Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (37 page)

The Yellow Mountains fell away almost immediately. A voice like a soft brush of wing told Eliza,
Don’t look
. Steam rose up from the Dreaming Wasteland. The black dragons circled and sang far below them. Eliza closed her eyes. She drew breath into her and pushed it out in a slow, circular rhythm.

“The battle is won or lost in your breath,” Swarn had taught her. “If you control your breath, you control yourself, physically and mentally.”

The song of the dragons drifted up, beautiful and sorrowful. Eliza felt tears sliding out from under her closed lids. She felt the pull from the Dreaming Wasteland, a tug at the heart. Clinging to the Vermilion Bird, she tried not to think of letting go, for at that moment it was sorely tempting. To slip from the soft back and fall. Finally, to let go and fall. Into that song. Her grip loosened and the voice came again, soft as smoke:
Do not listen.

She breathed in time with the gliding swing of the soft wings. Her only thought was
Don’t fall off.
She forgot her purpose, her destination, everything but
Don’t fall off.
As if this was all of life, as if she had never done anything else.

And then she was not on the back of the bird. The sweet, sad song was gone. They were not flying. She breathed. She waited until she was sure. She had not fallen. She had arrived. She opened her eyes and marveled.

She was at the foot of a staircase made of light. Levels upon levels of the Hanging Gardens were suspended in the blackness of space all around her. The light moved, changing shape. Brilliant spires became bright forests, which in turn became a waterfall of light flowing into yet something else. The shining stairs passed up through all these levels, and Eliza climbed them. She did not feel tired here, though the steps seemed to go on and on. Climbing was effortless; she was nearly weightless. The stairway led her into a vaulted cathedral of light. Luminescent pillars soared upwards. The light formed latticework and intricate detail along the pillars and the walls and around the vast ceiling. There was faint music, notes absolutely pure, and she walked among the pillars looking for its source before realizing that this sound came from the light itself.

She heard her name. Coming towards her among the pillars was a being of pure light. The being was as tall as a Giant, but far more shapely and graceful than those brutish creatures. Any features it might have had were obscured by the light that emanated from them. It was as if a star had taken the form of a colossal Faery.

The being called her name again, in a voice that was neither male nor female, neither song nor speech. It was a beautiful voice, gentle, sure, so full of warmth and kindness that Eliza felt immediately safe. She felt welcome.

Eliza, are you lost?

“No,” said Eliza. “I came looking for you.”

A pealing laugh seemed to come from every direction at once. The Hanging Gardens fell away suddenly. Lights plunged and doused themselves in the inky blackness of space, the pillars around her tumbling to nothing. Everything before her and behind her was collapsing, disappearing. Eliza dropped to her knees. She was perched on the edge of a long strip of light stretched far out over black space, like the edge of a plank stretched out from a pirate’s ship. Somewhere in the emptiness out there, an echoing roar – the Panther waiting, poised.

The Sparkling Deluder (for who else could it be?) curled softly in the darkness as if the darkness was a nest. It looked at Eliza, or so it seemed, though Eliza could not find eyes in the flare of brilliance that was its face.

Eliza, do you want to tumble too?

There was menace in the voice now, and amusement. The gentleness with which it had spoken her name had been deceptive. This was a being who meant her harm.

“No,” she said, and her voice shook. “I want to be safe.”

She was startled by her own pronouncement. It seemed she had never spoken words so true, so completely from her heart. For this was all she wanted, all she wanted in the worlds right now: only to be safe. Not to be perched at the edge of space, not to tumble at the whim of this being.

That’s all anybody wants, when they lack it.

The Sparkling Deluder reached towards her with a shining hand. The hand went right through her, into her body. It was the strangest sensation, as if her flesh were not substantial, merely a clamour of atoms being pushed aside. The hand withdrew, a black raven in its palm. The Sparkling Deluder opened its hand wide and the raven took off, disappeared into the black.

I could pull them out of you for the rest of time and there would still be more, I suppose.

“I dinnay know,” said Eliza.

You don't know what you are. You see, I was right. Lost, poor thing.

Eliza felt a cold sweat breaking out along her hairline and her upper lip. She couldn’t look at the wheeling blackness waiting to swallow her. There was nothing out there, no way back to the worlds she knew.

“Please,” she croaked, her voice failing her. “I’m frightened.”

The darkness seemed to sway and beckon. The hand swept through the darkness, dusty particles of light tumbling from it and winking out.

The Immortals are stirring. The Faeries of Tian Xia are looking for the Gehemmis. They wander the Dreaming Wasteland and their armies are lost in the underwater realms, disturbing the Deep. The Dragons are rising in the East and who can say what they will do now their power is restored. Amarantha walks the world again. All this because of a mortal girl on a quest to save the boy she loves. Can you see it?

“I cannay see anything,” said Eliza.

The Sparkling Deluder pointed with one bright finger and drew a circle of light in the air. Through the circle, Eliza saw Tian Xia, the lake of the Crossing, the Far Sea to the east. She longed to leap through it, just to be in the worlds again. She could leap, become a raven, be safe. But no, she couldn’t leap, she could hardly move, clinging to this strip of light over black space, terrified.

The Warrior Witch has given herself to the Dragons,
said the Sparkling Deluder.
Look.

The view through the circle of light changed. Eliza saw a world of soaring white stone half-obscured by a mist of sea-spray. Dragons of unfathomable size nested there. And she saw Swarn, brilliant with green fire, burst into a shower of light.

Grief, Eliza knew, could come in many ways. It could be a shadow that clung to you, or a fist around the heart. It could come all at once, washing over you like a wave and then disappearing, or it could approach with soft footsteps and linger close and quiet. It could gnaw at you with tiny teeth or crush you like a block of stone. Now it came like a blade, bright and sudden, twisting. She cried out in startled pain, then closed her teeth over it and breathed. Like Swarn had taught her, Swarn whom she would not see again. She breathed slowly, forbidding the sobs that clamoured in her chest, forbidding the tears that rushed to her eyes. Later, later she would weep for Swarn, if there was a later for her. For now she had to keep still, breathe, be ready.

“She was my friend,” said Eliza.

Yes, I know.
The Sparkling Deluder emitted a high whistling sound, like a sigh.
You don’t need to tell me. I’ve been watching. And you came here, all this way, for the Gehemmis. What good does it do, the struggle and the pain?

“I dinnay know what you mean,” said Eliza.

You see everything up close. You have no perspective. It’s not your fault. It’s the nature of what you are. But I will show you the larger picture and then we will see if you still care so much about finding the Gehemmis.

The darkness seemed to fold, cave in. The Vermilion Bird shot out over the Yellow Mountains, wings spread wide.

She could see everything at once, or so it felt. It was not like watching, exactly, for there was no passage of time. Simply, she saw everything in fullness and at once, from no particular direction or perspective.

Foss lay like an ashen shadow on the narrow bed where she had left him, the last faint glimmer of his eyes gone out. Ferghal knelt by the bed and wept over him. The Blind Enchanter dug a hole among the flowering bushes outside the house, sweat gleaming on his muscled shoulders. He slung Foss’s brittle and deflated body over his shoulder, carried him out and put him in the ground. Ferghal followed him out, still weeping. They covered him with flowers and shoveled the dirt overtop.

“Nay Foss!” Eliza cried out. “Please dinnay take Foss!”

Who has taken him? Who are you calling out to? He has simply ceased to be.

Eliza found herself standing on the strip of light again, suspended over the empty universe. “The river,” she croaked. “I’ll bring him back.”

You caught the boy as he was crossing between life and death and you brought him back to life. This one has already crossed. There is no bringing him back. This is the way of things. Why can’t you let go?

“I cannay,” she whispered. “Nay Foss.”

The Vermilion Bird winged over Di Shang now, and though her eyes were pressed shut Eliza had no choice but to see what it showed her.

The Citadel soared white and proud as ever at the edge of the desert. A beautiful young witch with black skin and amber eyes received a small, jeweled blade from Kyreth. Eliza recognized it. It was Malferio’s blade. Malferio knelt before the witch and Kyreth, his expression dazed, stupefied. The young woman grabbed him by the hair and drove the blade into the back of his neck, uttering an incantation as she did so. He gave a few rapid, stunned gasps, looking up at the triumphant girl in miserable disbelief. Kyreth watched, expressionless, as Malferio crumpled to the ground. At the same instant, Eliza saw Nia frozen in the Hall of the Ancients, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly before she fell. Eliza felt the Urkleis in her chest give a desperate throb and then crumble.

Charlie was running through a wood.

“I cannay watch!” screamed Eliza, unable to turn away or shut the vision out. “Dinnay show me!”

An arrow pierced him, and then another. He stumbled and fell and in an instant the Thanatosi were upon him, blades flashing. Nell came staggering through the woods after him, bleeding heavily from a wound in her shoulder. The Thanatosi ignored her, leaping away and vanishing, leaving Charlie on the forest floor. Nell was sobbing. She threw herself over the dead body of her friend. “Eliza!” she cried. “Where are you?”

Eliza could make no reply.

Your worst fears will come to pass. Everything you dread. But he met his end after hundreds of years. Is it so terrible? An end must come for us all, even for we Immortals. We all will pass. The question is only when.

She saw her Grandmother Selva laid out by the Faithful, who sang their mourning songs around her funeral pyre. She saw her parents, old and frail, playing chess together in their tent. She saw the Sorma funerals, her parents buried in the desert, the graves unmarked in the Sorma tradition. The endless sands swept over them, their bones lost forever.

She saw Nell, but so much older that it took a moment to recognize her. There were spidery lines around her violet eyes and her bright chestut hair had faded to grey. She was wearing a lab coat and her hair was pulled back as she examined a series of slides. The room was swaying – she was on a boat of some kind. A bearded man wearing a yellow raincoat entered the room suddenly, saying something with great excitement. Nell looked up from what she was doing and it seemed as if she was looking right into Eliza’s eyes.

The world continues without you. The survivors will grieve for you and live on, and then they too will pass and be mourned. What can you do? What is it you fear so? Some few extra years of life for some, if you fail or if you succeed? Does it make any difference? In the end, it is the same for us all.

She saw Nell with grown children laughing around a table, a man whose face she did not recognize. She saw the children, grey-haired and with children and grandchildren of their own, burying their mother. The funeral was in Kalla and there were hundreds of people there. Of course, in a lifetime, so many would come to love Nell.

She saw Kyreth in his passing, and Ka succeeding him as Supreme Mancer – the Citadel unchanged, but without a Sorceress.

You disappeared from the story. It carries on without you.

The Vermilion Bird blinked its black eyes and centuries flew by.

Four hundred years after you left the worlds, what do you see?

The Mancers doing their Magic in the Citadel. The Faeries recovering from their disastrous failure to obtain the Gehemmis. Emyr deposed, Alvar crowned. Another wizard, far less benevolent than Uri, lives in Lil now, and most of the womi have left. A young witch in Tian Xia hears for the first time the story of the last Sorceress. How the Shang Sorceress defeated the Xia Sorceress and then disappeared in the South. Legend has it she became one of the lights in the Sparkling Deluder’s Hanging Gardens. That one, you see, that winking light at the top of the spire: we call that one Eliza. Immortal Amarantha still wreaks havoc from her home in the Irahok mountains.