The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(35)

“You are a perversion,” said Kyreth. “A twisted and evil thing. A mistake.”

Nia spun and took his throat in her hand, driving him to his knees at the edge of the wood. He choked for breath. The tiger circled them, tail lashing. Nia held him there for several minutes. The world began to shrink and spin and go black. Then she let go and he fell face-first to the grass, gasping for air.

“I came into the world,” said Nia in a voice sharp and glittering as a newly forged blade, “helpless and misused. I made myself the greatest Sorceress that has ever lived, one of the most powerful beings in all of Tian Di. You will see how powerful I am, Papa, and then you will be proud of your little girl.”

She turned and strode into the dark wood. Her Magic dragged him after her on his belly. Many-legged things scuttled over him and the low branches scratched his face. Soon they were on that silver shore and the Boatman emerged from the mist. Kyreth struggled to his feet.

The Boatman faced Nia. “Great Magic bars you from Crossing,” he said in that voice like a blade scraping china. “I cannot take you.”

“But you can, ghoul,” said Nia. “And you shall.”

She raised her hands. There came a flash so bright that Kyreth was blinded. The shore and the water and the line of dark trees were erased. There was only a white brilliance and the Language of First Days rolling across it like thunder, words of terrible power, as old as time. When Kyreth came to himself, the boat hung in a dazzling void and he was on it. Nia stood at the fore of the boat, whispering now, and her whispers were like wind in the sails, driving them through light into light, until the whiteness rushed upwards, blurring and thickening into a mist, and the sea emerged from it beneath them. She had broken the Magic that barred her from Tian Xia.

“There is an island between the worlds,” said Nia to the Boatman, a little breathless. “You know where it is, for it was created by this being in the boat with me. Long ago, you took him there many times and took him away again. But you would not take me away when I begged you to. I had to learn to command you. Do you remember, Boatman?”

“I remember,” said the Boatman.

“Take us there now.”

Kyreth lay in the boat and gazed into the white mist that obscured everything. It was still possible that the Triumvira would stop Nia in Tian Xia but would they help the Mancers then? The alliances were fragile; he could not count on them. He shut his eyes and rested. He would need his strength for what was coming. He slept. In his dreams he saw again and again a golden-haired girl, green eyes full of loathing, backing away from him as he moved towards her.

“Papa.” Nia’s voice was soft in his ear. “We’re here.”

Though he could see nothing through the heavy white mist, Kyreth felt the stone tower he had built himself on a black wedge of rock he had called out of the water. What a day that had been, the exhiliration, for the first time testing the extent of his own power. He could hear the hounds of the Crossing baying all around the tower.

They disembarked, stepping onto the wet rock they could not see, for even their bodies were lost in the mist. Only Kyreth’s eyes were visible, as the sun sometimes is on a foggy day, a haze of flame.

“Here is where my mother threw herself into the sea after you took me away from her,” said Nia.

Kyreth shook his head and then remembered Nia could barely see him. “She did not want to raise you any more than she wanted to live,” he said hoarsely. “I bound her with barriers throughout her pregnancy, kept her here, for your protection only.”

“Barriers,” said Nia in disgust. “This mist still makes me nauseous, centuries later, would you believe! Anyway, I haven’t brought you here to avenge my mother. I never knew her and it was her own fool fault if she was too weak to take revenge and decided she preferred drowning instead. No, Papa, you’re here because of what you did to me. Up we go.”

Kyreth followed Nia into the tower. What choice did he have? Steps wound up to a single chamber at the top.

“Home sweet home,” said Nia. “It was all sightless terror back then. The sound of the hounds all I had for friends...” She walked around the room as if in a trance, touching the walls she could not see. “You thought you could raise me to revere you. When that was an obvious failure, you thought to tame me like a little stray wildcat, break my spirit, and in that way make me your creature. But I wasn’t like my mother, was I? I didn’t give in so easily.”

Her voice had been coming from across the room and so Kyreth was startled by her hand, cool on his cheek.

“What do you think I’m going to do to you?”

“I expect that you intend to kill me,” he replied.

“And is there anything you’d like to say before I do? Any regrets you’d like to express?”

“I could not have predicted your nature,” Kyreth said coldly. “I did the worlds a great wrong, unknowing.”

“You did the worlds a wrong? What about me? What about my mother?”

“How little you understand,” said Kyreth. “I had a vision. I knew the Mancers could be greater than we were. The Shang Sorceress has always been our greatest asset, our warrior. But imagine a Sorceress protecting either side of the Crossing! Two lines, the Shang Sorceress and the Xia Sorceress, guided by the Mancers. We should never have allowed our influence in Tian Xia to lapse. What I did was for a greater good, or would have been, if only you had been other than what you are. My single regret is that I did not see sooner what you were destined to become and snuff you out.”