Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (8 page)

To her amazement, the wall fell away instantly. She stumbled and found herself in the flower gardens of the Citadel in broad daylight. Her grandmother Selva was approaching her, smiling. Her cropped hair shone white in the sun and her black robes flowed about her. She carried a white staff the length of her forearm and a long serpent lay across her shoulders, tongue flickering. Bees buzzed around her face and limbs.

“What happened?” asked Eliza, stunned at how easy it had been. “Where are we?”

“Isn’t it interesting?” exclaimed Selva. More bees abandoned the flowers and swarmed about her face as if she was made of nectar, but she didn’t seem bothered. “I didn’t think anybody else could come here with me. Sometimes I wish he would come; I walk and wait for him, but he cannot. I suppose it’s because he is not a Sorceress. I miss walking in the garden with him. When I was a young girl about your age, we walked together for hours and he told me so many things, so many things! This is my sweet relief and I can find my words more easily but always I have to go back and then there are rats and I don’t know what I am saying. He comes and I am not myself. He is not himself either. But you, you are so whole, and you have found your Guide, dear girl! I am so glad for you.”

Eliza realized that a large raven was perched on her own shoulder.

“Are you in the tower?” she asked.

Selva glanced back at the large white tower that shone in the sunlight. Bees formed a noisy halo about her head. The serpent slithered down her body and lay coiled about her feet.

“Do you know,” said Selva then, not answering the question, “he says that I am under a Curse!”

“Yes,” said Eliza. “Is it nay true?”

“A Faery Cursed me,” said Selva dreamily. “Jumbled my mind! But there are no accidents. Don’t be fooled. Now every stone and every tree has secrets to tell me. I know about you. I know all about you. I watch you and I am so proud, so proud. Look at that brave girl, I think to myself.”

“I want to help you,” said Eliza.

Her grandmother laughed and gave a little caper. “It is lovely in this garden!” she said, plucking a flower. The flower wilted at once and turned ashy grey. The garden shimmered and darkened for a moment.

“Careful, careful,” whispered Selva. She came creeping closer to Eliza on her bare feet. “It is I who will help
you
. Oh, we cannot stay long, we cannot stay. They say a gift may be a curse, but a Curse may be a gift as well, and who is to say? Am I under a Curse, or is the Curse under me, holding me up where I can see things? I know secrets. I know who is in
that
tower.”

She pointed at the northeast tower.

“Who?” asked Eliza.

Her grandmother winked. “I will ask the stones to show you. They are my friends and I can go where I like. I am a part of this place. They think it is their place. Well, so it is, so it is. Simathien built the Citadel but did not Zara help him? This place is loyal to us as well. Ah, the stones will tell
me
things and I can speak to marble and gold and I can crawl inside the walls and look out. It’s a shame, that other one, the
bad apple
, she used me you know, trampled right over me, got inside. Got to him. I couldn’t help him but I helped
you
, didn’t I? Never mind, all done, all finished. I can come to the garden whenever I want, stop it, stop it!” The bees were swarming about her face now. “I can’t see you!” she cried to Eliza. The flowers all around them were wilting, dipping, turning black. The grass melted to tar and the sky went fast from day to night. The bees formed a dark cloud all around Selva but with her staff she pointed to the northeast tower. The sky crumbled into dust and Eliza found herself still in the dark hallway with her forehead pressed to the wall of the tower. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts.

“Thank you,” she whispered, running a hand along the wall.

To reach the northeast tower she had to go through the portrait galleries. It was an eerie feeling, all those Mancer eyes watching her from the paintings as she ran by. By the time she had passed through all the galleries she was out of breath. She slowed as she came to the narrow hallway that wound around the outside of the tower and joined with the north wing and the Library. She touched her fingers tentatively to the wall of the tower. It parted before her. She cringed, expecting a siren to go off, but there was no sound. The Citadel itself was working this Magic on her behalf, or on her grandmother’s.

It was dark and cold inside the tower. She was standing on a broad stone ledge that ran full circle round the inside wall. There was a gap of a few feet between this ledge and a spiral staircase that wound up the center of the tower. There seemed to be a ledge like this one at the level of each floor of the Citadel. She jumped from the ledge to the staircase, wondering whether to go up or down. There was a rush of wings up ahead of her and so she went up.

She had been climbing for quite some time when she rounded the final curve and almost hit her head on the solid stone ceiling. The staircase simply stopped, going nowhere after all. She sat down on the steps to catch her breath. She felt something crawling inside her sleeve suddenly and shook it. A bee flew out and straight up, disappearing through the ceiling. Eliza nearly laughed. When she touched the ceiling, two stones parted quietly. She climbed through the narrow space and into a broad, circular room lit with lamps. Lying huddled on a divan, teeth chattering, clutching a book to his chest, was Malferio, once King of the Faeries.

She had barely a moment to take in the stacks of books, the jars of powders and liquids and the boxes of talismans that cluttered the room. Malferio looked up at her and screamed, a scream of pure terror. He threw the book he had been clutching at her. The Urkleis gave an awful wrench in her chest. Eliza turned tail and ran back down the spiral staircase. Malferio’s screams chased her, echoing in the dark passage. She rounded a curve and ran straight into a body, which knocked her back onto the stairs.

She landed badly. Pain shot up her back from her tailbone. Kyreth’s face loomed over her.

Chapter

~5~

“Eliza,” said Kyreth in his beautiful, sonorous voice.
“What a pleasure to see you. Welcome back.”

The brilliance of his eyes lit up the stairway. She noticed immediately that they were between two floors and so the nearest ledge was quite a long drop down. There was no way past him.

She scrambled to her feet painfully. Ravens gathered behind her, lining the stairs.

“You have no reason to fear me,” he said, with a nod at the ravens. “I have only ever wanted your safety. Even now, I would protect you against any who wished you harm.”

“What’s your idea of harm?” asked Eliza, her voice trembling with rage and fear. “Does killing somebody I love count as harming me? Because frankly I’d prefer a more direct approach.”

Kyreth smiled thinly. Malferio’s screams from above were dwindling into sobs.

“What are you doing to him?” asked Eliza.

“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Kyreth. He reached towards her with his hand, as if to touch his fingers to her chest, above her heart. Eliza backed away up the stairs, slipping a little. The ravens drew closer around her, cawing.

“You still bear the Urkleis,” he said. “It is a burden.”

“Yes.” She took another step back and added, “If you try to touch me again, I’ll kill you.”

Kyreth acted as if he had not heard this. “I am going to lift your burden, Eliza. You pretend to be used to it but you will never be used to it. You feel within your very flesh and bone the hatred and the hunger for freedom of she who sought to annihilate you. In that room above lies the key to Nia’s Immortality. Under her Curse he wishes only to die, and so he shall. When that happens, the Xia Sorceress will die too, and you will be free of the Urkleis.”

“You’re going to kill Nia?” asked Eliza. In spite of everything she felt a bewildering wave of sorrow. “Your own daughter.”

“She is no daughter to me,” said Kyreth, his terrible eyes boring into her. “Rea is my daughter.”

Eliza said nothing.

“What we love is the same,” he said to her in a low voice. “What we hate is the same. What we wish for is the same, Eliza. This is where you belong. It is good that you have returned.”

“You lied to me,” said Eliza bitterly. “You lied to me about everything.”

“Don’t be childish, Eliza. When did I lie?”

She turned her eyes from his, for there was something in them that sought to hold her or consume her. “You told me my grandmother was dead,” she said.

“There are many kinds of death, Eliza Tok,” murmured Kyreth.

“There are nay many kinds!” she shouted, looking straight into his face for an awful burning moment. “I’ve seen the Guardian between life and death. I’ve been to the river. There is one kind of death, Kyreth. One.”

“Sixteen years old, in love, and you think you are wise,” he said dryly. “What have you seen that I have not seen? Nothing. What do you know that I do not know? Nothing. You have lied to
me
, Eliza, countless times, endangering yourself and the Mancers. A selfish adolescent, unfit to be called the Shang Sorceress, oblivious to your duty, obsessed only with your own inner circle, your own inner world.” He said this entirely without emotion but he stepped a little closer as he did so. The ravens screamed, more and more of them appearing on the stairs. Eliza wished they would fly at him, attack him, but they did not dare go near him.

“Let me by,” she said in a tight little voice.

Kyreth did not move. His eyes burned still brighter.

“Let me by,” she repeated, more forcefully this time.

“How did you get in here, Eliza?” Kyreth asked her softly.

There was something terrible in his eyes, something dangerous. She did not think. She leaped off the stairs to the ledge below. A second bad landing, this time twisting her ankle. She pressed her shoulder to the wall but it did not make way for her. She pounded against it with her fists and her ravens swarmed in a panic about the tower.

Above her, Kyreth gave a joyless chuckle.

“Go back to bed, Eliza,” he said and made a gesture with his finger. A door opened in the wall. Eliza limped out into the hall. Her ravens streamed after her and the door shut behind them, disappeared. She did not look back but went as quickly as she could on her hurt ankle, back through the galleries under the endless eyes of the Mancer portraits, to the south wing and her room, where she crawled into bed. Her ravens formed a black, feathered wall all around her, but they could not comfort her once sleep came.

In her dreams, the black panther from the river of death gnashed his teeth at her and growled,
You cannot steal from death. You will bring me your beloved
, and the Oracle of the Ancients, the one Nia had killed, hissed the prophecies that had haunted Eliza for years now:
Yours is the lonely road. You will lose all those you love. You will cut out your own heart.

~~~

Eliza’s ankle was swollen and sore when she woke in the morning. A stab of pain shot through it as soon as she tried to stand. She forewent her usual scavenge in the kitchen for breakfast and instead limped straight to the Library. Foss was seated at the broad mahogany table where they used to have their lessons, open books spread out all around him. He was drawing a chart on a long scroll whose other end spilled off the table and lay on the floor in great curls.

“Kyreth has Malferio in the northeast tower,” she told him, limping to her chair and sitting down. Sitting hurt almost as much as walking – she had given her tailbone quite a crack when she fell the first time.

Foss looked up sharply. “Are you hurt, Eliza?”

She shook her head. “Nay badly. I think I sprained my ankle. I ran into Kyreth last night. He’s gone insane, Foss.”

“He is still deep in Nia’s Curse,” said Foss. “He is driven as much by fear as the lust for power. Together, a dangerous combination.” He cleared his throat. “I have been rethinking the matter, Eliza, and I have concluded that you should not stay here. It is not safe. I will speak frankly with Aysu and find out what can be done for your friend the Shade…Charlie. But you should not be here.”

“I cannay leave yet,” said Eliza.

Foss passed a big golden hand over his forehead. He looked very agitated. “Malferio is here,” he muttered. “I did not know.”

“Kyreth is up to something. He has Malferio because he wants to kill Nia. If Malferio dies, so will Nia; his Curse will be lifted and he’ll get credit for defeating her. Obviously he wants Charlie out of the way too. But he’s just clearing the way for something else. Lah, I know he wants me to marry a Mancer and have a little Sorceress daughter that he can control better than he can control me, but there’s something else going on. Something bigger. I’m sure of it.”

“That may very well be so,” said Foss. “And it is all the more reason for you to be away somewhere safe. Winning Aysu over and ridding her of Kyreth’s influence is the key and I am well on my way, Eliza. I think it would be best if you joined your friends in the Realm of the Faeries or went to Swarn for protection.”