Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (41 page)

Nia screamed, staggering back a step or two. All the prying little hands inside Eliza vanished. Nia gave her a shocked, white-faced stare, then struck her hard across the face.

“You horrid little…” she put her hand over the bleeding gash. The wound closed up.

“
Please
listen to me!” Eliza spoke as fast as she could. “You can drain me of my power, we both know that, but it will take time too. And…”

Nia struck her again with the hand she’d touched to her wound. Her flat palm smeared blood across Eliza’s face. Eliza fell back against the wall. Nia grabbed her by the wrist with a burning grip. Unwillingly, Eliza felt her fingers loosen and she dropped the dagger. With her other hand Nia grabbed Eliza’s face and squeezed.

“Shut up, Smidgen,” she snarled. Eliza saw the lines riving Nia’s pale face, the torn and peeling skin of her lips, the web of broken blood vessels in her eyes. All this swam before her and again the cold grip within, tearing at her.

“Kyreth has Malferio,” she managed to croak.

Nia let go of her and Eliza fell to the ground, gasping for breath.

“No,” said Nia.

“There isnay time,” said Eliza. “He has Malferio and he’s been preparing the Magic to kill him.”

“He can’t,” said Nia. “He swore by the oath of the Ancients. You were there.”

“He’ll find a way,” said Eliza. “Malferio is helping him.”

Fear flickered across Nia’s face. She opened the locket around her neck and looked into it. Immediately she was restored, her hair shining, her face young and lovely, her eyes bright.

“Important to face the worst with one’s best face,” she said to Eliza, her tone more cheerful. “All right, Smidgen. You’ve got yourself a few minutes. Why are you here telling me this?”

“You drained the Book of Symbols,” said Eliza. “You have all the knowledge of the Mancer Library and I have the Gehemmis. You can use the Gehemmis to stop Kyreth. And then I have to use them…I need you to show me how to separate the worlds.”

“Honestly, Smidgen. You must be joking. You come here and offer me objects of tremendous power and what do you expect? That I’m going to spare you? Let you share the power?”

“I made a promise to the Sparkling Deluder,” said Eliza. “I said I would separate the worlds. If I dinnay do it, I’ll be taken back to the Hanging Gardens with the Gehemmis. I dinnay think even you can afford to have the Sparkling Deluder as an enemy.”

She had no idea if the Sparkling Deluder would take back the Gehemmis as well or hold Nia responsible if Eliza failed in her promise, but lying was coming more and more easily to her the more desperate she became.

Nia smiled. “You never cease to amaze and delight me, Eliza,” she said. “But I have conditions too. If I am going to help you, I want to finish what I started when you interrupted me last time. Swarn.”

“She’s dead,” said Eliza stonily.

Nia sighed. “Typical. And Kyreth is free of my Curse?”

“Nay free of it. But nay completely bound by it either. If you want to kill him, I’ll help you this time.”

Nia burst out laughing. “You
are
full of surprises! Very well, a spot of patricide in the afternoon and then we’ll see where we stand. I’m curious, though. This eagerness of yours to separate the worlds seems a little out of character and I don’t for a minute believe you’re just keeping a promise. Since when do you care so much about separating the worlds?”

“Humans would finally be safe,” said Eliza. Nia arched an eyebrow at her. “And my friends would be safe. Right now we’ve got the Thanatosi after us, and the Faeries, and the Mancers, under Kyreth. If you kill Kyreth and we separate the worlds, we can stay in Di Shang and be safe from all of them.”

“And safe from me too? Is that what you think? That I won’t demand of you the power that is mine?”

“It’s nay yours, it’s mine,” said Eliza. She took a deep breath. “But if you let me live, I’ll give it to you. No fighting. The power only. Nothing more.”

Nia gave her an appraising look.

“I have to admit that my experiment with Rea was hardly successful. I don’t particularly enjoy having all her memories clamouring about in my head, and the power…well, I’ve managed to make use of it well enough, even without taking her whole. If you’re going to offer me your power without a fight, your life and self seem a fair price. Then, as you say, you and your little friends can stay in Di Shang and lead your little human lives, and I…well, I will have all of Tian Xia, with the power of three Sorceresses and the Gehemmis.”

Eliza’s heart gave a little lurch. She thought of what Kyreth had said at the Lake of Awful Truths. Here she was, planning to leave Tian Xia at Nia’s mercy. Nia and Amarantha, both Immortal and terribly powerful, would make Tian Xia a very dangerous place indeed. But what else could she do?

“I imagine that Kyreth has some idea of what you’re up to, however,” continued Nia. “I suggest we hurry. Give me the Gehemmis.”

There was no turning back now. Eliza took off her backpack. At the same moment, Nell came racing into the Hall.

“The Thanatosi!” she cried. “They’ve found us!”

Charlie and Ferghal followed, dragging Foss.

“Faeries, too,” Charlie panted. “They’ve just come up through the clouds.”

“I must say, it surprises me that Kyreth sent the Thanatosi after you, Smidgen,” commented Nia. “That seems rather extreme, even for him. I thought he wanted an heir from you.”

Mist poured into the Hall and Eliza fixed her eyes on Charlie, holding her hands out and garbling a barrier spell. Arrows bounced off the barrier and the Thanatosi came spinning and swirling through various entranceways, surrounding Charlie. Eliza quaked with every blow from every sword against her weak barrier.

“They’re nay after her,” said Charlie from within the mist. “They’re after me.”

Nia raised her eyebrows meaningfully at Eliza. “Ah. I
see
.”

“Help us,” begged Eliza, grabbing Nia by the hand. She felt the barrier shudder and give a little. “I’m begging you. Help us, and I’ll do whatever you want.”

“You’ll do whatever I want
any
way,” said Nia with an irritated shrug, pulling her hand away. “And don’t grovel. It’s depressing.”

“We were friends once,” Charlie called out to Nia. “I was a good friend to you for a long time.”

Eliza and Nell exchanged a startled look. It struck Eliza how little she really knew of Charlie’s history and the long alliance he’d shared with Nia. She had always assumed he was bound to her by obligation and fear. To hear him describe their relationship as friendship was rather unsettling, and she could see that Nell felt the same way. The Thanatosi were slashing at the barrier ruthlessly now, feeling its weakness. It was buckling, folding.

“Please!” she cried to Nia.

Nia looked at Eliza almost pityingly for a moment and then Eliza felt the weight of the barrier lift. It ballooned out around Charlie, pushing back the Thanatosi. They continued to whirl around it, swords flashing, but it held firm against them.

“Thank you,” she gasped.

“We’ve still got Faeries coming any moment and we won’t be able to get much done with these ridiculous things performing acrobatics,” said Nia with a gleam in her eye. “The situation calls for something more extreme, I think. Lend me your power, Smidgen.”

“What for?” Eliza felt a cold fear creeping under her skin.

Nia gave her a fierce look. “Do you want my help or not?” she demanded. She took Eliza’s hand in hers. Eliza felt everything inside her suddenly surging with an intensity beyond anything she had ever felt.

“
You
two?”

The tone was one of utter disbelief. A little boy stood facing them, arms folded. Eliza recognized him. It was the curly-headed little moppet she had spoken to in the desert before defeating the Kwellrahg. The one who had told her to go back. He stuck his finger in his mouth and glowered at them.

“To
gether!”
added another voice. A pigtailed girl was perched on the stump of a broken statue in one of the grottoes above them.

“I hate her,” said the little boy irritably, pulling his finger out of his mouth and rolling his soft eyes towards Nia. “She’s so bossy.”

“She can’t boss
me
around,” the little girl sniffed. “She tries to but she can’t.” She looked down at Eliza curiously. “Aren’t you the Sparkling Deluder’s purest star?” she asked.

“I suppose I…was. Or will be,” said Eliza cautiously.

“The Sparkling Deluder is my best friend,” said the little girl happily, and her two pigtails lengthened into long slender snakes, swinging and hissing. She leaped down into the Hall.

“Oh. That’s nice,” said Eliza.

“Make it stop,” said Nia to the little girl. “Everything but us.”

Eliza stared at the Sorceress, baffled. The little girl shook her head firmly, and then she was not a girl at all but a huge black cobra, coiled right around the hall. Her dry scaled flesh heaved and her hooded head waved above them. She looked down on them through flickering eyes. Nia did not seem in the slightest perturbed. She pointed at the little boy cowering now at the far end of the hall and commanded him: “Come here.”

“I’m not helping you!” he shouted tearfully. “That’s my sister!”

Eliza felt a tearing and wrenching within. Ravens swirled around the head of the cobra.

“Stop it!” shouted Eliza, pulling her hand free of Nia’s. The ravens disappeared.

“Don't be a baby,” said Nia through clenched teeth, sweat breaking out across her brow. “I need power.”

She grabbed Eliza’s hand again and once more Eliza felt herself torn open. Her body jerked back rigid, her mouth opened wide, and ravens poured out of her throat. She heard Nell screaming as if from another world and from the corner of her eye she saw Nia’s raised arms flickering with black light. The black light spiraled out from her arms and twisted around the cobra, pulling it this way and that. The little boy was at her side, looking miserable. There was no air in the hall, only a soundless flaring struggle, which finished with a popping sound.

The little girl with pigtails lay on the floor, bleeding from her nose, her eyes full of tears. The little boy ran to her side but she pushed him away angrily.

The arrows of the Thanatosi were frozen in mid-air, as were the leaping assassins themselves. They were suspended, swords raised over their heads, their featureless faces all turned towards Charlie, who was looking up at them in alarm. The mist around them was frozen too, like a photograph of a cloud. Nell was stopped in mid-run, feet hardly touching the ground, mouth wide, making towards Eliza. Ferghal was huddled protectively over Foss’s prone form.

“Marvelous!” said Nia, her eyes shining. “Let’s look outside. Come on, Smidgen!”

Aching inside, as if she had been pulled out of her own skin and then stuffed back in, Eliza stumbled after Nia. Twenty or more myrkestras were but paces from the Hall, stopped in mid-air. There was an eerie stillness all around, no breeze, no whisper of air. Nia turned to Eliza with a look of triumph.

“That girl is the Guardian of Time,” she said. “I’ve never been able to get her to concede to anything before but it would appear that with your power added to my own and your mother’s, I’ve just enough. Which is…a
very
exciting notion. Think what I’ll be capable of!”

“What about the boy?” asked Eliza numbly.

“The Guardian of Magic. Supposed to set its limits and so on, but he’s a bit of a pushover really. Well, come on. I don’t know how long this is going to last. I’ll put a barrier around the Hall just in case, much as I dislike them. We don’t want to be interrupted.”

“Can we move the Thanatosi outside?” asked Eliza. “I dinnay like them…hanging over Charlie like that.”

“Poor Smidgen,” sighed Nia. “Yes, of course.”

The Thanatosi, limbs still unmoving, came drifting out as Nia murmured under her breath. She stood them on their heads, smirking to herself, and then raised a barrier behind them as she and Eliza re-entered the Hall.

Back inside, Nia noticed Ferghal and Foss for the first time. “You always have the oddest hangers-on,” she noted. “A Scarpathian indigent? Honestly, Eliza. And what in the worlds is wrong with the Mancer?”

“He rebelled,” said Eliza. “He stood up to Kyreth and he’s dying now. Cannay you help him?”

“Nobody can help a Mancer but the Mancers,” said Nia with a shrug. “I’m sure he knew what it would cost him. Trying to keep a Mancer alive when it’s been cut off from the others is like trying to keep a flower alive in the dark. There’s not much that can be done. Give me the Gehemmis.”

Without waiting for Eliza to hand it to her, Nia snatched the camel-hair backpack from her and took each of the Gehemmis out in turn, looking them over carefully.

“Can you read the symbols?” asked Eliza.

Nia smiled. “Of course. Thanks to the Mancer Library. You know, it’s as if this was meant to be, Smidgen. You and I, here. It’s perfect. I don’t believe in destiny but sometimes random chance offers up something so sublime that you almost want to believe it
had
to be this way.”