The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(60)
“You do not need to threaten me,” said Alvar. “You smell wonderful. What is that?”
“It’s a human-made perfume, would you believe,” she said with a laugh. “They’re surprisingly good at some things. Are you listening to me, Alvar?”
“It is a difficult thing you ask,” he said.
The waves darkened and rose up, the sky began to tremble, and he looked at her in surprise.
“Not so difficult,” she said. A wave crashed against the shore, and the water that splashed them was cold. “Perhaps you would prefer that both he and I were dead, but this cannot be. It will all be over in a day or so and I promise you I will be the victor. This king of yours is not well loved. His marriage to me left him very unpopular as we both know. The Faeries will support his exile. In return I will swear by the Oath of the Ancients never to enter the Realm of the Faeries again. You can accept my proposal now or you can wait for me to give you a demonstration of my power and accept it later. What will you do?”
“It is not enough,” said Alvar. “The Faeries will not back it.”
“The Festival of Light, when the Faeries swear allegiance, is the day after tomorrow. I will give the Faeries every reason to turn on their king, I promise you. Overthrown, he is in your power, and you must promise me his expulsion. Do not put my question aside again. What will you do?”
The waves were dark giants now, the sea black, the sky red. The chrysanthemums were growing, swaying, winding upwards. Nia’s eyes shone.
“Tell me what you wish me to do,” said Alvar.
~~~
To Eliza’s partial relief, the ravens did not follow when they flew south again. They found the Special Forces deployed by General Malone well before nightfall. It appeared that the General had not taken entirely seriously her assessment of the threat. He had sent a pitifully small troop to deal with the Kwellrahg and they had not fared well. When Eliza and Uri Mon Lil found them, they were in various stages of regrouping at the edge of the Great Sand Sea, just south of the border.
Uri Mon Lil needed reminding of what he was to do, but he then did it so flawlessly and effortlessly that Eliza was deeply impressed. She was able to make a simple barrier around herself quickly enough, but this! Soaring overhead on a dragon, this spindly little wizard with his wild hair, bright eyes flashing terribly, his arms above his head, used the spell they had retrieved from the Book of Barriers to enclose the hapless troops below in invisible cells. It was sheer luck that had brought her such an ally and Eliza was flooded with gratitude. The barriers would last a day or so at the most, but long enough, Eliza hoped, for her to do what needed to be done without interference. The troops thus contained, they flew on, looking out for the Kwellrahg. They did not have to look for long. It was staggering along the ground several miles beyond the military encampment, wings scorched and hanging useless after the battering it had received from rockets and artillery fire. Aysu and Obrad’s dragons were still pursuing it, circling overhead but keeping their distance. Eliza called the dragons together, glad to have the advantage of speed over the Kwellrahg. They were well beyond any inhabited areas and so they let the beast be and flew into the desert.
They had left behind them that morning a wintry, snow-covered plain, and now flew over an expanse of burnt sand. Claimed by no country or kingdom, the Great Sand Sea was home only to the Sorma. For thousands of years, cut off from the rest of the world, the Sorma had travelled in small tribes from one oasis to another. It was said that they could bring any being back from the very brink of death and that they could tame any creature, however fierce, however wild. After her rescue from Nia’s Arctic prison, Eliza’s mother Rea had been in desperate need of healing, and so it was to the vast loneliness of the desert and to his people the Sorma that Eliza’s father Rom Tok had brought her. Ten years of torment had left Rea deeply scarred within and broken without. Nia had stripped her of her power and her memory and these could not be returned to her. The Sorma could not replace all that she had lost; they could not give her back the strength she once had. But they could tame her wild terror. They could give her new strength and ease the pain. With the Sorma, Rea seemed to find some degree of peace. She could not remember how she had loved her husband once but she came to love him again. When she was with him, Eliza thought she seemed almost happy.
Rea’s relationship with her daughter was not so easily rebuilt. They remained careful with one another, both wishing for a closeness they had no idea how to work towards. Eliza spent most of her time with the Mancers in their Citadel, deep in her training as a Sorceress. It was not a journey her mother could make and Rom did not like to leave her, so Eliza saw her parents only when she came to the desert. It was always a joy and a wonder to see her mother alive. All through her childhood some part of her had longed for this woman of whom she had no memory, only a photograph. Now Rea was here, but she remained a stranger, a fantasy come inexplicably to life. Rea herself had trained with the Mancers and with Swarn; she had had a Guide, married and borne a child in secret, fought with Nia, but she remembered none of it. Her Guide had left her. And so Eliza could not turn to her mother for advice or answers to her many questions about the strange life she had been called to. She could not ask her mother why she had tried to hide her from the Mancers. All Rea had known and been belonged to Nia now. In a sense, Nia contained Eliza’s mother, or at least that part of Rea that had been, once, Eliza’s mother. Rom and the Mancers spoke sometimes of how powerful Rea had been, how full of life and joy. But all Eliza knew was the enfeebled stranger in the desert who hung off her father’s arm and woke them all in the night with her screams.