Shade and Sorceress (6 page)

Now Kyreth was speaking softly and rapidly and Eliza heard only fragments: “...until we know more...vigilance...best she does not know too much.”

“And if the girl cannot...?” somebody asked. Eliza strained for the end of the sentence but could not catch it.

Kyreth murmured some reply, the only part of which she understood being, “Tomorrow she will begin.” Then he raised his voice and said, “The sun is setting. Go. Rest.”

Eliza and Charlie sat in the ashy fireplace and looked at each other. Eliza’s heart was thumping painfully.

“I’ve got homework, aye,” said Charlie, abruptly getting up and brushing his pants off. “See you tomorrow.”

“Homework?” exclaimed Eliza. “Is it nay your summer holiday?”

“We get piles of homework for the summer,” he said with a roll of his eyes that she hoped was intended for his teachers and not for her. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and sauntered off, whistling. Eliza sat in the fireplace, alone with her turbulent thoughts, until Missus Ash happened upon her.

“That’s no place to sit about. Lah, you’re filthy! You’ll have to wash up before supper.”

Missus Ash was terribly excited by the day’s events. She put Eliza’s chicken stew in front of her, saying, “I will say, lass, you’ve brought a good deal of excitement with you. Almost all day they spent in the Inner Sanctum! An
intruder,
we’ve got! We’ll have to keep an eye out. But no need for you to fret. The Mancers will protect you. Powerful, powerful beings they are, aye. What I can nay fathom is how an intruder got
in
here, with all the mystical barriers they’ve got. They must be puzzling that out themselves.”

“They said it came with me.”

“Oh, did it, aye? Little invisible something hanging on to you? Is that what they think?”

“I dinnay know what they think.”

“Lah, dinnay worry, little mite, they’ll sort it all out in no time. No one can get at you with that trinket you’re wearing, aye.”

Eliza found this small comfort. Missus Ash took her back to her room after supper, where she changed into the nightgown she’d left on the floor and lay down on the huge bed. A profound loneliness gripped her and she curled into a ball.

Eliza was no stranger to change and upheaval. She had been only seven years old when she’d had to walk an hour down the mountainside in the snow and the freezing wind to the little school in the Karbek mountains. The mentor there, a man with chapped red hands and watery eyes, had introduced her to the six other students, whom she saw only as a group of pinched, unwashed faces staring at her with undisguised hostility. She remembered how she had felt sitting down at her desk that first day, shivering and miserable in her boots and coat. It had seemed impossible, intolerable that this would be her life from now on. And yet within a few weeks that long walk to and from school was simply habit, and if she was lonely at school, that too was nothing out of the ordinary. She got used to everything in the end, simply waiting out the worst until she and her father moved on.

But this was stranger and more frightening than the Karbek mountains, the scowling men with guns at their hips in Huir-Kosta, or the bandit raids in Quan, and she was entirely alone, without her father to comfort and take care of her. She longed for his broad, cool hand on her forehead, his wry grin and laughing eyes. She wanted to be in Holburg, in her own bed, listening to the wind in the trees, straining for the sound of the surf. A sob swelled in her chest. Before she released it she heard a little scuffling sound and a soft mew. She looked up to see a lanky grey cat at the foot of the bed looking at her with bright, inquisitive eyes.

“Hi, you,” said Eliza, reaching out a hand. The cat approached, sniffed her fingers once or twice, then rubbed its face up against her hand. A purr rose from its throat. Eliza lifted the cat onto her stomach and lay back against the pillows, her tears unshed. In fact, she was terribly tired. With the warm body of the cat against hers, its deep purr soothing her, she fell quickly and soundly asleep.

~ Chapter 4 ~

When Eliza woke
to her second day in the Mancer Citadel Missus Ash was already in her room drawing the curtains.

“Good morning, chicken,” she chimed. “I’ve got a hot breakfast ready for you in the kitchen.”

Eliza sat up. She could feel the warm spot next to her where the cat must have been just moments before and looked around the room for it. Missus Ash chuckled.

“Looking for Smoky? He ran out just as I came in.”

“Is he your cat?”

“He is, aye,” said Missus Ash. “You dinnay mind him, do ye?”

Eliza shook her head. “I like cats.”

“Lah, that’s fine then. He took to you quick enough, to spend the night in your bed. I’ve never seen the like with that cat.”

“My father’s Sorma,” said Eliza. “Animals always like me.”

“That explains it!” said Missus Ash with a smile. “Lah, do you wear that thing to bed, too?”

Eliza remembered the heavy pendant around her neck. “They said to nary take it off,” she said.

“Very wise, no doubt,” agreed Missus Ash. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast in ye.”

In the kitchen, Eliza devoured a hot bowl of porridge with brown sugar and golden syrup and then asked Missus Ash for the second time, “How did you end up working here?”

“That’s a story too long for this morning,” said Missus Ash with an odd smile. Eliza was disappointed but couldn’t think of any way to press her for more without being rude.

“So Charlie has been coming here during the holidays since he was a little boy?” she asked.

“Aye, that’s right, chicken.”

“Where is he now?”

“Up to no good, I spec. But you’ll nay be joining him in
that
this morning, Miss Eliza Tok.
You
are to report to the Spellmaster in the Library.”

“What for?” asked Eliza, alarmed.

Missus Ash gave her a twinkling little smile. “Your lessons, o’ course.”

~

Missus Ash took Eliza to the top floor of the north wing. They had to take a great many breaks on the way up and Missus Ash was panting for breath by the end.

“No reason they cannay install an elevator,” she muttered, walking Eliza down the length of an empty hallway. “Now, where is it, where is it?” She paused and knocked on the wall. A door appeared a bit further down and opened. A Mancer with a silvery hue to his skin stepped out and greeted them. His eyes had a softer light than the other Mancers she had met, like the sun just beginning to set, and so it was easier to look at his face. His voice, however, had the same powerful resonance as Supreme Mancer Kyreth’s.

“Welcome, Eliza Tok! I am the Spellmaster, Foss.”

He bowed respectfully to her. She had no idea how to respond, if she was supposed to bow in return, or maybe curtsy. Paralyzed by her uncertainty, she just stood and gaped at him awkwardly.

“Lah, I’ll leave ye to it,” said Missus Ash abruptly, and she turned and walked away. Eliza looked after her desperately.

“This way, Eliza Tok, this way.”

Foss gestured her through the door. Eliza stopped just inside the doorway and stared up, lips parting in amazement. The whole Citadel was on a larger-than-human scale, but the Library went beyond that. This was like entering a vast cavern, marble bookcases towering up, cliff-like, towards the ceiling. Bamboo ladders tall as trees, taller, stood against the bookcases, and woven bridges were slung between them. She tried to imagine Mancers climbing up to those dizzying heights to fetch their books. Some light filtered in through long windows far at the back of the hall, but mostly the library was lit by amber orbs hanging haphazardly from the shelves. Staring straight up, she thought she saw little dark shapes flitting about near the ceiling – bats, she guessed.

“This is the Old Library, as we call it,” Foss told her conversationally, guiding her in among the soaring bookshelves. “The New Library consists of the Commentaries and extends seven stories below us, though the rooms are rather smaller than this one of course. But these books,” he swept his hand in an arc, “are the Early Texts. Look.”

He said something that Eliza couldn’t understand, and as he spoke the light slipped out of one of the amber orbs, leaving it dull, and went twirling upwards. Foss climbed after it, up one of the ladders, and then with startling agility he stepped off the ladder onto the edge of one of the shelves, holding on to a shelf above with one hand, and edged along it as if along a rock face to where the amber light danced. He pulled a book off the shelf there, tucked it under his free arm, and made his way swiftly back to the ladder and down. The amber light hung in the air a moment then went diving back to the orb and crawled back in, illuminating it once more. Foss returned to Eliza and opened the book to show her. The paper was brown with age, and neat ink characters ran across the pages like little insects. The Language of First Days, as Charlie had called it.

“It looks old,” said Eliza shyly. She reached to touch it but Foss cried, “Ah ah ah!” and closed the book. Back up the ladder he went to return it. There was something so odd about this tall and terrible being climbing around like a monkey that Eliza wanted to laugh and had to bite her lip.

“That was Volume Ten of the Book of the Ancients, Eliza Tok!” he said, back at her side. “Written by the Great Mancer Simathien! You have studied him, of course.”

Eliza nodded vaguely. She had no idea what he was talking about.

“You will have your lessons here, Eliza, among the oldest and finest books in the worlds. I hope the presence of these great texts will serve as an inspiration for you.”

Foss led her to a table between two precipitous bookcases, as if deep in a ravine. Eliza thought the setting was more likely to distract than inspire – she couldn’t help fearing that an avalanche of books might come pouring down upon them at any moment. Foss gestured for Eliza to sit down. Eliza noticed, now that he was facing her again, that on his robe he had the black crab identifying the manipulators of water.

“It is wonderful to have you here at last,” he enthused warmly, sitting down across from her. “We have been
looking
for you for quite some time! It was not easy to unravel the spell your mother cast to hide you. It was really very cleverly done, a kind of adapted complex barrier as far as we can tell. Do you know, I’ve taught eight generations of Sorceresses and never had such a quick student as your mother. She took to Magic like it was natural as breathing to her. Well, well, well. You don’t look much like her, do you?” He paused, as if waiting for her to respond in some way, but Eliza didn’t know what to say and so she said nothing. He plunged on cheerfully: “Tell me, Eliza Tok, what do you know about Magic?”

“Nothing,” replied Eliza. There was something gentle about this Mancer, and she felt her fear of him falling away. So she explained: “I’m nay a Sorceress like my ma was. I cannay do anything.”

“We shall see,” said Foss with a merry wink, as if she might be joking. “Now, I assume you have gone to school?”

“Yes,” said Eliza.

“And so you have learned about the twelve branches of Magic.”

“No!” Eliza gave a little snort of laughter that she instantly regretted, for Foss looked deeply offended. “They dinnay teach that kind of thing at school,” she explained.

“Why in the worlds not?” he demanded.

“Lah...humans cannay
do
Magic,” she said.

“Irrelevant!” cried Foss. “Do they neglect to teach you about the photosynthesis of plants because humans themselves cannot photosynthesize? I am shocked. I will speak to the Emissariae. This should be raised with the Ministers of Education. You do study
Nature,
I presume?”

“Natural Science,” said Eliza.

“Precisely! How can you come to a full understanding of Nature without also understanding Magic? Or, indeed, vice versa?”

“But they’re opposite, nay?” said Eliza.

Foss banged the table with his fist, making her jump.

“They are
not
opposites, Eliza Tok, they are
not.
Each is intrinsic to the other; each
contains
the other and cannot function without it! Like all dyads, they exist in balance.” He sighed heavily. “We will really have to begin from the beginning. Do not be discouraged, Eliza Tok, do
not
be discouraged. It is true that you are twelve years old and may be too old to learn, even if you have the innate abilities we hope. But do
not
be discouraged. We are beginning from the beginning.” He folded his hands and looked up. At first he spoke very slowly and patiently, but he quickly became so excited by his topic that he sped up, and then his hands unlocked involuntarily and he began to gesture wildly as he talked. His eyes grew brighter and brighter.

“Magic is a creative force, Eliza, and not
well
understood even by we who have studied it for millennia. One might say it is the
essence
of the Ancients, who Made Tian Di, the One World. The Magic of Making is in everything and different beings are connected to it in different ways. Mancers manipulate elements to extract their Magical properties. We turn nature into Magic, you might say. A Sorceress like yourself, Eliza, is deeply and
directly
connected to the Magic of Making and can use it to marvelous effect. Do you know the difference between Great Magic and Lesser Magic?”