The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(43)
“Yes! These first pages explain to me that I married a Storm Seamstress from the Isles of Shol and our daughter, when she grew up, was the most beautiful woman in all of Tian Xia.” Eliza looked at him doubtfully but he carried on as if he hadn’t noticed. “Our daughter is a Storm Seamstress like her mother. Having a wizard for a father meant that her storms were in a class all of their own. Thunder like mighty drums, lightning that danced! She made wind that sang as it blew and ice crystals that rained down like diamonds falling from the sky! We were very proud of our strong and lovely daughter and imagined she would do great things. Word of her storms spread as far as the realm of the Faeries, on the opposite end of the world! The King of the Faeries called forth a storm from her to see it for himself. So taken was he with this storm that he summoned my daughter to his kingdom, that he might meet her. My daughter, as I said, is known to be one of the great beauties of the worlds. I knew what would happen if the King laid eyes on her. I had heard many things about this King. I had heard he was cruel and corrupt and I did not want him to marry my daughter. My daughter was frightened and begged me to help her, for refusing such a king would mean death. So before she went, I worked a spell to make her appear homely. Such a fool I was, to think I could deceive the Faeries with Illusion! I knew little of Faeries, then, but they are immune to Illusion!”
Eliza nodded and rolled her eyes a bit, thinking that Lil must be very remote indeed if the wizard did not know that.
“The King saw through my spell,” Uri Mon Lil carried on. “He saw my daughter in all her true loveliness and he declared that she would be his wife. My own wife and I despaired. We could not allow our daughter to be enslaved to such a being and so I tried again. I travelled to the realm of the Faeries, ostensibly to meet the King who had claimed my child. Once there, I had my daughter obtain a piece of his hair and I tried to cast a spell on him, a sort of...anti-love spell.”
“There’s no such thing as a love spell,” said Eliza, “so how could there be an anti-love spell?”
“It is a form of Confusion made to work on the mind and affect the will,” conceded the wizard, consulting his book again. “Again, I failed. When the King suddenly changed his mind about my daughter, his advisors realized that some Magic had been worked on him. I was put in a dungeon and they brought in a witch to break my spell. I felt sure I would be put to death for daring to cast a spell on the King of the Faeries, but my daughter Gautelen begged for my life and the King deemed it unseemly to murder his father-in-law. Instead, I was punished with this Curse and sent back to Lil. Every twenty-nine minutes, I forget...everything.” He consulted his book again, reading rapidly, and then continued. “As you may know, the King of the Faeries may take as many wives as he pleases and selects which wife shall be queen for a hundred years. The King married my daughter a year ago and declared her the Queen of the Faeries, the first queen since the Xia Sorceress who is not, herself, a Faery. I have not seen her since. I came here hoping beyond hope that the great Books of the Mancers might teach me some way to free my daughter. To enable me to make this journey and keep my mission in mind, my wife made me this book, which I have been adding to. I gave a lock of my daughter’s baby hair, all I had left of her, to the Boatman at the Lake of the Crossing. I thought I could give one of the Books of the Mancers to return once I had found the solution but these books are empty, worthless, and there is nothing I can do to help my daughter!” Uri Mon Lil’s entire body sagged with sorrow once again.
“If together we can free the Mancers,” said Eliza, “I’m sure they’ll be grateful and willing to help you.”
Hope lit up the tiny creased face of the wizard as she spoke and his eyes shone. “Yes! Yes indeed! I will help you in whatever way I can.”
“Good. Do you know the spells of Deep Seeing?” Eliza asked.
Uri Mon Lil opened his book and glanced over the first page again. “There are spells at the back,” he said cheerfully, flipping through the pages at the back of his tattered little book. “Let me see, let me see. Simple Illusions. That’s not right. Useful, though, I’ll bet. Flight with staff, aha!” He snatched up the knobbed staff lying at his feet triumphantly. “I was wondering how I’d gotten here! Moving objects large and small. Hum. Potions, quite a number of potions.” He turned a few more pages. “Simple barriers. Seeking. Oh dear, I don’t think there’s anything here about Deep Seeing.” His face fell. “Of course, I must have known how to do it once. But I can’t remember.”
Eliza’s mind was racing. “It doesnay matter if you cannay remember,” she decided. “You still have power, aye. I know how the spell works and I’ll teach it to you. Then we’ll do it together.”
She was a bit anxious, as they didn’t have long before Uri Mon Lil would forget again whatever she taught him. She led the wizard to where Foss towered above them both in stone, and she allowed herself to look at the figure closely for the first time. His face was a mask of horror, his arms flung up, and she wondered what his final thoughts had been. He had sent the summons for her to return to the Citadel, hoping to protect her. How horrified he must have been, then, when Nia appeared, and he realized that in fact he was summoning Eliza to face her. She stepped around Foss to the wall directly behind him and put her hands against it.
“We need to ask the wall to show us its memory. We’re looking for the moment in time, not very long ago, when this Mancer was turned to stone.”