The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(36)

“Well, never mind,” said Nia with a sigh. “I’m more interested in your suffering than your repentance. I wonder if you’ve ever known true fear? When I was just a small thing, you were all I knew of the world, and you meant me ill. Shall I show you what I mean?”

Now he felt her hands on either side of his face. His strength and certainties poured out of him like blood from a cut vein. He sank to the cold floor. Her voice seemed to come from the stone and the mist, a thousand voices in one, whispering, “Fear was my first lesson, my only lesson from you. I am its master now and will teach you to crawl before it. You will live in that moment when fear reaches its most terrible crescendo, the moment it turns your blood to ice, from now until your death.”

As she spoke, terror swept through him, a mad, reasonless dread. He pressed himself against the wall, clawed at his chest. He could not see, he could not see what was coming, his matchless foe, his undoing. He tried to scream. His mouth opened wide but no sound came out of him.

“I am done with you,” said Nia.

She turned and left the tower, breaking into a run halfway down the steps. She boarded the boat and was seized by a shudder that shook her from head to toe. Her tiger came and pressed against her. She buried her hands in the soft white fur of its neck.

“Go,” she said to the Boatman. “To Tian Xia.”

The Boatman obeyed her, as he had done centuries before, when she was just thirteen years old, crackling with a power that could no longer be contained and never to be mastered again.





Chapter


9

Nell ran down the stairs, jumping over Marti and Alban in their sleeping bags, passing her snoring father on the sofa, and out the battered screen door into the backyard. Charlie lay where she had seen him fall, breathing in shallow gasps. Something was wafting out of his chest like smoke.

“What’s happening to you? What’s the matter?” She knelt over him and put a hand to his clammy forehead.

“The Sorceress is free.”

Nell’s stomach executed a highly uncomfortable somersault.

“Where’s Eliza?” she asked. When he didn’t answer immediately, his head lolling to the side, she asked again, “Where IS Eliza?” and shook him by the shoulders, which made him gasp. A plume of the smoky substance poured from his chest. Nell pulled herself together and ran back inside for towels and water. She pressed the towels to his chest to try and stanch whatever was leaking out of him and raised him up so his neck and head were on her knees. She held the glass of water to his lips and he drank from it.

“She’s nay hurt,” he managed to say when he could speak again. “With any luck she’s gone to Tian Xia...for help from the Triumvira.”

“Why didnay you go with her?” demanded Nell. “You’re hurt! You could have gone to the Cave, aye!”

Charlie shook his head and swallowed some more water. “No time. I would have...slowed her down. Couldnay have made the Crossing...like this.”

“What happened to you? Why did you come here?”

He tilted his head back so he could look right up at her. “I’m dying, aye,” he said. “I didnay want to be alone.”

She looked down at Charlie, at his face white with pain but so very calm, and the moment seemed to stretch on forever. Then she tore her eyes away and looked up at the stars. Her mind worked quickly. A doctor would be useless and the doctor on the island was a drunk anyway. The Sorma might be able to help but then again, they might not. And how would she get to the desert, how would she find them without Eliza? Although she did not remember the Crossing to Tian Xia herself, she had forced Charlie and Eliza to tell her about it many times, how she had almost died on the way and how the healing cave had restored her to perfect health. The cave had healed Eliza’s arm too, which had been crushed by a hound of the Crossing. The cave could save Charlie now.

“You’re nay going to die, Charlie,” she said firmly. “Just hold the towels to your chest and wait here.”

“Dinnay go,” he pleaded as she shifted him off her lap and back on to the grass. “It’s all right, I’m nay scared. I’ve been around forever. Long enough, aye. I just didnay want to die in some dark corner without any friends.”

“Charlie, stop it. I told you, you’re nay going to die. Just wait. I’ll be right back!”

“Nell!” he called after her, but she was off, running out the back gate and down the road to where Ander Brady and his mother lived.

The streets in Holburg were generally empty after eight o’clock and it was past midnight now. Everybody was sleeping. Her bare feet slapping against the road was the only sound besides the crickets in the gardens. When she reached Ander’s house she ran straight up the front steps and rang the bell several times, then pounded on the door for good measure.

A light went on in one of the rooms and a few moments later Ander appeared at the door in his pajamas, looking sleepy and confused.

“Nell?” He squinted at her in the dark of the porch.

“I need help,” Nell told him. “I need the helicopter and I dinnay have time to explain.”

He frowned and rubbed his chin, then ducked his head at her and sniffed. “You’ve been drinking!” he said, appalled. “Your parents let you drink?”

“I dinnay think they really remember how old I am,” she said impatiently. “Mister Brady, please listen to me. You know what we saw on the news, General Malone talking about Tian Xia attacks?”