The Unmaking (11 page)

Around her neck she wore the shard of crystal Kyreth had given her long ago. He had told her she could use it to summon the Mancers if ever she needed them. For all her battles with Kyreth, now, when her greatest fear was materializing, she wished desperately that he were here. Nothing terrible could happen if only the powerful Supreme Mancer were watching over her. Why had she left the safety of the Citadel? She closed her fist over the crystal around her neck and squeezed it, begging, “Help me,
please
.” The crystal gave a sudden, dramatic flash. Light poured out between her fingers but the light struck the walls and bounced back without penetrating them.

“You
have
to let me go,” said Eliza again, more feebly. It was no good. She sank to the earthen floor and buried her face in her hands. The Oracle’s voice hissing that she would cut her own heart out came back to her. She choked back a sob and leaped to her feet again. She would
not
wait in this hole for Nia to come.

In this way the night passed, and much of the following day. She swung between despair and grim determination. The air was getting thicker and her head was pounding from hunger and thirst. As long as the Oracle remained, nobody would bring her food or water. At this rate, she might be dead before Nia even arrived. She thought she was dreaming when a sudden groaning and straining sounded from overhead. The Oracle stared furiously at the hinged flagstone, which trembled as if some great force were trying to shift it. Then the flagstone dropped away and the Oracle leaped to her feet, spitting. Eliza backed against the far wall with the Oracle, assuming it was Nia come for them, but instead Swarn’s face appeared above.

“Pardon my intrusion, O Oracle of the Ancients,” she said in a rather perfunctory tone. Eliza was so flooded with relief she could have wept.

“Insolence,” hissed the Oracle.

“Eliza must come with me,” said Swarn. “I have received a message.”

“We are doomed,” the Oracle replied in a dead voice, not budging. But Eliza leaped for the arm Swarn extended her and Swarn pulled her up and out of the pit. She drank back the fresh air outside it, the fog in her brain clearing as if in a sudden breeze.

“It’s about Nia, nay?” said Eliza, her heart hammering in her chest. Swarn gave her a sharp look.

“What about Nia?”

“She’s coming,” said Eliza. “She’s free of the barriers.”

“I did not know,” said Swarn quietly. “A messenger bird from the Citadel came to me with two words only – Eliza Return. It was sent in great haste by your Spellmaster.”

“So Foss
did
know where I was all along,” said Eliza. “And they must know about Nia already, aye.” Her panic was beginning to subside. This time, she would not have to face Nia alone. She had the Mancers and Swarn on her side.

“Yes. You will be safer with them than with me, I expect. Your friend the Shade is waiting outside. Come.”

The daylight was so bright after her days in the Chamber of the Oracle that her eyes watered. Rhianu was waiting with Charlie and Swarn’s dragon in the shadow of the Temple. She handed Eliza her dagger and Eliza took it gratefully.

“It’s Nia,” Eliza told Charlie immediately. “She’s free.”

His face tightened slightly but all he said was, “You look thirsty, aye.” He gave her a flask and she drank it dry before turning to Rhianu.

“Your hospitality...” she began, but she was too agitated to think of the right words. “I’m sorry to leave this way,” she said. “Thank you.”

Rhianu bowed and said, “Your Destiny awaits you.”

Eliza did not find this particularly comforting, given what the Oracle had told her of her destiny, but again she said, “Thank you.”

“This is for you,” said Swarn gruffly, untying a long, bright spear from her dragon’s spikes. “It is deeply enchanted. When the time comes to use it, aim for the heart.” She strapped it expertly to Eliza’s back. Eliza could feel its power against her spine. Then Swarn pressed a small leather gourd into her hand. “A potion, also. Should you need it, it will give you some extra hours of strength when all your strength has been sapped.”

Eliza put it in the pocket of her robe gratefully. Such a potion was very potent indeed and she happened to know it required the mucus of a giant, no easy thing to come by.

“I wish I could have stayed longer,” said Eliza. “What will you
do?”

“Warn the Faeries,” said Swarn. “When you arrive, Eliza, tell Kyreth we await his call and are ready to join the Mancers in Di Shang if need be.”

“I’ll tell him,” promised Eliza.

“May the Ancients keep you safe and guard you always,” shouted Rhianu as they took off, heading for the black cliffs around the lake of the Crossing, where Swarn commanded the Boatman to take them home.

~~~

They disembarked on the silvery beach and headed in among the trees. No reply came to Eliza’s request for entry and no barrier stopped them as they passed through the dark wood into the grounds of the Citadel. She had a sudden, panicky urge to flee with Charlie to the desert and her father. But that was foolish. She was safer with the Mancers. Perhaps in her exhaustion she had simply not felt the usual acknowledgement of her arrival, or the barriers may have been down in expectation of her.

“Something feels different, aye,” said Charlie. “I dinnay like it.”

“You dinnay need to stay,” said Eliza.

“Lah, I’m not leaving you here alone,” he said grumpily.

When Eliza’s eyes fell on the Inner Sanctum she gave a cry of surprise, for its usually gleaming white dome was black and spiked. It was a moment before she realized it was covered with silent ravens. She and Charlie exchanged a horrified look and approached it together. Eliza had never been inside but the ravens covering it looked at her hard as if
willing
her to go in. Whether that meant she should or should not enter she couldn’t say but curiosity won over prudence. She drew her dagger.

“We’re nay supposed to go in there,” Charlie said, but Eliza ignored him. There was no door barring the way, just an arched opening tall enough for a Mancer leading down a gleaming marble corridor. She followed the corridor all the way to the main hall, where the Mancers worked their Magic, and there she stopped. Horror pooled live and cold through her veins.

The Mancers stood in formation, more than two hundred of them. Their arms were raised, their eyes looking up towards the domed ceiling. But they were made of stone. All of them. Eliza ran from one group to the next. Here were the manipulators of wood and water and fire and earth and metal, frozen into statues. The manipulators of earth formed a pentagon around an empty centre. This was where Kyreth and the Emmisariae ought to be, Eliza assumed, but they were missing. She noted with a mixture of relief and trepidation that Foss was not among the manipulators of water.

“Forsake the Ancients!” Charlie whispered, entering behind her. “What happened?”

“She’s
here
,” said Eliza. Her voice sounded odd to her, like somebody else’s voice. “She must have taken them by surprise, aye. They had no time to...act.”

“We’ve got to leave,” said Charlie urgently. “Come on, Eliza. We have to go straight back to Tian Xia, find Swarn.”

Eliza’s mind was as frozen as the Mancers around her. She could not force it into action.

“Eliza!” shouted Charlie, grabbing her shoulder and shaking her. “You need to get
out
of here! Let’s go! Now!”

Eliza pulled away from him. “I need to find Foss. We’ll look in the Library.”

“Have you lost your
mind
?”

“Lah, she might not be here anymore. But if she is, she already knows we’re here and it’s too late. I need to know if Foss is all right.”

“We could still escape,” insisted Charlie.

Eliza shook her head. “Too late. You know that.”

She swung Swarn’s spear from her back. It comforted her to have something flowing with such power in her hand. Charlie became a half-hunter, a ferocious, thick-skinned beast, part-lizard, part-hound, that walked on two legs and bore weapons. Although she knew an enchanted spear and a half-hunter would be no match for Nia, Eliza was glad to have the hulking creature at her side. They left the stone Mancers and the raven-shrouded dome behind them and headed across the grounds back towards the north wing. The usual birdsong in the grounds was silent. There was no sound at all, in fact, until they approached the Old Library and heard a hollow sort of
thunk
. They both froze, but there was no further sound. The half-hunter sniffed the air, then nodded his great head at Eliza, baring teeth as long as daggers. Cautious and alert, they continued a little further. A human-sized hole had been smashed through the thick marble wall. They stepped through it into the Library.

The Library looked as if a giant had been rampaging through it. A great number of the vast, marble bookshelves had been pushed aside, some of them collapsed against the next stacks like toppled mountains. In the space created at the centre of the Library there was a large pile of books. On top of this pile stood Nia, wearing a red dress and a white fox-fur coat. Her hair was loose, spilling in red-gold curls over her shoulders and down her back, and she wore a jaunty white fur cap. She had a book open in her hand and was running her fingers along page after page very rapidly. The pages fluttered aside under her touch. She seemed to be concentrating deeply and didn’t notice them for a moment. Eliza saw Foss frozen against the wall, stone arms raised before his stone face as if fending off a blow, and her heart broke.

Without thinking what she was doing, she found the spear was flying from her hand straight for Nia’s heart. Nia’s head shot up. She reached out and caught the spear with one hand, stumbling back on her pile of books as she did so. There was a groaning moment while Nia clutched the spear, straining against its Magic without dropping the book in her other hand, and then it snapped in two and Eliza felt the Magic crumble.

“Why is it that whenever I see you, you’re terribly angry with me and in desperate need of a bath?” asked Nia, tossing aside the broken spear. “As a personal favour to me, next time you come for a confrontation,
please
have a shower first. Honestly, what have you been doing?”

“Speaking to the Oracle,” said Eliza grimly. Nia had not changed at all from Eliza’s memory of her. She was still utterly bewitching. There was no point running away from her now, so Eliza stood her ground.

“Fascinating, I’ve no doubt,” said Nia, arching an eyebrow at her. “I suppose that explains your outfit. And you’re still hanging about with the Shade – sweet. You know you can’t trust those things, though, don’t you?”

Eliza said nothing. A low growl rumbled deep in the half-hunter’s massive chest and he drew two short swords from his leather harness.

Nia laughed and looked Eliza up and down appreciatively. “Look how tall you’ve become, Smidgen! And your hair...well, your hair is still a fright but it’s lovely to see you anyway. I assume that since you greeted me with a less-than-friendly spear throw, you aren’t here to help me take my revenge.”

“Why are you taking revenge on
Foss
?” cried Eliza. She couldn’t bear to look again at her teacher made stone.

“Oh yes, have you seen the others too?” asked Nia. “I know it’s hard to tell the difference, but if you look at them
very
carefully, you’ll notice that they’re ever so slightly slower than usual.”

Tears spilled unexpectedly from Eliza’s eyes. Nia’s face fell.

“Go on, that was
funny
. You don’t feel
sorry
for them, do you, Smidgen? Look, these beings have kept me locked away in the Arctic for more than twelve years. Why should I take pity on them now?”

Eliza wiped her tears away angrily. “They had no choice,” she said. “They had to protect people.” It was absurd, really, trying to rationalize things to Nia.

Nia tilted her head on one side and smiled warmly. “One of these days, Smidgen, I’m going to have to enlighten you about your friends the Mancers. But that’s not what I want to talk about with you right now. Something has been baffling me ever since you snuck off the last time and I’ve just got to know – how in the worlds did you lay your hands on
Faery blood?
I’ve been
dying
of curiosity for more than
two years
now!”

It had not occurred to Eliza that, of course, Nia didn’t know she had stabbed the King of the Faeries and so her escape must have remained a mystery. Sealing her inner thoughts away tightly, she said, “The Mancers and the Faeries are allies. They help each other.”

Nia shook her shining curls and laughed scornfully. “Eliza, please! Don’t insult me by suggesting that Faeries are giving their
blood
to the
Mancers!
They only tolerate each other at all because they’re all terrified of
me
. No, Smidgen, the Mancers don’t have a secret stock of Faery blood. And yet
you
had some. I haven’t been able to figure it out.”

“Lah, let me know when you do,” said Eliza, struggling to keep her voice steady and calm.