The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(77)

“You said you thought this place had a kind of dark undertone to it, before.”

“Oh! Yes. Yes. It does.”

“What did you think I meant?” Charlie sounded hurt.

“I dinnay know. I’m sorry.” She sighed, wondering what to say to make things normal between them again. Part of her wished she could forget what had happened on the lake. It had been such a strange and powerful feeling and she had been unprepared for it. “I’m glad you showed me, Charlie.” She didn’t have to explain what she meant. But she wasn’t telling the whole truth and he knew it.

“It’s nay really a big secret. I just thought...because we’re friends...” he trailed off.

“I know,” she said.

“Come this way!” called Jalo. “Look!”

They followed him down a long glittering tunnel made entirely of diamonds.

“The correct use of diamonds can increase the power of a Curse exponentially,” said Jalo cheerfully, waving his fire stick so the light at the end of it leaped off the glittering walls.

“Your mother seems partial to them,” said Charlie. Jalo gave him a sharp look. Charlie looked back blankly. His hair had fallen over his eyes again.

“Are you hungry?” Jalo asked Nell and Ander. “I have heard that humans and animals suffer greatly from hunger and must eat frequently.”

“That’s true,” said Charlie feelingly. Nell and Ander agreed that they were hungry as well. Jalo led them out of the mine shaft and they found themselves in a clearing at the top of a hill. The hillside was covered with silver-leafed olive trees and the sky was pale blue with wisps of white cloud, like the sky of Di Shang.

“Does this make you feel at home?” Jalo asked Nell. To her surprise, the familiar sky made her want to weep. She wondered how her parents were. They must be beside themselves with worry for her.

“Yes,” she managed. “Thank you.”

A blanket was laid with soft bread and cheese and bowls of olives. There was a jug of wine as well, and four jewelled goblets.

“Dinnay know that you two should be drinking this stuff,” said Ander to Charlie and Nell as they filled their goblets happily.

“I’m much older than you are,” said Charlie indignantly.

Nell sipped at the goblet. The wine was smooth and rich. Every mouthful made her feel warmer, calmer, kinder. She looked at Charlie and felt a smile stretch wildly across her face. He gave a short laugh and looked away, down the hillside.

They remained there, eating and drinking and talking languidly, until peals of bells broke open the sky. The olive trees swayed and bent as if beneath a great wind, though the air was still. Black-clothed guards strode into the clearing. Tariro swept behind them in an elaborate scarlet dress.

“It’s time,” she said to Jalo, and then looked at the others. “Are you bringing them, too?”

“I’m sure they would be interested...” Jalo began. Nell watched him a bit pityingly. He seemed afraid of his mother. She couldn’t imagine what that must be like.

Tariro waved her hand as if to say she didn’t care and just hearing about it was a bother.

“I’ll arrange for an extra morrapus,” said Jalo humbly.

The morrapus was an orb of silk fixed around a delicate gold cage the size of a small room. The bottom was filled with cushions for the comfort of the travellers. Snowy-plumed myrkestras pulled it through the air. Jalo rode in his mother’s morrapus. Swarn, Ander, Nell and Charlie rode together in another. It did not feel like flying at all, but more like floating. Ander began to feel quite nauseous as they bobbed through the air and had to huddle at the bottom of the morrapus with his head between his knees.

“Did you have any luck today, preparing the spell?” Nell asked Swarn.

“What spell?” scoffed Swarn. “There is nothing to prepare. I do not yet know what Nia has done to the Mancers or if I can break it. I must see them before I can try to do anything at all.”

“But Jalo said they had given you a place to work,” Nell said, perplexed.

“A polite way of saying they kept me confined. They did not want me wandering freely. You may be considered harmless, but I am not.”

Swarn’s jaw was set and she did not seem to want to talk any more. Nell pulled the silk away from the gold webbing so she could see out. The sky was full of billowing silken morrapi of every colour imaginable. They flew over narrow spiralling mountains with shining bridges, miles long, slung between them. She could see foaming waterfalls and breath-taking gorges, dark, gleaming lakes surrounded by thick woods, and high in the mountains, hundreds upon hundreds of castles with swooping rooftops, their brilliant tiles shining in the golden light.

The morrapi were converging on an enormous, sheer white rock that towered over the mountains. Nell felt again that unsettling perceptual shift, as if the mountains were only jagged stones, the castles upon them mere toys. A strangely beautiful structure covered the flat top of the rock, its intricate walls and elegant curved rooftops giving the impression of a giant bird about to take flight. The morrapus landed within the outermost walls, in a crowd of silken orbs and white myrkestras. Jalo rushed to help Nell out. He led her and her companions through the crowds toward a pair of giant crimson doors, Ander staggering queasily, Swarn and Charlie looking guarded. They had to wait to file in past rows of long-legged silver-hounds. Nell felt the cold nose of one of the hounds touch her hand as it sniffed her, searching for silver. She looked into its bottomless eyes and shuddered. The lean hounds moved past them, down the line.