living thing inside the ceiling, although they weren’t sure how it had gotten there. They fired a rocket straight into the ceiling and none of them heard or saw anything more for a further twenty minutes, when it was spotted again running for the Communications Tower.

General Malone’s office was under heavy guard in case this was an assassination attempt. He was at his desk now, on the phone with a commander who told him that dragons had been sighted near the border. Reports were coming in from all over. This was the greatest influx of Tian Xia beings that Di Shang had seen since the arrival of the Xia Sorceress nearly half a century ago. Worst of all, the Mancers were nowhere to be found. The normal lines of communication yielded no
response. Pilots were out looking for their Citadel but it could be anywhere in Di Shang. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Quite suddenly the carpet under his feet shifted and then bulged. General Malone muttered, “Keep me posted,” and hung up the phone. He backed away from the desk and drew his gun. The bulge in the carpet grew bigger, the carpet split, and a breathless girl with untidy hair crawled out from under his desk and looked up at him imploringly. She was wearing a dirty black robe and a dark green winter coat. He recognized her instantly.

“By the Ancients! Eliza Tok.”

“Everybody’s chasing me,” she said, seeming rather hurt. “Would you tell them to stop?”

“
You
are what the entire complex is after?
You
breached our wall?”

“I needed to see you, aye.”

General Malone went on the intercom. “Attention all personnel. The intruder has been found. The threat is eliminated. Resume your normal duties.” He looked back at Eliza. She had grown a few inches. She looked older but not so different from when he had last seen her in the Xia Sorceress’s web of Illusions.

“The outer wall will have to be rebuilt,” he said. “We’ve shot up our own armory. The whole place is in uproar.”

“I’m sorry,” she said meekly.

General Malone wasn’t sure if he wanted to scold her or laugh. He did neither.

“Perhaps
you
can shed some light on what’s going on,” he said. “Where are the Mancers?”

“The Xia Sorceress turned them all to stone,” said Eliza. She didn’t know what had happened to Kyreth but there was no point mentioning that now. General Malone stared at her in horror, speechless.

“She’s free of the barriers but she’s going to Tian Xia,” Eliza continued. “We dinnay need to worry about her here, yet.”

“Tian Xia worlders must know the Mancers are no longer defending Di Shang,” said the General. “That’s why so many are crossing over. The military...we can’t handle a full-scale Tian Xia invasion without the Mancers.”

There was a tap on the door.

“Enter,” called General Malone.

Two guards opened the door.

“Everything all right?” asked one of them, looking warily at Eliza.

“Fine. Our intruder is...an old acquaintance of mine,” said General Malone dryly. “She has a strange way of making a visit.” He looked at Eliza again. “You do know I have a telephone, don’t you?”

“I didnay know your number,” said Eliza.

The General nodded to the Guards, who exchanged a look and shut the door behind them.

“I appreciate the information about the Mancers,” said General Malone heavily. “Was that what you invaded a top military command centre to tell me?”

“No, there’s something else,” said Eliza. “There’s a creature that the Sorceress
Made
, and if you kill it, it might...hurt her, or stop her. I’m nay sure. But it’s connected to her. That’s the one you need to go for, aye. Two of the Mancer dragons are following it now.”

Eliza sat down on the floor abruptly and stopped talking. General Malone knelt at her side, touching her shoulder lightly.

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “I havenay eaten in a while. Nor slept. I came straight here.”

The General nodded. “I’ll have a bed made up. Let’s get you some food.”

He started to rise but she caught his sleeve with her hand. “First you have to send soldiers. It’s heading for the border towns around Quan, aye. Going south. It might take a lot. Rockets, or...I dinnay know. It willnay be easy to kill.”

General Malone patted her on the shoulder and helped her to her feet. “Consider it done, Eliza.”

As she followed the General out into hall she seemed to hear the Oracle’s voice again, almost hissing with pleasure.
Victory will only come at a price for you. You will cut out your own heart.
The first time they had met, she had told Eliza that she would lose all those she loved. Those words had haunted her ever since. According to the Oracle, Eliza was sure to meet a terrible end, the road ahead full of heartbreak and loss.
Yours is the lonely road,
the Oracle had said that first time. Now that Nia was free, surely that time had come, the time the Oracle was speaking of. But not everybody believed in prophecies. The Mancers believed the future to be undetermined and took prophecies more as warnings than as certain predictions. Eliza clung to this now and wished Foss were here to advise her. Now that the military was aware of Nia’s creature and could prevent it from reaching her mother, she had to find a way to break Nia’s spell on the Mancers. She couldn’t face the battle ahead without them. But first, food and sleep.

Chapter

~10~

N
ia climbed the black stone steps into Tian Xia
, leaving the lake of the Crossing behind her while the nebulous boat faded to nothing. With this moment ever before her, she had been patient for years. She had prepared everything meticulously and at last the time had come for vengeance. For truly only revenge, the laying low of all those who had hurt and betrayed her, would give her any peace now. She reached the top of the steps and looked out over the red domed temples of the Faithful. She did not need to be patient any longer.

As she approached, black-robed figures massed in the fields and filled the catwalks on the outside of the temples, pointing at her. Soon they had all disappeared inside. Praying, no doubt. As if the Ancients were listening, as if they cared what happened here in the world they had left behind. The High Priestess descended a set of stairs from the Temple of the Nameless Birth and waited, alone, for Nia. Her eyes were like empty pools beneath her beaded hood. She bowed low as Nia approached and said in the Language of First Days, “The Ancients have allowed that the Great Sorceress has returned.”

“Forsake the Ancients,” said Nia curtly, pushing past her and climbing the steps. The fatalism of the Faithful irritated her to no end. She had never been able to share their beliefs, though she had endured the trials, sworn allegiance and donned the cloth simply out of gratitude for their protection once. They had been her first friends in the worlds, though she had not stayed with them for long, and so the Oracle’s betrayal had stung all the more later on. It was the Oracle who had formed the Triumvira. It was the Oracle who had decided on banishment. She would pay for that now.

The chambers in the Temple were full of the Faithful chanting and praying. She could feel the power of their words joining and rising up. Such a waste of power. They were calling on beings too far away to hear or care. Nia passed them quickly, annoyed by their passivity. She descended the central spiral staircase and made her way swiftly along the dark, narrow passageway at the very bottom of the temple. None followed her. She stopped suddenly, shrugged off her coat, and drew from its scabbard a curved sword she had strapped to her back. She knelt on the cold floor and touched one of the flagstones lightly, whispering to it. It fell away without a sound. Nia leaped into the chamber. The Oracle stood against the wall, waiting for her.

“Somehow I knew you’d be huddled in a dark corner like a bug,” mocked Nia. “It occurred to me that you
might
have moved quickly enough to gather your little cabal but clearly you’re not as organized as I’d feared. Do you know, your people are all just babbling away up there. Not one of them tried to stop me.”

“Destiny cannot be prevented,” said the Oracle. “Though you will show me no mercy, I must tell you that I have never acted out of malice. I speak only the Truth given to me by the Ancients, Lords of us all.”

“Calling yourself unmalicious shows a shocking lack of self-knowledge,” said Nia. “And I don’t know who is whispering answers in your ear but I’d be wary of assuming the future is set in stone. You’ll never be a match for those who believe they can make the future what they will. But never mind. I’ll ask you a question and you tell me the answer. When will the Oracle of the Ancients die?”

The Oracle closed her eyes and raised her head. A single tear slid down her cheek. “I have seen it,” she said. “I am ready. You will strike my head to the ground with your sword.”