The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(74)
She wanted to find Charlie but encountered only fire and a terrible clashing sound when she sought him. Wings scorched, she flew back, then told herself, No, I cannot be burned. She flew through the fire into the deepest mist. There was nothing here. But that’s not true, she thought. Something is here. She flew into a tempest, where hail and wind assailed her, forced her back. But the storm was unreal. She drove through it into a wood full of snakes and thick webs and throttling vines. There was no up or down, no ground or sky, only the tangle of beast and branch and a slithering furious darkness that wrapped around her throat and squeezed-but she would not be strangled. There is no Guardian here, and I will pass. She found herself in a deep, mossy wood. Charlie and Nell were both there, asleep on beds of flowers, breathing softly. Swarn sat by a tree, her face buried in her hands. How had they all come to be in this place together? She wanted to go to them, ask them what had happened, but a wind came and caught her unguarded, swept her away. She fought it with all her might, blown across a landscape of strange, swirling rock formations to the wall of a great castle, where Nia stood alone, looking out into the night. The wind blew her into Nia’s oustretched hands.
“You’ve found your Guide,” said Nia, “and space won’t trap you now. But you’re not really here, Eliza. Can you feel this?” She snapped the wings of the bird and let it drop towards the ground, but there was no ground. Eliza plummeted and opened her eyes. The desert was dark and she could hear the furious roar of the Kwellrahg. She could still feel the broken wings on her back where there was nothing. She didn’t know what it meant but there was no time to think about it. First things first – the Kwellrahg. She had to get back to it.
~~~
They fought through the night and as the sun rose over the edge of the sandy horizon. Eliza held the reins to the Kwellrahg’s harness in one hand, her dagger in the other. As the day grew brighter the terrible beast regarded Eliza with flaming eyes, groaning pitifully as if to say, Just let me be. She felt all the forces of the universe aligned with her, flowing through her. She was not tired. She was not afraid. The barrier weakened and fell away. The Kwellrahg’s Magic was faltering too – the air around it was breathable, if thin. The Kwellrahg groaned deeply. She drove her dagger into it again and again, tears blurring her vision. She thought of the Cra, the countless numbers of them she had cut down with this very blade, the stink of their blood and the terrified screams of their deaths. She thought of Abimbola Broom. “I have two daughters,” he’d said, his face a desperate mask. And yet she had brought him to the Mancers to face punishment instead of to the Sorma for a chance at redemption. She remembered her grandmother. “No pity?” Where was her pity, then? She had been so sure, so righteous. Where had that righteousness come from? And where was it now? Her pity for the Kwellrahg washed through her, overwhelmed her. Distracted, distraught, she stumbled in the sand. A flash of fear cleared her mind and she readied herself for the blow the Kwellrahg would surely land.
But the Kwellrahg was hunched before her, silent, unmoving. All its will to fight had left it. She led it this way and that with the harness and it followed wearily. She forced it to climb the dunes after her, to crawl along the burning desert floor at whatever speed she determined. She brought it to lay on its belly before the Sorma.
“Now we will do what we can to ease its pain,” said her grandmother.
“Not yet,” said Eliza. “I’m not finished. I need the wizard.”
A bewildered Uri Mon Lil was brought to her.
“I do apologize –” he began, but Eliza cut him off with an exhausted smile.
“Dinnay apologize. Help me to rename this thing.”
“Ye-es,” he said hesitantly, his eyes fixing on hers. There was something so commanding in her gaze that he asked no more questions.
Eliza put her hands on either side of the Kwellrahg’s burning face. The sky went black with ravens and the air filled with the sound of beating wings. In this moving darkness she spoke to the Kwellrahg in the Language of First Days, while Uri Mon Lil knelt in the sand and gave all his own power to her task. It was not a spell or anything he understood. She was taking possession of the beast and he simply channeled his power into the tremendous Magic that flowed all about them. Sometimes the Kwellrahg snarled and tried to writhe out of her grasp, but mostly it lay very still and seemed to be listening. The sun completed its journey from east to west and disappeared from view. In the darkness the ravens rattled, Name him Urkleis, name him, take him, name him, name him Urkleis.
It was like entering the earth, being buried alive in its hot centre. She had to wrestle a thing she could not get her hands on, a dark tangle. She saw it with her mind’s eye but could hardly move towards it. The thing wheeled about freely while she was trapped, her mouth and eyes stopped. Her fingers felt like mud; how could they grasp? She heard her own voice and the words she spoke somewhere else, somewhere on a sandy strip on the surface of a tiny world, but they were such small words and the universe was endless and empty and uncaring. The dark swirling thing she had to catch was falling away from her, fast, and she would be alone out here, utterly alone. She was afraid, she burst the solid mass around her and it became an avalanche, sweeping her away, to a place where she would spin forgotten forever. The wizard’s Magic held her as the avalanche poured over her and that voice of a girl kept speaking, determined. Now she could move, and she dove through empty black space after the thing she could feel but no longer see. It had eternity within which to flee her. The wizard’s Magic carried her like a current in space and she called the thing to her and it came, Nia’s spell, it slithered and mocked and bound her hands and filled up her ears with its gleeful clamour. It was stronger than her, stronger by far. It twisted about her and squeezed, like an anaconda. See if you pop. See what comes out. See what you are made of, little girl.