The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(73)

“We’d love to,” said Nell, looking at Charlie. He looked back at her a bit sadly.

“Sure,” he assented.





Chapter


18

Rea woke up screaming. Instantly she was in Rom’s arms, his mouth against her ear, his voice telling her, It’s just a dream, it’s a bad dream, his body strong and close. But this was no dream. She had lost herself and would never find herself again. All she had been, all she had loved and fought for, all she had known and believed had been taken from her. Her entire life, her daughter. That tremendous power she had relied on, revelled in, had proved in the end insufficient, buckling and breaking before a greater power. She knew the horror of defeat, of finding one’s strength wanting. She had seen it again in the Kwellrahg’s eyes, her own fear, her own rage, her own absolute helplessness. She remembered only this – that Nia had broken her, torn her away from herself, stripped her down to next to nothing. All that remained was this lost ghost of what she had been, and she would walk the world so, always. It was not enough to have so little of oneself. It was not enough on which to try to build a new self. It was not enough even to have the ones you loved around you still when the full richness of that love and all its history was lost to you. It was no dream, the thousands of losses, her self yanked out of her piece by piece. She screamed until her voice gave out. Ry made her drink some mixture she choked on, the Sorma gathered to sing to her, burning herbs around the tent, and Rom clung to her and rocked her back and forth – but it meant nothing at all. They could not help her. Nia had been stronger and Rea had lost the battle. She had lost everything.

~~~

When Eliza returned to the camp, a circle of five Sorma spirit-speakers were gathered around the Kwellrahg, just outside the barrier. Three of them sang in low voices while one kept up a steady drumbeat and another played a wooden flute – a soaring, brilliant sound that swooped and spun over the gentle voices and the deep rhythm of the drum. Ry had placed three bowls of herbs on the ground around the barrier and they were burning now, their fragrant smoke pouring over the beast, who twitched restlessly, angrily.

“You feel better,” said Lai when Eliza joined them. It was not a question so Eliza did not answer it. She felt the pull of the Kwellrahg, the nightmares and panics it sought to draw from her. She gave them up willingly, let the burden of fear fall from her. She remembered what Nia had said about fear. True freedom is the freedom from fear. Eliza had faced before the loss of all she loved, all she was, and now she would face it again. She knew what had to be done. She knew she might fail but that was barely the point. It was just a matter of doing, now.

“I’m ready,” she said, and stepped into the barrier. The air went out of her lungs.

~~~

Swarn had taught Eliza what the Sorma knew also – in battle, balance trumps strength. What she had understood as an idea, yet struggled to enact with her body, became now her physical nature. A profound change had taken place in the desert by the tree. She did not need to untangle its meaning yet. She knew simply that she could rely on her Magic, that it would not let her down.

The Kwellrahg lunged at her and she swung aside, letting it crash against the barrier. She drove her dagger into its side and withdrew it. The monster was slowed and disoriented by the herbs of the Sorma, its innate viciousness quelled somewhat by their music. It stumbled and roared but it could not strike her with its powerful spiked fists, it could not catch her. She circled it for hours, letting it fall again and again, jabbing it with her dagger and dancing out of its reach. Whenever her lungs began to ache she leaped out of the barrier to draw in a breath, for the Sperre-Tahore contained the Magic of the beast, including its ability to draw the oxygen out of the air around it.

She did not meet the force of the Kwellrahg with force of her own, but with her dagger pulled it in the same direction it was lunging, so its own momentum brought it crashing forward into the sand. She rallied. When it was losing its balance or staggering away, she used all the force she had to push it back. Again and again she drove it down to the ground, then let it rise again. The Kwellrahg grew ragged and weary and furious. The barrier was weakening but she spared no thought for that. Lava flowed from the beast’s many wounds. The vast dome of sky overhead faded to black and the stars appeared, countless numbers of them sprinkled across the darkness. She stumbled slightly in the sand and stepped outside the barriers quickly.

“I need to rest,” she said. The spirit speakers were waiting with a spiked harness. They went to work immediately. She watched for a moment, pitying the beast, as they skipped about it, quick on their feet, steady on the moving sand. It was not difficult for them to fix the harness around the Kwellrahg. The spikes carried a soothing drug that flowed when the harness remained loose. But they also held a pain-inducing poison that was activated by excess pressure. Any beast ensnared by the contraption learned quickly to obey the pull of the harness, to maintain the flow of the soothing drug and to avoid the poison.

Eliza walked a little ways in the dark and then sat down on the cooling sand. She closed her eyes and felt her mind take flight on dark wings. She flew with a great flock along a canyon by night. They were of one mind, turning and dipping together. It was electrifying, the power of her own wings bearing her up, her sheer lightness in the air. She had always been a passenger, too heavy for the sky, borne up by another. Now she truly understood the joy of flight. She swooped up along the great white wall of the Mancer Citadel and saw below the dead dragon in the grounds, a few of the Cra creeping this way and that. Somewhere here, her grandmother Selva was kept alive, in secret. This was something to do with the Gehemmis she had read about. The Mancers and their books, the Mancers and their secrets, the Mancers and their dominion over Di Shang – her grandmother and her mother and how many before them had sacrificed themselves to serve the Mancers. It was a noble heritage, Foss told her, but, dearly as she loved him, she could no longer agree. She veered away from the Citadel.