The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(18)

The world was a ruin. The black crab leaped among the battered rocks and the sky crumbled overtop of them. Fire fell like rain.

~~~

Eliza looked up at the tatters of red cloud swirling in the sepia-coloured sky, that pitiless, unfriendly Tian Xia sky she had come to know so well. She was watching for something she did not see. Then she spotted it, falling fast towards her, a ball of light. In one fluid motion she pulled her bow taut and raised it to the sky, letting her Deep Knowing guide her arms and calculate the speed at which the object fell. She released the bow and the dark arrow shot through the ball of light, exploding it into a shower of sparks.

“The aim is good,” said Swarn, who was standing back and watching with her arms folded. “But you lack force in all you do. You are precise, but weak.”

They were standing in the middle of the dark marsh dotted with skeletal bracken. Swarn’s house was a little hump in the distance, not really recognizable as a house at all from where they stood.

“It takes everything I’ve got just to fix on the right spot, aye,” said Eliza. She wondered if Swarn could tell she was wearing a bra. She wondered if Swarn was wearing a bra. It seemed unlikely somehow. Definitely not a bra with lace flowers on the straps.

“Then you practice. Grow stronger. The aim should be easy by now, it should require nothing of you. When you face an opponent, you cannot just tap it between the eyes. You need to go right through the skull.”

Eliza grimaced a little at that. Swarn bent and snatched up one of her long red spears. In her arm, lean and brown and muscled, it seemed to weigh nothing. She tossed it to Eliza effortlessly but Eliza knew enough to brace herself. The spear was enchanted iron and very heavy. Catching it nearly knocked her over.

“You are using your physical strength again,” said Swarn impatiently. “You are a fourteen-year-old human child, Eliza! There are few beings as physically weak as you are. But you are not only a girl. You are the spear. You are the air. You are the ground. Are you not?”

Eliza inhaled slowly and raised the spear over her shoulder.

“Let it flow, let it flow,” chanted Swarn. It was a feeling Eliza loved – when she could muster it. She felt like rushing water, a force of nature, and the spear in her grasp was subject to this force, a twig in a torrent. She could exert on it the same power as the sun did over the planets. It would follow its course, unresisting.

“Take care,” warned Swarn. She read Eliza’s feelings well, for Eliza was tempted to unleash this power she felt, to send the spear as far as it would go. But that was not the purpose of the exercise. She caught a flash from the corner of her eye and pivoted, hurling the spear straight through the ball of light. The spear plunged into the marsh several meters away, dripping fire.

“Better,” said Swarn. “Much better.”

Now that it was done, Eliza felt drained and weary. “I need to rest,” she said.

Swarn shook her head.

“You do not push yourself hard enough, Eliza. How will you get stronger if you stop whenever you are tired? Here.”

She tossed Eliza another spear and this time Eliza caught it easily, but the surge of power faded fast. She saw the ball of light too late this time and tried to throw the spear, but her aim was poor and her strength gave out. The spear made an ungainly crash to the swampy ground just a few feet away. Eliza’s knees buckled and she sat in the mud. Swarn looked at her as if she was an insect.

“I’m nay as strong as my ma,” said Eliza rather angrily, because she knew that was what Swarn was thinking.

“That is not the issue,” said Swarn. “You barely try.”

“I am trying.” Eliza could have wept with frustration. Whenever she left Tian Xia she was amazed at how much she had learned from Swarn, what leaps forward her Magic had made. But while she was here she felt only the exhaustion and misery of training under someone who seemed to have no experience of pain, hunger or weariness. She forced herself to her feet again.

“I’m ready, aye,” she said.

Swarn threw her another spear and it knocked her over into the mud.

~~~

At first, Swarn had taught her potions. Foss had books of potions and endless jars of supplies in the Mancer Library, but Swarn was a witch and she knew of potions no book told of; she needed no reminding of the materials or enchantments necessary. She and Eliza had hiked great distances through the Dead Marsh, even into the Ravening Forest and the Irahok Mountains, to find the right herbs or stones or creatures. There were no jars of tidy powders and dried herbs. Eliza learned herself how to cut open a frog or a foot-dragon and take the parts she needed, how to find the right roots and dry them in the sun, how to recognize different types of volcanic rock or obtain the saliva of certain cliff-dwelling birds. There was a great deal of clambering about with nets and baskets and it reminded her a bit of playing with Nell on Holburg when they were children, although this was much more strenuous and dangerous. As they searched for their ingredients, Swarn told Eliza all about the mystical properties of the thing they sought and what other materials might serve in their place in an emergency. She came to understand, on these long rambles, the underlying theory of potion-making. Now, if Swarn told her “invisibility” or “confusion” or “forgetfulness” or “rage,” Eliza could set out with her equipment and find the necessary ingredients, prepare them and mix them in a potion that would do the job, if clumsily. Some time later, Foss had decided to teach Eliza a few potions. She had been so efficient, so confident, so expert, that he had just watched her carefully and then moved on to something else. They had never returned to potions and she wondered if he guessed where she had learned so much.