Shade and Sorceress (35 page)

It was like going through a mirror. Eliza and her father came crashing through the fireplace into an identical room, but this time there was a woman sitting with her back against the opposite wall, staring at them. She had deep hollows under her eyes and pale, sunken cheeks. Rom Tok made a slight choking sound. Eliza recognized the woman too.

It was her mother.

Eliza’s knees went weak and she sank to the floor. She watched as if in a dream as Rom Tok ran to her side and caught her up in his arms, shouting, “Rea!”

Rea struggled free of his embrace. Her face was a mask of horror. She looked from Eliza to Rom and back again, then said in a faint voice, “Who are you?”

~ Chapter 20 ~

Eliza sat numbly
on the floor and watched her father kneeling next to this woman so like the photograph of her mother that she had given away. Tears poured down his cheeks and his voice cracked as he spoke.

“Look at me, Rea! What’s happened to you? Oh, I thought you were dead all these years, I thought I’d lost you. Thought I’d
lost
you. Look, look, it’s Eliza, your daughter. We’re here, we’re all here, my Rea. Why won’t you talk to me? What’s been done to you?”

Rea sat hunched against the wall, flinching away from his touch. Her eyes were wide with terror. She looked at Eliza once or twice with the same frightened, unhappy expression. There was no flicker of recognition on her face. Like the room she’d found her father in, Eliza felt her heart turn to glass, and break, and become ice water. Her mother had only ever been half-real to her. There was no doubt this was she, but most of her, Eliza knew, had been sucked out. Nia had told Eliza that she wanted
all she was,
her power, her very self. With a rush of cold horror, she understood now that the struggle she had felt going on behind that wall had been going on for ten years. Nia had not simply killed her mother. She was absorbing her, devouring her, piece by piece. This woman on the floor had no memory of her life before. She barely had the strength to stand. There was almost nothing left of her. And
yet
...Eliza had felt the force of her resistance, how hard she clung to what little she had left.

“You’re scaring her, Da!” Eliza shouted suddenly. Rom stopped talking, letting go of his wife’s hand. Rea drew the hand to her breast and cradled it in her other hand, as if it were injured.

“She doesn’t remember us,” said Eliza, trying ferociously not to cry. Her words came out more bitterly angry than she intended. “Don’t you see? She’s got no power left, nor memories, nor anything.” She looked at Rea, who stared back at her with fearful eyes. She spoke to her in Kallanese, unsure if she knew the Sorma dialect: “Do you even know who you are?”

Something like defiance crept into her mother’s expression. Still clutching the hand Rom had tried to hold, she stuck her chin out and said, “Rea.” Then she looked down at the floor.

Rom stayed silent, and Eliza said more gently, “We’re your friends, aye. We’re here to help you.”

Rea shook her head, still looking at the floor.

“Can you stand up?” asked Eliza.

Rea shook her head again.

“Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

“Always,” whispered Rea.

Unable to hold his tongue any longer, Rom burst out, “If you’d always been here, how could you be Rea? You were powerful once, and happy. I was your husband. We have a daughter, Eliza. You must remember! You
must!”

She cringed away from him again.

“Ma,” said Eliza, but the word sounded too strange and she couldn’t continue.

She felt Nia enter the room. Rea flattened herself against the wall with a hoarse gasp of fear. Instinctively Rom and Eliza leaped to their feet and stood between the Sorceress and Rea.

“Eliza, you marvelous girl!” said Nia warmly. Eliza fought an inexplicable desire to go to her, to lose herself in Nia’s embrace. “You are much cleverer than I’d given you credit for. People are such disappointments, usually, that it’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised. And now you’ve managed a little family reunion, which is charming, really.”

With a strangled cry of fury, Rom charged at Nia. The white tiger leaped from nowhere to meet him, knocking him back and pinning him to the ground with a snarl.

“STOP!” shouted Eliza, and to her surprise, everybody did.

There was a pause, and then Nia said, “I almost feel sorry that I’m going to drain you dry, because I do think you’d make a fantastic Sorceress if you had a little more time. Your raw power would probably be about average, but you’re sharp and you’re passionate and that goes a long way. It comes down to character in the end, doesn’t it? Never mind – I’ll be a triply fantastic Sorceress, so it all balances out.”

“That’s what you’ve done to her. You’ve been doing it for years.”

Nia peered around Eliza at Rea with a little frown. “Exactly, my clever Smidgen. You know, it’s brilliant of me to have thought of it. Anyone would tell you it’s impossible, but you see we are so connected anyway, there is something in us that tries to draw us back together, and that’s what I’ve put to use. Unfortunately it’s taking much longer than I expected to strip away the deepest, most fundamental aspects of selfhood and in particular the will to live. It’s a tricky business, and she fights me so, even when there’s so little left of her that I don’t see the point. What is she trying to protect now, I wonder? She has no power left. She doesn’t even have the physical strength of a regular human being. She can’t stand, let alone walk. She doesn’t remember anything at all, except her name, as you discovered. But still she clings to life and self. I wonder if you’ll be like that, too, Smidgen. It’s a fascinating sort of experiment into the nature of self, really, isn’t it?”

“And that’s what you want me for. Nay the Book of Barriers.”

“Well, the book may prove useful too. You never know.” She looked at Rea again, and Eliza shifted to block her view.

“It’s not as if I
enjoy
hurting her,” said Nia a bit petulantly. “I’m very fond of her and it’s quite depressing to see her like this. She’s the worthiest opponent I’ve ever had. And now that I’ve got all her memories I feel even closer to her. What a hideously fussy baby
you
were, by the way. Cry cry cry all the time, very demanding, always squalling about this or that. I just can’t understand why she was so attached to you. Babies are horrid. Somebody should just go around and get rid of them all. At least the Cra are useful in that respect. Now, it’s been
quite
a day, and I’m going to have a little rest, but is there anything you’d like? Ice cream? Chocolate? You could all have some goodies and watch tv or something. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

Eliza tried to clear her head. If Nia was going to give them time they should make use of it. They might be able to plot an escape, and if they failed, it was the only time they would have left together, as a family.

“I think we could all use something to eat,” she said stiffly. “And a chess board.”

~

Nia slept on the divan with her eyes open and the tiger lay before the fire watchfully while Rom, Rea, and Eliza ate together for the first time in a decade. The Sorceress did not skimp on the meal, providing a varied and hearty buffet. Rom tried to explain things to Rea, her life before, their life together, his eyes quite wild with hope and with an old grief made new. His intensity alarmed Rea and depressed Eliza, and eventually he gave up and fell silent, cutting Rea’s food into small bite-size pieces for her and then spooning bits of soup and jelly into her mouth when it became clear she wasn’t able to stomach anything more substantial. Eliza ate as much as she could, which was not very much, and watched her parents, each of them lost in their own inner worlds. Rom lifted a cup of water to Rea’s lips and she drank. He wiped her mouth afterwards as if she was a child. When the meal was done he took her hand, and this time she let him.

When she was sure that Nia was asleep in spite of her open eyes, Eliza made another attempt to pass through the walls as Rom and Rea looked on. She shut her eyes and tried to follow her instincts but each time she walked into a perfectly solid wall. Whatever momentum she had briefly gained was gone, and Nia, even asleep, had the upper hand again. The tiger watched her with an expression she could have sworn was amusement.

She and her father spoke in hushed voices, going over what they knew about Illusion, which amounted to very little. Rea half-listened, though they were speaking in the Sorma dialect, looking back and forth between them and sometimes drifting off to sleep. When this happened, her head would sink to her chest then jerk back up and she would wake herself with a sharp little cry. Then Rom and Eliza would try to comfort her and tell her she was dreaming, and she would look at them as if
they
were the dream and whatever horrors she had just woken from far realer than them.

“If we’re going to get out of here we need to do something now, while she’s sleeping,” said Rom. “And we can’t break the Illusion while she’s alive.” He looked at Eliza fiercely. “Give me that dragon claw.”

“What?” asked Eliza, startled. “No, Da, it won’t work.”

“I’ll drive it right through her heart,” he said.

“She’s immortal,” Eliza reminded him. “You’ll just make her mad, and then she’ll probably kill you. She doesn’t have any reason to keep you around. If anyone is going to do something risky, it should be me. If she wants to...use me up, then she won’t want me dead. I mean, not right away.”

Rom gave a pained grimace. “All right, how about the pendant she’s wearing? Or that vial, looks like she’s got bottled light in there. They have to be enchanted, power sources or some such thing. Can we get them off her?”

“The pendant is something to do with her immortality,” said Eliza. “I don’t know if...” She broke off. The white tiger was circling the table, a low growl in its throat. It bared its great teeth at them. Her eyes met her father’s. “I don’t think we can get it from her,” said Eliza quietly. They fell silent and still.

“What good am I,” whispered Rom Tok again, with a shake of the head.

“We just need to stay close to each other,” said Eliza. “Keep our eyes open for a chance.”

Rom gave her a sad smile. “Brave girl,” he said.

“Come on,” Eliza grinned at him suddenly. “Let’s play chess.”

They stacked the plates and set up the chessboard Nia had conjured for them. It was a very elegant board, made of obsidian and pearl, the pieces beautifully carved. The scholars, centaurs, and castles were as usual, but Nia had made the white queen in her own likeness and the white king a tiger. The black queen was a stubby little caricature of Eliza, and the king a raven. All the pawns were cross-looking Mancers. Eliza couldn’t help laughing.

“I guess I should be black,” she said, showing her father the queen.

It felt good to lose herself in the game and she tried not to think that it was probably the last game they would play. They had each lost a scholar, a centaur, and three pawns, and Rom was on the attack, trying to trap Eliza’s queen, when the King of the Faeries stepped through the wall.

~

Nia was awake and on her feet instantly, the tiger growling, hackles raised. For a long moment the Sorceress and the King of the Faeries stood frozen like statues, their eyes locked. Nia was the first to gather her composure and speak, in the Old Language of the Faeries. Eliza flinched at the faint scurrying and swarming that started up deep in her ears and brain. Whatever the Oracle had stuffed in her ears back in the Hall of the Ancients was still at work.

“Malferio,” Nia said lightly, “I would have tidied the place if I’d known you were coming. I must say, I’m rather surprised to see you. I thought you were too much a coward to keep in touch with old friends.”

She smiled one of her wondrous, irresistible smiles, but the King of the Faeries did not seem at all tempted to smile back. He nearly flinched at the word “coward,” and his eyes wandered briefly to the growling, bristling tiger.

“I apologize for coming unannounced and uninvited,” he said with a slight bow. “Ordinarily, I would never be so bold. But these are rather extraordinary circumstances.” He cast a look so full of hatred towards Eliza that her skin prickled.

“Do tell,” said the Sorceress with a broad gesture. At once the five of them were seated in plush, comfortable chairs in a room made entirely of glass, suspended in a black starlit sky. Ringed planets and bright moons hung outside the glass walls, giant globes among the myriad stars, and galaxies swirled and flowed through the emptiness of distant space. Eliza and her father forgot to be afraid and gazed in awe around them. Even the tiger looked down through the floor curiously. The other two were less impressed. Rea curled into a ball in her chair, hiding her eyes, and the King of the Faeries twisted his lips in what was almost a sneer.

“There’s no point putting on a show for
me,
my dear,” said the King.

“I do it for myself,” said Nia, piqued. “To alleviate the boredom.”

“Naturally. Your love of yourself always outstrips whatever dim feeling you might have for any other being. I remember that quite stingingly, as a matter of fact.”