Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (12 page)

“The thing is,” said Eliza, “I’ve been out this door before, aye. And I’m nay sure…”

“Quickly, Eliza,” said Foss. Mancer voices echoed somewhere in the caverns, not far. She sent back a cloud of ravens to obstruct them and set to work on the door. She could feel the deep fury of the Citadel as she cut through the enchanted iron. She would not be welcomed back a second time. This was the end of any pretense of goodwill she could claim between herself and the Mancers.

Once she had cut out a space wide enough to fit through, she and Foss looked out. The door opened onto a cliff.

“Oh!” said Foss, dismayed.

“We’ve got to climb,” said Eliza.

~~~

Eliza had spent much of her childhood scrambling up and down trees and rock faces and the like and was, by any standard, a proficient climber. Even she was daunted, however, by this long ragged drop to the canyon floor below. Thinking about it would only make it worse, she knew that much, and so she lowered herself out of the doorway and scrabbled about with her unhurt foot for a foothold. Fortunately the cliff was covered with bumps and crags and roots. The soles of her boots were worn smooth and so she kicked them off, letting them fall. Her bare feet would give her a better grip.

It was several seconds before she heard the soft thud of her boots landing far below and this shook her confidence somewhat. She clung to a little ledge of rock with one foot, letting the hurt foot rest against the rock face. Still hanging on to the bottom of the doorframe with one hand, she reached down and found a root with her other hand. She held it fast and let go of the door frame. She pulled her center of gravity in, towards the rock, then drew her dagger and drove it into the cliff.

“Give me your foot,” she hissed to Foss. She reached up and felt his large foot against her hand. To her surprise, it was bare and soft. The Mancer robes brushed the ground and it had never even occurred to her to wonder if they used footwear of any kind. She guided his foot to the dagger. “Come on, down next to me,” she whispered.

“I do not think I can climb down a cliff, Eliza Tok,” he murmured back.

“You can. Dinnay think about it. Follow me,” she ordered him fiercely.

“I cannot see you.”

“Follow my voice.”

It was an arduous and painfully slow descent. Eliza used her dagger as a handhold for herself and a foothold for Foss to steady himself on with every further movement downwards. After they had been climbing for some time, she at last allowed herself to look down, but the canyon bottom seemed barely closer at all. Worse, their escape route had been discovered. The iron doors flew open and a dragon soared out of the Citadel right over their heads.

“Blast the Ancients,” muttered Foss, just above.

“They cannay see us,” said Eliza. “Keep quiet.”

“You cannot fool a dragon with a spell of invisibility,” said Foss. “We are done for, Eliza Tok. They will do away with me quickly but there is still a chance for you. They will not want you dead, not at any cost! You must not give in to them, Eliza!”

Eliza ignored him, taking his foot by the ankle and moving it from her dagger to a rocky protrusion. Then she pulled her dagger from the rock and held it out out as the dragon opened its mouth in a scream, circling round to face them. The dagger, forged from a dragon claw, enabled her to command dragons, but she could not speak out. She would have to try to enter its mind and there was no time to do so cautiously. Eliza shut her eyes and rushed straight into a clanging, flaming mind, an intelligence and ferocity that flayed her very will.
Don’t give us up.
It was a plea rather than a command. She felt her bones would melt. Her thoughts scattered and sizzled. But the dragon veered off and she exhaled. When she opened her eyes she realized with a jolt of horror that she had let go of the cliff face. And yet she was hanging in the air. It took her a moment to realize that Foss was holding her by the arm.

“By the Ancients, Eliza Tok! I felt you let go…what are you doing?”

Shaking away the sparks and pain in her mind she drove her dagger back into the cliff and let herself hang from it for a moment. Her arms ached. She couldn’t catch her breath to answer him.

“How curious!” he said as the dragon flew away with Trahaearn on its back. “Did you do something?”

“Yes,” she croaked.

The other dragons came soaring out of the Citadel but they followed Trahaearn’s dragon and did not give away the two invisible fugitives clinging to the cliff. Foss edged down and stepped on Eliza’s hand.

“Ouch!” she shouted.

“Oh, I am sorry! It’s difficult, when I cannot
see
you, to avoid
stepping
on you.”

An hour later they reached the bottom of the canyon and stood on solid ground with shaking legs, laughing with relief. Eliza was drenched with sweat and trembling all over from the exertion of the descent. She thought she could see the faint outline of herself becoming visible again.

“Can you see me?” she asked Foss nervously.

“I am beginning to,” he panted. “Yes, there you are, somewhat. Quickly, then. We must stay close to the edge of the canyon and get ourselves out of plain view.”

“Foss.” There was no way to say it but plainly. “Aysu is dead.”

“Yes.” She could hear the weight of his grief in his voice. “I felt it. They came for me very quickly after her murder.”

“I’ve got the Gehemmis.”

“Save your breath, Eliza. We must get out of sight. Onto my back again.”

She obeyed, saying, “But even if the dragons dinnay give us away they’ll use the Vindensphere to find us. How can we hide?”

“I smashed the Vindensphere.”

“What?”

“It was the only thing I could think of to do. When I felt Aysu’s death, I knew they would be coming for both of us. I was on my way to warn you. I stopped in the Treasury and smashed the Vindensphere. I thought it our best chance of escape. But they found me there, before I got to you.”

“Oh, Foss!”

“They will repair it but it will take time. Long enough for us to get a good distance, I should think. I can repel seeking spells, and the Mancers are not gifted at them in any case.”

Eliza stared over his shoulder along the length of the canyon. The dragons were still circling above, shrieking. The canyon splintered off into narrow fissures that wound between sheer cliffs. It was into one of these that they went. It was barely wide enough for Foss to stretch his arms out. The sky was a thin strip of blue far overhead. The path was barely a path at all and so Foss had to scramble over piles of stone where parts of the cliff had caved in. It made Eliza terribly nervous to see these piles and she kept looking up lest another one should be coming down on their heads.

Within an hour or two of scrambling through a maze of deep ravines, they were both entirely visible again. She could not see the sun but she guessed they were making their way roughly north.

“Where are we going, Foss?”

“We will go to Tian Xia,” he said. “We must get you to safety. There is no one who can protect you from the Mancers in Di Shang.”

“What about the Thanatosi?”

“Your friend is safer than you right now.”

The light faded from the sky. Eventually Eliza could make out a few stars glittering in the dark crack between the cliffs above. She was exhausted and terribly thirsty and they had no water or food. Even hanging on to Foss required more strength than she had left.

“I need to rest,” she told Foss.

“Ah! Of course.”

He stopped and put her down gently on the stony ground. Eliza took the Gehemmis out of her backpack and passed it to him. It was smooth to touch, not heavy, about the length of her hand but narrower.

“This is it.”

He held it in his hands and murmured a few spells over it. It took shape, and they examined it curiously by the light of his eyes. It was a white shard with a few black symbols etched into it.

“Is it stone?” Eliza asked. “It’s too light, nay?”

“Bone,” said Foss.

“What do the symbols say?”

“I cannot decipher them without the Book of Symbols,” said Foss. His voice was hushed with wonder. “But it is very old indeed, Eliza. Far older than anything that I have ever held in my hands. It possesses great power, too. I believe this is indeed the Gehemmis given by the Ancients to the Horogarth at the very Beginning and stolen by Lahja in the Middle Days. I did not believe the story until now, but holding it in my hands I cannot deny what I know to be true. Kyreth will not let go of this lightly.”

Eliza leaned against the wall of the cliff. Her mind was brimming with too many fears to think of. The Thanatosi, who could not be called off, were waiting for Charlie to leave the Realm of the Faeries. The Emmisariae were out looking for her and for Foss. She could hear the cries of the dragons not far off. And without food or water or money or any form of transportation they had to somehow cross the Republic, for the only ways into Tian Xia that she knew of, besides the Crossing in the Citadel grounds, were in the east.

“What are we going to do, Foss?”

But she was asleep before he could answer.

FOG

Chapter

~8~

Nell and Charlie waited in a grove of apricot trees.
The ripe, golden fruit hung from the branches like jewels. In the distance, a castle perched atop a craggy mountain. It was a smallish castle, as castles go, its roof forming a bright peak and swooping out in either direction like wings, as if the whole thing might, at any moment, take off from the mountaintop. It shone blue-green in the soft light.

“I cannay say it’s good to be back here,” muttered Charlie, rubbing his neck. He was sore from the long flight on the myrkestra.

“Just be glad he’s taking us in at all,” said Nell.

“I
am
glad,” said Charlie, sounding anything but.

“
Am
gla!
Am
gla!” twittered a songbird from one of the trees, cocking its head and looking curiously at the pair.

“Quiet, you,” said Charlie to the bird.

“Kwaityu! Kwaityu!” chirped the bird, hopping closer, most intrigued now.

Nell laughed, then pointed into the trees.

“Look, here’s Jalo come back.”

“That was quick,” said Charlie suspiciously.

Jalo strode purposefully through the grove, his cloak flowing behind him. He was followed closely by two other Faeries.

“All is well!” he called to them. “You will stay here with my friend Emin and his wife Mala.”

Nell and Charlie exchanged a brief glance and then Nell said, “Wonderful. Thank you so much, Jalo.”

They were not surprised or sorry that he was putting them up with a friend rather than taking them in himself. His mother Tariro was not fond of humans and Nell had been dreading the possibility of encountering her again.

Emin was shorter and stockier than Jalo, but he had that lightness of step combined with an eerie inner stillness that was common to all the Faeries. His hair was a dark curling gold and his eyes sparkled warmly. Mala was dressed much more simply than the other two, in a plain blue robe. Her hair was pulled back from her lovely face and she stared at them frankly, the way one might watch a peculiar bug or some other creature one does not credit with much understanding.

“Did you come all the way from the castle?” asked Nell.

“Well…in a manner of speaking,” said Jalo, amused. Looking past him, Nell realized that the castle was not far on a mountaintop at all. Gentle hills, not mountains, surrounded the valley, the great cliffs they had seen no more than boulders. What had seemed a castle was more a house with a dramatic roof, right before them among the apricot trees.

“Oh!” exclaimed Nell. She had forgotten how disorienting the perceptual shifts in this realm of Illusion could be.