Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (27 page)

“Keep it,” said Jalo, not looking at any of them. Not looking at Nell. “You’d better go. Quickly.”

“Jalo,” said Nell, but he was walking away, towards his own morrapus. Miyam stood facing them all still, the Master of the Vaults expressionless at her side.

“Come on,” said Eliza. She looked at Amarantha. “You could help us…”

“I have matters of my own to attend to, things long undone,” said Amarantha, a horrible, trembling joy in her voice. “But I will give you a gift.”

She took Eliza’s hand in hers. It burned like fire. Eliza gasped and tried to withdraw it but Amarantha held her hand hard until the burning had subsided. Her hand looked the same, but she felt the heat beneath her palm.

“A fire spell,” said Amarantha. “I was known for burning, once, and will be again.” She grinned unpleasantly. “Farewell, and good luck to you, Sorceress-bird.”

She raised her arms up in the air with a scream. A thick branch tore off a nearby tree and fell to her, hovering before her. She swung herself astride it, bent to whisper to it. The branch took to the air. The witch disappeared above the trees, her fair hair streaming behind her.

Eliza, Nell and Charlie bundled into the morrapus. Eliza called out to the myrkestra in the Language of First Days. It took off over the witches’ forest.

“If we can lose the Faeries, we’ll go north of the mountains,” Eliza said in a rush. “And then to Lil, aye. The Mancers will be watching Swarn, but they dinnay know about Uri. Praps he can help us.”

“The Mancers?”
said Nell.

“I take it things have nay been going well,” said Charlie.

“Nay well at all,” conceded Eliza. “But we have these.”

From her backpack, she drew out the diamond-encrusted box and opened it. Inside lay the strip of bone with its rough inscriptions, and a glass sphere. She took out the sphere and held it in her hand. A white fog swirled at its center, forming one symbol after another.

“Hurrah for us,” said Charlie. “What are they?”

“The Gehemmis. I’m going to get the other two from the Immortal Dragons and the Sparkling Deluder.” She giggled, slightly hysterical. The other two looked confused. “Sorry. It just sounds insane. It prolly is, aye. But we need to get you two to safety first.”

“And safety is Lil?” asked Nell.

Eliza began to giggle again. “I doubt it,” she said. “Sorry. I’m really, really tired. And the Faeries are coming after us, and the Emmisariae, and…”

An arrow tore through the silken morrapus, skimming between them and tearing out the other side. The morrapus gave a great lurch and began plunging downwards, fast.

“Hang on to me!” cried Charlie, and then it struck him yet again: he couldn’t change. He looked to Eliza with fast-dawning horror.

Eliza drew back the silken door. The black trees of the witches’ forest were hurtling towards them like iron spikes and among the trees white shapes were moving quickly. The Thanatosi had found them. They had not been flying high enough and the myrkestra had been shot. Hanging onto the delicate gold frame of the morrapus she pulled herself out of the billowing dome and climbed on top of it. They were falling fast for the trees, the weight of the dead myrkestra pulling them down. She drew her dagger and cut the transparent threads that bound the morrapus to the myrkestra. At the same moment a swarm of ravens took up the dangling threads, pulling them back towards the sky. Arrows hissed upwards and Eliza huddled against the top of the morrapus. She could tell already that she did not have the strength to maintain this many ravens for long enough to fly them across Tian Xia, or even across the Witches’ Forest. It was exhausting just pulling the morrapus out of range of the Thanatosi’s arrows. She would have to come up with something else.

One raven broke off from the others, flying straight for the Irahok mountains. Eliza let the other ravens lower the morrapus, surrounding it as best they could, though many of them fell to the arrows. Eliza clambered back into the morrapus. Charlie and Nell were crouched together, Nell clinging to her folder, their faces white with terror.

“It’s the Thanatosi,” said Eliza. “I’ll hold them off, aye. You need to make a run for it. Get to the Far Sea if you can. I’ve sent Swarn a message, told her to look for you.”

There was no time to talk any more. Nell was screaming questions and Charlie’s face told Eliza clearly that a journey all the way to the Far Sea, two humans on their own, was sheer folly. But they had no choice. Eliza built a barrier spell faster than she had ever done before and hurled it over the massing Thanatosi below. It trapped most of them, only seven of them escaping it. The morrapus touched the ground.

“Run,” cried Eliza.

Charlie grabbed Nell by the hand and they ran.

Eliza crawled out of the morrapus to fend off the Thanatosi that had not been caught in her barrier. Those within it were straining against its walls and she could feel that the barrier would not hold for long. The first of the Thanatosi to reach her she felled quickly, driving her dagger into its heart, pulling out her blade and striking off its head with one swift blow. She leaped back into a defensive posture, ready for the next six, which were coming at her as a group. But they paused around their fallen comrade. Their blank faces began to move and darken. Black, misshapen mouths formed slowly. Their fingers grew long and dark. They fell on the dead Thanatosi, plunging their fingers into him, bending their mouths to him. Within seconds there was nothing left of him but his white garments and his weapons. The Thanatosi that had eaten were strangely still now, their mouths disappearing. The rest of the horde was still pressing against the barrier. Eliza needed to buy time for Charlie and Nell, and so she did not attack them but poured all her strength into holding the barrier firm.

“
Help
me, please!” she entreated the trees. The forest was an army of witches under a Faery Curse since the Early Days and it had some powers of its own. But the trees were still and indifferent. The Sorceress and the Thanatosi were nothing to them. The six that had eaten began to convulse horribly. They fell to the ground, twisting this way and that, as if straining against their own skins. And then Eliza witnessed something she had not read about in any of the books, something that had been only vaguely alluded to with the lines:
Death has no meaning for them, though they are mortal in a technical sense, for a single Thanatosi can be killed. However, the power of one belongs to all, and they draw on this and multiply by it.
The skin of the six Thanatosi was stretching, as if something inside was pushing its way out. New arms clawed their way out from the shoulders, new legs from the thighs, another head bulging through the skin of the single head and at last separating. The new body clambered and flailed and pulled itself free, and Eliza found that now instead of six Thanatosi outside the barrier she was faced with twelve. Her horror at the scene shook her grip over her barrier spell. The remaining army of Thanatosi burst through it.

There was no time to think. She would tell herself this later: that it happened too quickly, that there was nothing else she could have done. But she would wonder, of course she would wonder if she might have done something different, something less destructive. The Thanatosi were rolling towards her like a great white wave spiked with glittering weapons. She opened her palm and spoke to Amarantha’s fire spell. A ball of fire burst from her hand, breaking against the mass of Thanatosi and leaping up into a great ring of flame twenty feet high, pouring black smoke, enclosing those who had not been burned. The heat scorched Eliza’s skin, made her eyes water. Inhuman screams rose up. At first she thought this was the Thanatosi, but then she realized it was the burning witch-trees. As she dashed back among the trees, away from the blast of the heat, black branches and roots and leaves all poured their wrath towards her. They stole her air and pressed and pulled at her so that she could hardly move or breathe.

“Stop it,” she gasped. One of the witch-trees was drawing her towards it. She felt the bark rough against her face, the tug inside her bones, like her skeleton was about to be pulled loose from her body. Ravens swarmed above but could not descend among the trees. She pressed her palm to the tree and fire burst through it. The tree howled, recoiled, and Eliza pulled free. She spun around, pointing her palm at the trees.

“Give me air,” she rasped, “or you’ll burn.” They hissed fearfully, and she found herself able to take a breath. She climbed one of the hateful trees. It tried to shake her off but she held on tight and moved swiftly. From the top of the tree she saw that the Thanatosi were coming through the wall of fire in groups. Roughly ten of them would form a sphere of bodies over three or four and they would roll through in a great flaming ball. Those on the outside would burn, and those on the inside would feed on them afterwards, then split into two, then feed and divide again, as yet more of the balls of bodies rolled through. Eliza watched in horror as the army increased. The tree was shaking violently. She leaped from it to the ground. Nell and Charlie could not have gotten far yet. The only thing,
the only thing
was to keep the Thanatosi from pursuing them. The terrible screams of the forest filled her ears and she did not notice that she was sobbing. As the first wave of the ever-growing army of Thanatosi began to pour through the trees again, she let another wall of fire burst from her palm.

~~~

Charlie and Nell ran until they could hardly breathe and their legs would no longer move. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle, gasping. The trees were thinning here. Behind them they could see the flames and the billowing smoke, and Eliza’s ravens swarming over it all.

“Is she going to be all right?” asked Nell tearfully.

“Eliza can handle herself,” panted Charlie. “Besides, they’re nay really interested in her. They just want to get
past
her.”

“We have to keep moving.”

“I dinnay know if I can. Ancients blast this feeble human body!”

“You can. Come on, Charlie.” Nell got to her feet shakily and helped him up too. They managed a shuffling sort of jog out of the trees. The outline of the Irahok mountains filled the sky. They were facing rolling, bleached foothills. Frost crunched beneath their feet. The air was terribly cold.

“Where are we?” wailed Nell.

“The Northern foothills,” said Charlie. “We’ll keep north of the mountains, like Eliza said. We cannay cross the mountains on foot, and we cannay go through the land of the Giants without becoming a snack or an ornament.”

“We’ve nay got anything to eat.”

“Let’s just keep moving.”

They followed a frozen creek into the hills. Every few seconds one of them looked back fearfully but they saw only the witches’ forest in flames, the sky full of smoke. No sign of the Thanatosi.

“I hope Eliza’s all right,” wept Nell, crying freely as she stumbled along. She knew she ought to be grateful just to be alive but right now she was only cold and terrified.

Charlie kept walking grimly.

“Do you think it’s safe to stop for the night?” asked Nell some time later, noticing that the sun was getting low in the sky. “Oh Charlie! Even if the Thanatosi dinnay find us, how are we going to keep from freezing or starving? There’s nothing to eat, nothing to make a fire with out here.”

“We’ll just have to keep walking, aye,” said Charlie, looking around. It was true. There was not even any bracken, just low icy hills that flattened out into the Great Ice Plains of the Horogarth in the north and veered up into the forbidding Irahok mountains to the south. The flaming witches’ forest was a full day behind them, the Far Sea still many days on foot ahead of them. After what they had escaped, it seemed almost absurd that they should freeze or starve in the foothills, but he could not think his way around it.

“Yes. Keep walking,” Nell echoed. The cold was in her bones now. “What’s that light, Charlie?”

A thin blue wave was undulating all along the northern horizon, sending sharp, glittering rays upwards. When she looked at it she got a strange drifting sensation, like her life was wafting up out of her, leaving her body behind. She stumbled. The whole northern sky was made of shimmering blue waves now.

“Dinnay look,” said Charlie, grabbing her arm and yanking her to his other side. “It draws you to it. That’s the Horogarth.”

“Is it?” she said faintly. “It’s lovely.”

“Dinnay look,” Charlie repeated, and she obeyed, watching her feet shuffle through the snow. She couldn’t feel her toes.

The sun set and the hard freeze of the night drove into them. They stumbled through the dark, their arms wrapped around each other to share what little warmth they had. When Charlie fell to his knees and then plunged face-first into the snow, Nell shook him and pummeled him and coaxed him to his feet again. When she collapsed sideways, he did the same. Too hungry to be aware of it, too cold to think, they urged each other through the night, and when the sun rose again they were grateful for the little light and little warmth that it afforded.

“What are we going to eat?” asked Nell. The words were thick and strange in her mouth.

“There’s nothing to eat. Keep walking.”