The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(25)
“We’re nay supposed to go in there,” Charlie said, but Eliza ignored him. There was no door barring the way, just an arched opening tall enough for a Mancer leading down a gleaming marble corridor. She followed the corridor all the way to the main hall, where the Mancers worked their Magic, and there she stopped. Horror pooled live and cold through her veins.
The Mancers stood in formation, more than two hundred of them. Their arms were raised, their eyes looking up towards the domed ceiling. But they were made of stone. All of them. Eliza ran from one group to the next. Here were the manipulators of wood and water and fire and earth and metal, frozen into statues. The manipulators of earth formed a pentagon around an empty centre. This was where Kyreth and the Emmisariae ought to be, Eliza assumed, but they were missing. She noted with a mixture of relief and trepidation that Foss was not among the manipulators of water.
“Forsake the Ancients!” Charlie whispered, entering behind her. “What happened?”
“She’s here,” said Eliza. Her voice sounded odd to her, like somebody else’s voice. “She must have taken them by surprise, aye. They had no time to...act.”
“We’ve got to leave,” said Charlie urgently. “Come on, Eliza. We have to go straight back to Tian Xia, find Swarn.”
Eliza’s mind was as frozen as the Mancers around her. She could not force it into action.
“Eliza!” shouted Charlie, grabbing her shoulder and shaking her. “You need to get out of here! Let’s go! Now!”
Eliza pulled away from him. “I need to find Foss. We’ll look in the Library.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Lah, she might not be here anymore. But if she is, she already knows we’re here and it’s too late. I need to know if Foss is all right.”
“We could still escape,” insisted Charlie.
Eliza shook her head. “Too late. You know that.”
She swung Swarn’s spear from her back. It comforted her to have something flowing with such power in her hand. Charlie became a half-hunter, a ferocious, thick-skinned beast, part-lizard, part-hound, that walked on two legs and bore weapons. Although she knew an enchanted spear and a half-hunter would be no match for Nia, Eliza was glad to have the hulking creature at her side. They left the stone Mancers and the raven-shrouded dome behind them and headed across the grounds back towards the north wing. The usual birdsong in the grounds was silent. There was no sound at all, in fact, until they approached the Old Library and heard a hollow sort of thunk. They both froze, but there was no further sound. The half-hunter sniffed the air, then nodded his great head at Eliza, baring teeth as long as daggers. Cautious and alert, they continued a little further. A human-sized hole had been smashed through the thick marble wall. They stepped through it into the Library.
The Library looked as if a giant had been rampaging through it. A great number of the vast, marble bookshelves had been pushed aside, some of them collapsed against the next stacks like toppled mountains. In the space created at the centre of the Library there was a large pile of books. On top of this pile stood Nia, wearing a red dress and a white fox-fur coat. Her hair was loose, spilling in red-gold curls over her shoulders and down her back, and she wore a jaunty white fur cap. She had a book open in her hand and was running her fingers along page after page very rapidly. The pages fluttered aside under her touch. She seemed to be concentrating deeply and didn’t notice them for a moment. Eliza saw Foss frozen against the wall, stone arms raised before his stone face as if fending off a blow, and her heart broke.
Without thinking what she was doing, she found the spear was flying from her hand straight for Nia’s heart. Nia’s head shot up. She reached out and caught the spear with one hand, stumbling back on her pile of books as she did so. There was a groaning moment while Nia clutched the spear, straining against its Magic without dropping the book in her other hand, and then it snapped in two and Eliza felt the Magic crumble.
“Why is it that whenever I see you, you’re terribly angry with me and in desperate need of a bath?” asked Nia, tossing aside the broken spear. “As a personal favour to me, next time you come for a confrontation, please have a shower first. Honestly, what have you been doing?”
“Speaking to the Oracle,” said Eliza grimly. Nia had not changed at all from Eliza’s memory of her. She was still utterly bewitching. There was no point running away from her now, so Eliza stood her ground.
“Fascinating, I’ve no doubt,” said Nia, arching an eyebrow at her. “I suppose that explains your outfit. And you’re still hanging about with the Shade – sweet. You know you can’t trust those things, though, don’t you?”
Eliza said nothing. A low growl rumbled deep in the half-hunter’s massive chest and he drew two short swords from his leather harness.
Nia laughed and looked Eliza up and down appreciatively. “Look how tall you’ve become, Smidgen! And your hair...well, your hair is still a fright but it’s lovely to see you anyway. I assume that since you greeted me with a less-than-friendly spear throw, you aren’t here to help me take my revenge.”
“Why are you taking revenge on Foss?” cried Eliza. She couldn’t bear to look again at her teacher made stone.
“Oh yes, have you seen the others too?” asked Nia. “I know it’s hard to tell the difference, but if you look at them very carefully, you’ll notice that they’re ever so slightly slower than usual.”