The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(30)
A new plan formulated quickly in her mind and she gave her commands now. “Dragons of the Mancers,” she called in the Language of First Days, fumbling for the right words, “Two of you must delay the monster. Drive it away from the...centres of living. One of you must go to the Xia Sorceress’s former prison in the, um, land of snow. Bring me the Book of Barriers.”
The wounded dragon was hunched on the stony ground now, staring up at her.
“Find refuge,” she called down as Ka’s dragon circled anxiously above it.
The dragons obeyed immediately, the injured dragon and one other veering north and two following the beast south. Nia’s creature was bounding along the earth now, using it wings to glide several feet with each stride before touching the ground again with scalding hooves. The two dragons might be able to slow it down for a while, Eliza reasoned, but they would likely tire more quickly doing battle. It could hurt them but they could not hurt it. They would need help to stop it. The Mancers could not help her and the journey to Tian Xia would take too long but there were still some powers in Di Shang she could call on.
Ka’s dragon looked back at her with one glittering eye.
“To Kalla,” she told it.
~~~
While Eliza flew towards the capital on Ka’s dragon, Nell was heading away from Kalla on a train to Elmount. It was one of the modern, high-speed Confortare trains. She had come out at the beginning of the semester on one of the old trains. It had been cramped and the air-conditioning had been broken but on the Confortare even the second class berths were relatively comfortable. A kindly attendant in a red blazer came around offering hot tea or coffee every hour or so. For the first few hours of the journey she enjoyed the view out the window of the world blanketed in snow, looking eagerly at the prosperous towns and cities they passed through. But now they were roaring along a black tunnel through the mountains and would be for some time.
End of term exams were finished at last and Nell was confident she had done well. Better, she hoped, than Oscar Van Holt, her main rival for top of the class. Now her mind was on other things, such as the outfit she’d bought in Kalla for Winter Festival, and whether Charlie and Eliza would be there or off on some adventure without her. Dearly as Nell loved her friends, it caused her no end of grief to be shut out of the Magic and excitement of their lives. Eliza was a Sorceress and Charlie was a Shade and their lives were entirely made up of strange adventures, whereas she, Nell, just had to go to school like an ordinary child. If they weren’t in Holburg, Winter Festival would be entirely spoiled for her. She would only be able to think of what she was missing. But if they were there, they would tell her fantastic stories and Charlie would take her flying when everybody else was asleep.
With nothing to look at out the windows now, Nell opened a novel on her lap and pretended to read, while actually examining her fellow passengers. The train to Elmount was mainly full of people returning to the archipelago for Winter Festival. Elmount was one of those cities that islanders and vacationers passed through but where nobody actually seemed to live. Although of course there must be people on the train going home to Elmount as well. Nell shared her berth with an elderly couple and a strange-looking young man with a pale, narrow face and a mop of dark hair. Every time she looked at him, he twitched nervously and glanced at her, as if he could feel her gaze.
The elderly man was reading a newspaper he’d bought at the last stop. Now he folded it up and put it away, saying loudly to his wife, “Nothing new here! Abimbola Broom’s trial and the Cra are still all over the front page, aye.”
Nell brightened immediately, leaning towards them. “What’s that about the Cra?” she asked. The woman looked disapproving, as if this was not a suitable subject for a young girl to take such an interest in, but her husband seemed quite happy to talk about it.
“Lah, you remember a couple of months back they disappeared. Mancers got them, that’s the official report, aye. Almost all of them, all at once, which makes you wonder... Lah, of course we owe our very world to the Mancers and so it doesnay do to sound ungrateful, but if they could just round them all up like that, why didnay they do it before, I wonder?”
“I’m sure the Mancers have reasons for everything they do,” said his wife placidly.
“Lah, that’s what’s in the papers,” said the man cheerfully, ignoring his wife. “But at the newsstand they were saying there’ve been attacks all over the Republic just today, aye. No mention of that in the papers. Say what you will about Abimbola Broom, but the papers have gone downhill since he was put on trial.”
“If it just happened today, how would it be in the papers already?” his wife asked pointedly.
“Attacks by the Cra?” asked Nell.
“Nobody knows,” said the man smugly.
The young man emitted a high-pitched laugh that made them all jump.
“Except those who were attacked!” he said. “They know.”
“Aye,” said the elderly man gruffly, as if he did not think much of this contribution.
“Whatever it is, the Mancers will protect us,” said his wife. “But it’s probably nothing, if it’s nay in the papers. Just gossip.”
“You said yourself, it cannay be in the papers yet if it just happened!” the man said belligerently.
Nell looked out the window at the roaring blackness. Part of her was very excited, as always when Something Was Happening, but at the same time her heart was breaking. If Something Was Happening, Charlie and Eliza would almost certainly be in the thick of it and would not come to Holburg.