Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (5 page)

~~~

They crossed the great stretch of desert to the eastern coast, stopping only briefly for silent meals. They ate quickly, stretched their legs and then resumed their positions on the back of the dragon.

When Eliza spied blue sea on the horizon she felt tears spring to her eyes. How she missed the sea! The dragon began a joyful downward swoop towards the white-capped waves, but rose again at a stern command from Foss. It was another hour before they reached a chain of volcanic islands. The archipelago, and Holburg, lay to the north. Their destination was a long-dormant volcano, whose crater had collapsed into a deep cavern, large enough even for the dragon to enter. They descended with slow wing pulses to a pool of black water, the ring of dusky sky receding above them.

“Fascinating,” said Foss, climbing off the dragon and splashing in the water up to his knees. “I do not think the Mancers know this entry to the Crossing.”

“Charlie knows all the entries, aye,” said Eliza.

“We cannay know if he knows
all
of them,” pointed out Nell, ever logical. “I mean, he wouldnay know about the ones he doesnay know, would he?”

Charlie snorted.

“I must confess I’m rather excited,” said Foss. “I’ve been an Emmisarius for a short time only and there has been no cause for me to make the journey to Tian Xia. This is the first time that I will see that other world. May I command the Boatman, Eliza?”

“Be my guest.”

Foss began to intone the words:
My power spans the worlds and that between the worlds, my power spans the skies and seas of Tian Di, my power is undivided
. He seemed to find it effortless. Though he was her teacher and a source of seemingly endless knowledge, it was rare that Eliza was able to witness displays of his power. The tremendous barrier that morning, covering all the Sorma camp, and now this commanding of the Boatman, reminded her what a powerful being he truly was.

A boat took shape on the water as he spoke, its sail full, its boards ash white. The ghoulish boatman, knotted muscle and bone and blood vessels visible through his translucent flesh, stood at the helm to greet them.

“So this is the Boatman!” said Foss.

“Emmisarius of Water,” the Boatman greeted him in an awful scraping voice, like a blade on stone.

“Greetings,” said Foss, bowing. The Boatman stepped aside and all four of them were permitted to board the wide, flat sloop, unchallenged. The boat slipped away through the water and the darkness of the cavern, emerging quickly onto a misty grey sea. Nell settled down near the front of the boat and took her folder out of her satchel.

“Can you give me a light, Eliza?” she asked. “Or praps Foss could just look over my shoulder and keep his eyes nice and bright.”

“Dinnay you want to get some sleep?” asked Charlie.

“I’m fine,” she said, barely looking at him. Eliza conjured a light for her friend to study by, then lay herself down on the pale planks. She felt a chill around her, within her: a memory of the dark water of the river of death, as if it were flowing through her and mingling with her blood. When she closed her eyes, she saw hundreds of ravens trying to take flight and yet somehow fastened to the ground, while somewhere there was a sound like a great tail lashing the air.

It was a long time before she slept and it felt like a very short time before she was woken again by the spine-chilling baying of the hounds of the Crossing. They were deep in the white mist of the Crossing now but she could still make out the forms of the others. Charlie was on his back – she had to look closely to make sure his chest was rising and falling. Nell was slumped over her folder, fast asleep. Foss sat against the gunwale, his eyes bright discs of flame in the mist. She glanced at Charlie again, to make sure he was sleeping.

“Foss?” she whispered, crawling closer.

“Yes.” His deep voice soothed her, gave her the courage to ask the question that was tormenting her.

“Do you really think the Mancers are responsible for calling the Thanatosi?”

“I do. Not all of them, naturally. I cannot know for certain who took part.”

“Kyreth.”

“I assume so. But not alone. He could not have done it alone.”

“Because they’re afraid…they’re afraid I’ll do what my mother did.”

This was terribly vague, but Foss understood.

“I believe so,” he said. Eliza’s heart sank.

For thousands of years the Shang Sorceress had lived with the Mancers, learning to use her power under their tutelage. When she came of age she married a Mancer and bore a single daughter, heir to her power. Once the continuation of the line was established, she went into the worlds and performed her duty, guarding the Crossing from any being who did not belong in Di Shang. This had been the unfaltering way of things until Eliza’s mother, at the time an unusually powerful and rebellious young Sorceress, fell in love with a young Sorma man, Rom Tok. She married him in secret and bore him a daughter, thus diluting the line of the Sorceress as far as the Mancers were concerned. Though none of them had ever spoken to her of the matter of an heir, Eliza had known she would be expected to marry a Mancer one day. It was one of the reasons she would not go back to them. She would not be told whom to marry. But somehow they knew,
Kyreth
knew, that she had feelings for Charlie. They were eliminating the competition, hoping to prevent her eloping with a non-Mancer as her mother had done. Now that Foss had confirmed her fear, she did not want to discuss it further. The fact that Kyreth would enlist some of the Mancers in a plot to murder Charlie, her dear Charlie, for fear that she might one day choose him over them, made her nearly sick with rage. If she was to stop the Thanatosi, she would have to begin with the Mancers.

The whiteness closed about them, until they could not see one another at all, and then blew away all at once. They were sailing on the green lake of the Crossing, the fiery sky of Tian Xia blazing above them. Around the lake curved the great black cliffs, carved with images of unrecognizable beings and unreadable symbols.

Nell woke up and put her papers back into her folder in a hurry. She looked a bit green.

“This is your third time, aye,” said Charlie gently. “Shouldnay be so bad.”

Eliza handed her a little sack of herbs from the Sorma. Nell held them close to her face and inhaled deeply.

“Not an easy journey for a human,” noted Foss.

“Or anyone going where they dinnay belong,” said Charlie. “I got hellishly sick crossing over to Di Shang the first time, but it seems like after a few times you build an immunity. Like you have enough of that world in you to make you belong a little more. Then there’re people like Eliza, aye, who dinnay get sick at all, either way. Belonging to both worlds, I spec.”

“There are no people like Eliza,” Nell said, glancing up from her sack of herbs for a moment. “Oh, the Ancients, I feel awful.”

“And the Mancers?” asked Foss.

“Lah, you’re really Tian Xia worlders, nay?” said Charlie. “But you live in Di Shang. So you should be all right either way, I spec.”

Foss looked thoughtful. As they drew closer to the towering black cliff that frightened Eliza every time, Foss became very interested in the symbols carved there.

“If only I had the Book of Symbols with me!” he cried. “I do not think all of these have been deciphered, you know…though it ought to be possible, with the book.” His face fell, light fading from his eyes slightly. “It is one of the Books Nia drained. It has been a tremendous job, Eliza, trying to repair the Old Library, and we have only made the smallest beginning in a year’s time. We have repaired the Book of the Ancients and many other Great Texts. But the Book of Symbols is still empty. Such a shame.”

Nell curled into a ball and whimpered, clutching the bag of herbs to her face.

“Almost there,” said Eliza, squeezing her shoulder. “Just hang on a little longer.”

“Are the Thanatosi crossing also?” Foss asked the Boatman.

The Boatman grinned hideously and did not reply.

“You cannot tell me?” asked Foss. “Fascinating. I have much to learn about the way of things. Not everything can be learned from books! Well, we must assume they are. I will prepare a barrier.”

“Crossing at the same time?” Nell asked, giving him a white-faced, miserable stare. “How?”

“The Boatman, as I understand it, is not constrained by time and space in the same manner that beings more rooted in the worlds are,” said Foss. “But it is quite beyond our minds to comprehend it.”

Nell groaned and shut her eyes again. Eliza held her hand. Foss knelt aft and murmured to himself, preparing a barrier. The black cliff loomed up before them and then opened into steps.

“Come quickly,” said Foss, rising. They followed him off the boat and up the steps while the boat faded away to nothing behind them. Eliza and Charlie supported Nell between them.

At the top of the steps they faced the temples of the Faithful, great red-earth domes still being repaired since Nia had destroyed them. The Ravening Forest scooped around the eastern horizon, a green half-ring. The very land and air here seemed to thrum with Magic.

“I wonder if they’ve chosen a new Oracle yet,” said Charlie, looking at the temples.

“Should we take shelter?” Eliza asked. “We could go to the Faithful but I hate to put them at risk after everything they’ve been through.”

“We will stay in the open,” said Foss. “We want to see our enemy approaching. First, do what you must to contact the Faery.”

Nell turned the crystal in her ring and said, “Jalo, please come and help me. It’s Nell, aye. Thank you.” She looked around at them all, suddenly doubtful. “What if it doesnay work?”

“It will take him time to reach us,” said Foss. “But the gemstones of the Faeries are known to possess a great variety of powers and I am sure the ring does what you have said.”

He paced out the outer limits of the barrier he had prepared and uttered the final words of the spell. It formed a dome over the little group and their dragon, visible only by the slightest shimmer in the air. Nell sat down on the dry red earth and pulled her folder out of her satchel again. Moments later she was entirely lost in a physics problem. Foss looked over her shoulder curiously.

“Ah, but you see, this neglects the Magic element,” he said, pointing at the problem with his long, golden index finger. “If you look at this problem from the perspective of Deep Physics it becomes much clearer. Matter is not only matter, it is
imbued
, one might say…”

“I dinnay need to know about
Deep
physics,” said Nell impatiently. “That’s nay going to be on the test.”

“
Not on the test?”
cried Foss. “At Austermon? The most prestigious university in Di Shang? I myself have written a letter to the President of the University, commending him. It is outrageous that they should not require any knowledge at all of the Deep Sciences. I shall have to write to him again.”

Eliza’s heart gave a thud and a raven appeared on Nell’s head with a squawk.

“Foss!” she said, drawing her dagger. The cliff behind them opened into steps. Fog poured up it, covering the barrier but not penetrating it. Arrows fell off the barrier and swords struck it uselessly. In the fog they saw the featureless, oblong faces of the Thanatosi, with only the slightest depressions where eyes ought to be and the slightest protrusion where a nose ought to be. Their hair floated about their heads as if they were underwater. The four companions drew close to one another inside the barrier.

“Are you sure they cannay get in?” Nell asked, clutching her notes to her as if she was protecting a beloved child. “Eliza, why is this raven on my head? Its claws are scratching me.”

Eliza jerked her head at the raven and it flew to her shoulder, disappearing as soon as it alighted.

“The barrier will hold,” said Foss. He couldn’t resist adding, “If you had some knowledge of Deep Mathematics you might have more faith in the barriers of the Mancers and how they come to be. It is like asking if the sky will fall. It is not easy to make the sky fall, is it?”

“I’ve nary tried,” said Nell primly. She glanced at Charlie. “Are you all right?”

Charlie looked pale. “It’s just strange, aye, to think that if they
did
get through the barrier I couldnay change. I couldnay do a thing. They would just rip me apart.”

“Fear not!” said Foss, becoming a little annoyed with all this talk of the barrier not holding. “They will not give up but nor will they break the barrier. You would be safe for a lifetime within it. Of course, that is not ideal.”

“Can you make a
moving
barrier?” asked Nell eagerly. “Then he
could
just stay in it forever.”

Foss sighed. “Those who understand nothing of Magic think
anything
is possible,” he said to Eliza, who smiled at him. To Nell he said, “Some permanent barriers move, but only on a set course. Charlie would not be able to set the course himself and so would not be able to move about freely. It is, as I say, not an ideal solution.”