The Unmaking (9 page)

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 be 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~

A
fter 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.”

“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.