The Unmaking (10 page)

“In ancient days I came here to meditate upon the Great Truth,” began Eliza. Of course, it wasn’t correct to say
ancient
days but she didn’t know how else to express
before now
. “The Faithful welcomed me with persimmon petals.” She heard Rhianu snort ahead of her. She was making a horrible muddle of it. “Now I come to this sacred place to...respect...honour, and I am inadequate, a wish deep as the ocean and wide as the sky to consult the Great Oracle of the Ancients with my...question.”

Rhianu was silent in response to this. Eliza followed her the rest of the way down the stairs. They stopped in a small chamber for Eliza to leave her weapon and put on the robes of the Faithful. Then they continued along a sloping, unlit passageway so narrow that the walls on either side brushed against her shoulders. Eliza could not see Rhianu ahead of her in the darkness but followed the gentle slap of her footsteps and the steady intake and release of her breath.

The footsteps stopped and there was a slight rustle of clothing. Eliza stood still in the dark. Rhianu began to croon something in the Language of First Days. It sounded like
The greatest secrets of your servants are ever protected
but the words for protect and remember were rather similar, as were the words for secret and truth, so it was hard for Eliza to be sure. Then Rhianu stood and took Eliza by the hand, pulling her down towards the floor. Eliza felt along the flagstones with her hands for the one that had fallen away. She reached through the gap until her fingers touched the rope ladder.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

Rhianu’s footsteps retreated back the way they had come. Eliza felt a clammy ripple of fear creep along her skin. She had been here before and the Oracle had not come that time. She was not much looking forward to what might be simply a long, pointless wait in the dark, alone. But she climbed down the ladder and stood in the darkness. The ground was packed earth, the walls cold stone. The last time she had come here, she had been entirely powerless, with the Mancers hunting her. So much had changed since then.

By measuring it out in paces, she found the centre of the octagonal room and sat down cross-legged there. She stared into the darkness, thinking about the ravens and what she would ask the Oracle. Her concentration was occasionally interrupted by unwanted thoughts, such as what might be looking at her now in the dark or how outraged Charlie had been at the idea of her marrying Obrad. She tried to shut that memory out, as it just confused her. She was the Shang Sorceress, not a schoolgirl. She had more important things to think about, she told herself scoldingly.

As it turned out, she had a great deal of time to think. When she began to be terribly hungry, the flagstone above was lifted quietly and a dark package sailed down, landing at her feet with a thud. Then the opening was closed up again. She undid the package. There was bread, cheese, dry fruit and a flask of water inside it. When she was tired, she stretched herself out on the earthen floor and slept.

Calculating by her meals and the times she slept, three days passed in silence and darkness. The difference between sleeping and waking began to close. She sat upright in a sort of half-dream for hours at a time. Her body ached with stillness. She had almost forgotten what she was doing there when on the third day a blaze of light startled her, the walls groaned, and there before her was the Oracle of the Ancients.

“Oh,” said the Oracle, recognition dawning in her cold crystal eyes. “It’s you.”

~~~

Foss had not slept in three nights when it happened. A few days earlier, he had shown the Emmisariae and Kyreth his replicas of the barriers. Foss had hoped that the Supreme Mancer or the powerful Emmisariae would be able to see clearly the answer that eluded him but they were as baffled as he was. Whatever reservations the other Mancers had about him, no one doubted that he had the sharpest mind regarding Deep Mathematics. Kyreth pardoned him from the work in the Inner Sanctum and asked that he focus entirely on solving the riddle posed by the Xia Sorceress’s holes. He had spent the past three days and three nights on the brink of understanding and yet it never quite came together. There
was
a pattern, but it was a pattern that simply didn’t make sense. She had understood
their
pattern, the orbits and rotations of the barriers, that much was clear. She had solved the puzzle and so she knew there was no way out. She continued making the holes in an elaborate pattern of her own and yet the pattern revealed nothing. Foss paced and racked his brain and did not sleep. No solution presented itself.

And then one morning she struck.

It was a great blow to the barriers. Every Mancer in the Citadel rocketed from their sleep. The gong sounded twice, summoning them to the Inner Sanctum. Only Foss did not obey. Shaking, he breathed out a replica of the barriers as they were now.

Some terrible force had radiated out from within the prison, striking the barriers in nine places. The barriers were far too strong and complex for any amount of force to break them all. But she struck now with nine blows so powerful and so precise that they altered the motion of the barriers. Orbits changed. Rotations reversed. Another nine blows came and he felt it like a violent kick to his heart.

The Mancers ran to the Inner Sanctum. Kyreth stood in the centre of the main hall, shouting out commands with his Emmisariae around him. They bent all their concentration to the barriers. But there was no time. Mancer Magic was slow and whatever was happening now, it was happening very quickly.

Foss, in the Library, knew it was too late. Another nine blows struck and they all felt it. Everything was changing position. For a brief moment, as he watched his replica, his horror was surpassed by a profound delight. This was miraculous. It was beautiful. It was pure genius and he would never have imagined it possible. As the barriers spun and shifted, her pattern came clear. It was simply unstoppable. Foss strode across the Library, threw open the window, and called a small bright bird to him. It sat alertly in his palm and he spoke to it briefly in the Language of First Days. Then it swooped off in the direction of the dark wood in the northwest corner of the grounds. Time was short. He turned to watch it happen. He could not resist. The barriers spun, and for a mere few seconds all of the holes came into line, creating a circular passage, six feet in diameter, out of her prison and into the world.

~~~

The Oracle came towards Eliza on her eight golden spider’s legs, her upper body tattooed with the elaborate characters of the Language of First Days, her crystal eyes severe.

“I have questions,” said Eliza, forcing herself to meet the Oracle’s eyes.

“Ask them,” replied the Oracle. Her tone was light and mocking.

Eliza held up her right palm, with the tattoo of the dagger pointing down.

“What does the dagger signify?”

The Oracle tilted her head back as if listening to something.

“Struggle,” she said after a pause. “Violence.”

“Why does it point towards me?”

The Oracle’s eyes were alert with interest. “
Sacrifice,
” she said, as if it pleased her.
“Victory will only come at a price for you.”

She couldn’t help herself. She asked, “What price?”

The Oracle waited for a moment and then bared her tiny pointed teeth in a chilling smile.
“You will cut out your own heart.”

Eliza stared at the Oracle, radiant and haughty, moving to and fro slightly on her golden-furred legs. A deep shudder took hold of her. The Oracle was watching her hungrily, as if eager for her tears. Eliza knew that once a question had been answered, there was no point asking for clarification. She should not have asked such a thing in the first place. She forced her spine straight, drove her chin up, pushed aside all the new questions that clamoured within her, the panicked chorus of
when
and
why
and
spare me
, to ask the question she had come here to ask.

“What are the ravens to me?” she asked shakily.

“That which you seek,” said the Oracle with a disappointed scowl. “That which you fear.”

It was a pointless riddle of an answer. Eliza pressed on, “Are the ravens my Guide?”

“Only if you follow them,” said the Oracle.

“What are the ravens trying to tell me?”

“A warning,” said the Oracle.

“What is the warning?”

“She is coming,”
cawed the Oracle in the voice of a raven.
“Making.”
She looked confused by this and annoyed with Eliza for bringing forth so baffling an answer.

“Who is
she
?” asked Eliza, her heart tightening in her chest as she neared the point of it all. “Is it Nia?”

“Yes,” said the Oracle, her expression darkening. She fixed her eyes intently on Eliza, waiting for more, for this concerned her also.

“When is she coming?” asked Eliza.

The Oracle’s eyes widened with fear. She whispered,
“Now.”

~~~

The Mancers stood dumbfounded in the Inner Sanctum, uncertain of what had happened. They had all felt the gap in the barriers. Now it was gone, the barriers continuing in their new and uncontrolled movement.

Kyreth spoke in a terrible voice. “Emmisariae, go now to the Great Sand Sea. Find Eliza and bring her here. The rest of you must do your utmost to strengthen the barriers around the Citadel and prepare some defense. I will consult the Scrolls.”

They all obeyed him and he went quickly to his study. Now there was much to do. Getting Eliza here was the most important thing. Why had he let her leave? He would also need to call upon the Triumvira of Tian Xia for assistance, and he would need to do it immediately. There was no time to waste.

In his study he did not sit down but said to the Scrolls, “Is the Sorceress Nia free of the barriers?”

A single gold character appeared on each of the Scrolls:
Yes.

“Where is she now?” he demanded.

Here.
It was written over and over again.

His heart froze. “In the Citadel?”

Yes.

“How?” It came out a shallow gasp.

Magic.

He would need to convey this to the Emmisariae without delay. They must not bring Eliza here. They must take her to Tian Xia and put her under the protection of the Triumvira. But so transfixed was he by the horror of the moment that he did not act immediately and found himself asking instead, “What does she intend?”

The golden characters wrote themselves in a graceful sweeping row down one of the Scrolls:
No more than you deserve.

This shocked him so deeply that for a moment he could not formulate a thought, let alone a question. Golden characters spilled down the next Scroll in a great hurry.

You were a fool to think you could hold me bound and disempowered forever.

He took a step back and his blood ran cold. The Scrolls filled with words, one after the other.

Do the Mancers know what you did?

Do they understand the war I have with them?

Or do they follow you without question?

“How?” he said again. It didn’t matter. He began to murmur a spell to create a barrier between himself and his enemy but the words came out quite wrong, jumbled in his mouth, nonsensical. Somehow, without his realizing it, a Confusion had taken hold of him. He could not move to tear his eyes away from the characters on the centre Scroll, which began to flow rather differently, in long sweeping lines, outlining the form of a woman in gold ink. The ink became flesh and the Sorceress Nia stepped out of the Scroll into the study. Kyreth’s tongue was stilled, his hands frozen.

“Hello, Papa,” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek.

Chapter

~6~

E
liza hammered on the walls
, shouting, but no one came. She turned back towards the Oracle, seated on her eight legs in the middle of the room, eyes glassy and vacant.

“Get somebody to come and let me out of here,” she begged. “I have to go!”

“She will come for me,” said the Oracle faintly. “She will come for me here.”

Eliza’s mind was hurtling along a trajectory of worst fears and nightmare scenarios. She needed to get out and she needed her dagger and she needed Charlie.

“Rhianu!” she screamed, pounding the wall again.

“The Chamber shall not be entered or left while I am here,” said the Oracle in a faraway voice. “They cannot open it.”

“Then leave,” said Eliza furiously. “I need to get out!”

“She is coming for me. I will remain here. We cannot flee our destinies,” said the Oracle.

“I have to warn the Mancers,” pleaded Eliza.

“They will fall before her,” said the Oracle. “I have seen it. I have seen my death today.”

Eliza stared at the spot where she thought the opening should be. She felt her way up the walls with her Deep Knowing to the ceiling and the flagstone that had opened before. She pushed at it with all her will but the presence of the Oracle was like a magnet holding the room tight together. Eliza was not strong enough to break it.