Bone, Fog, Ash & Star (The Last Days of Tian Di #3)(9)

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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.