~ Chapter 2 ~

Eliza woke in what felt like an ocean of soft pillows and silk sheets. Straight above her was a high, gilded ceiling. There was a dizzying moment of incomprehension before she remembered the events in the mayor’s office. When it came back to her, she sat bolt upright. A Mancer was looking at her from the end of the bed with incandescent eyes.

“I am glad you are awake,” the Mancer said. “I am Anargul, manipulator of wood. We were not properly introduced, before.”

Eliza just stared at her a moment, too stunned to reply. Then she threw aside the covers and ran to the window, pushing open the ornate curtains to look outside. Sprawling grounds were walled in by a vast square of gleaming white buildings. A tower stood at each corner. She looked out onto woods and a lake and low grassy hills lined with rows of brilliantly flowering bushes and fruit-bearing trees. Colourful birds dipped and swooped and sang, and at the centre stood a white domed edifice. It was quite beautiful, though at that moment Eliza barely noticed the beauty, was only frightened by the strangeness of it all.

“Where am I?” she asked, spinning around to face the Mancer.

“If you mean where in Di Shang, the location is not fixed. It moves,” said Anargul. “But this place is the Mancer Citadel.”

Eliza took a deep breath and managed to keep her voice steady as she asked, “Is my da here?”

“A visit will be arranged soon,” said Anargul. “Now you must dress yourself. His Eminence the Supreme Mancer is waiting to see you.”

Eliza looked down and saw that she was wearing a white nightgown. Her clothes were washed and pressed and sitting on a chair next to the bed. It was bright day outside, but she had no idea if she had slept for an hour or even for days. She turned away from Anargul and dressed herself quickly, closing her teeth over her fear, grinding down on it with her jaw. She willed her eyes dry and her voice steady and her gaze hard and sharp as an axe.

“I’m ready, aye,” she said to Anargul.

The moment she said it an ear-splitting sound rent the air, a wail so shrill and powerful that Eliza fell to her knees with her hands over her ears. She felt Anargul’s large hand close around her wrist. The brilliant face of the Mancer was transformed, twisted with fear, white and loathsome. Her voice leaped into Eliza’s mind, What have you done?

Eliza cried, “Nothing! I didnay do anything!” but she couldn’t hear her own voice over the siren. The sound stopped all at once and the silence was like a great muffling blanket. Eliza was still on her knees, shaking. Anargul yanked her to her feet and without another word pulled her out into the hallway. Eliza had to half-run to keep up with the long, swift strides of the Mancer. The hallway was broad and tall enough that a Giant would be able to walk down it quite comfortably, which gave Eliza the unsettling feeling that this place was not designed for beings like her at all. Anargul led – or rather, pulled – Eliza down a staircase and along yet another hallway that seemed to stretch on towards the end of the worlds. There were no doors, no windows, no pictures, just the white marble of the walls and ceiling and a thick red carpet underfoot that swallowed the sound of their footsteps. Anargul stopped suddenly and knocked on the wall. Where she knocked, the marble seemed to ripple and then a door appeared. Eliza blinked, trying to take this in. But there was no time to wonder at it. Anargul opened the door and firmly directed Eliza through it. Then she shut the door behind her, leaving Eliza alone with the formidable being within.

~

“Eliza Tok,” said a voice like a great bell. “I have waited too long to meet you.”

They were in a spacious, wood-paneled study lined with bookshelves on two sides. Blank scrolls hung on the far wall, around a stone fireplace. There were two chairs facing the broad marble desk in the centre of the room, and behind the desk sat a Mancer. The brilliance of his eyes lit the room like sunlight bursting through cloud, and so she could not look closely at his face. What she saw of him, at first, were simply his powerful gold hands folded before him on the desk.

“Sit, won’t you?” His voice reverberated in her very bones and at the roots of her hair. “Are you hungry?”

“Nay,” she said. She didn’t want to sit, but her fear was greater than her anger now and she obeyed. The chair was much too large for her and her feet dangled foolishly off the ground.

“But you had better eat, I think,” said the Mancer, and he smiled. Squinting at his face through the brightness, she glimpsed a row of gleaming white teeth. The smile was brief, crumbling almost as soon as it began. “I am Kyreth, Eliza Tok.”

“What do you want with me?” she demanded. Her voice sounded small and weak to her but it was comforting, somehow, just to hear herself.

It was difficult to make out his expression, but she could have sworn he looked puzzled. At that moment, the door behind her opened again and a small woman with grey streaks in her dark hair came bustling in with a tray of food. She very efficiently unfolded four long legs from the tray, so that it became a little table, and placed it in front of Eliza. It contained a plate of steaming waffles smothered in berries and whipped cream, as well as sausages and eggs and fried tomatoes and a big mug of hot chocolate.

“Missus Ash,” Kyreth intoned, by way of introduction. “She will take care of you, Eliza Tok.”

“Oh,” said Eliza, at a loss for words. Seeing such an ordinary-looking woman in a place like this was almost more surprising than being surrounded by Mancers, or doors appearing in walls, or sirens going off. Missus Ash gave Eliza a quick, friendly smile and then said cheerfully to Kyreth, “Let me know if she needs anything else, aye,” almost as if he were just a man and not this terrifying being with blazing eyes. Kyreth gave a single nod and Missus Ash left them alone again. The archipelegan aye had startled Eliza and she stared after the woman a moment, wishing she had stayed.

Reluctantly, she forced her gaze back towards the Mancer.

“Why am I here?” she asked again, more forcefully.

“Has it not been explained to you?” The Supreme Mancer sounded shocked.

Eliza couldn’t remember if it had been or not. What she had heard had not made a great deal of sense.

“There’s been a huge mistake, aye,” she ventured. “They think I can do Magic, and something about my ma, but Ma could nay do any Magic and neither can I.”

“I am sorry,” Kyreth said. “It must seem as if we have kidnapped you. To be accurate, I suppose we have kidnapped you, but believe me when I tell you it was absolutely necessary, that of course you will see your father soon, and that you will come to understand the necessity of our actions.”

Hearing again that she would see her father calmed her slightly. The smell of the hot chocolate got the better of her and she raised the mug to her lips. It wasn’t as if they were likely to try to poison her, after all. It was the perfect temperature, hot and soothing, but not so hot as to burn her tongue. It was the best, richest, most chocolaty hot chocolate she had ever tasted.

“I will answer all of your questions, Eliza, but first we have an urgent matter to take care of. The sound you heard a few minutes ago was the Citadel telling us that Unauthorized Magic was being done on the premises. I suspect...indeed, I hope...that it was something you did. Perhaps accidentally. Before you heard the siren, Eliza, did you try to do something?”

“I’d just...I didnay know where I was,” said Eliza. “I was getting dressed.”

She realized she was terribly hungry after all and began on the waffles. No point starving herself, after all. They were delicious.

The Mancer’s voice was heavy. “It is very important that you be honest with me, Eliza. Did you do any Magic?”

In spite of her fear and confusion, Eliza almost wanted to laugh. It was all such an absurd, hideous mistake, her being here. She was afraid of what he would do, but she said again, “I told you, I can nay do Magic! Trust me, I’ve tried! My best friend and I used to...” She trailed off, because he didn’t seem to be listening any more and likely wouldn’t be interested in the half-serious attempts she and Nell had made to mix potions.

“You are safe for the time being,” he muttered, looking past her. She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her, or to himself, or even to somebody else she couldn’t see. This last possibility gave her a little shiver of fright. Then he looked straight at her with those radiant eyes and she found she had to look away immediately.

“For many hundreds of generations, the Mancers have guarded and guided the Shang Sorceress from infancy to adulthood, until she bears a daughter fathered by a Mancer,” Kyreth pronounced, as if he were giving her a set speech. “Once she has a daughter and the line is secure, she can perform her duty as humankind’s champion. Since the separation of the worlds, her task has been to guard the Crossing and banish those who do not belong here. Your mother, Rea, was my daughter, Eliza, and so I am your grandfather.”

At this, Eliza almost choked on her last bit of waffle. It simply couldn’t be true. She rejected it absolutely, horrified.

“I hope you will not always feel that way,” he said softly, and she realized he knew what she was feeling. Ashamed and confused, she stared down at her plate.

“We had intended Obrad for your mother,” continued Kyreth. “The manipulator of earth has no seasonal ascendancy and so his power does not wax and wane as much as the others. He is strong and young and we hoped it would prove a good match. But your mother was difficult. I say this as her father and teacher and someone who loved her. She was remarkably gifted. Such power! We had not seen it for generations. She will be a legend, Eliza, like Zara who slew the Demon army in the Early Days, or Lahja who obtained the Gehemmis from the Horogarth. But Rea was willful. She kept secrets, and your father was one of them. Had she married Obrad, their child would have been born in our care, raised in full knowledge of her birthright. But she married your father in secret and hid you from us with Magic.” He looked down at the marble desktop for a moment, and Eliza felt the relief of being released from his gaze. “You are already twelve years old, untaught, entirely ignorant, fathered by an ordinary human. It remains to be seen whether you possess the full power of your foremothers, but nonetheless, you are the Shang Sorceress. It has taken us ten years since her death to find you, ten years during which agents and spies of that pythoness in her Arctic prison have also been searching for you. Our duty now is to protect you and to teach you what we can. That is why we have brought you here, Eliza.”

“Wait, do you mean the Xia Sorceress was looking for me?” asked Eliza, dumbstruck. The entire recitation had sent her mind reeling, but this last piece of information was just too much.

“We do not use that title for her here,” Kyreth said with an angry flash, and she knew then she never wanted to anger him again.

“But why would she be looking for me?”

“You are far more important to Di Shang than you realize,” said Kyreth, with another of his brief, crumbling smiles.

Eliza found this answer entirely unsatisfactory, but before she could say anything else there was a knock, and several Mancers entered the room. Each of them had the symbol of a white bear on their robes.

“These are manipulators of metal,” said Kyreth, rising. “They have something for you.”

“Miss Tok, if you would please wear this around your neck,” said one of the Mancers with a brief bow. Eliza jumped off the chair, feeling very small indeed among the towering Mancers. Their eyes cast her in a pool of bright light. The Mancer who had spoken was offering her a gold pendant shaped like a star with many points, hanging on a heavy gold chain.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It is a barrier star,” said Kyreth. “It will keep you safe. It has a great many powers and uses, but while you are wearing it within the Citadel walls you can neither be harmed nor removed from this place, and none can take it from you. Not even I could take it from you once you have put it on.”

“But I’ll be able to take it off, nay?” said Eliza, rather alarmed by this.

“Yes,” said Kyreth. “But you must not remove it until we are sure that it is safe to do so. This is very important, Eliza. Do you understand me?”

Eliza nodded. She took the pendant obediently and hung it around her neck. She half expected to feel something, a charge of some kind, an indication that this was not just any pendant. But she felt nothing. It was even heavier than it looked.

The manipulators of metal filed out, each one bowing to Kyreth as they left.

“I will join you in the Inner Sanctum,” he said to them. Then he turned towards Eliza again. “I have work to do, but we will speak more tomorrow. Today Missus Ash will show you the grounds.”

“When can I go home?” Eliza asked.

“Try to think of this as home for a while,” said Kyreth, and her heart sank.

Missus Ash appeared again and picked up Eliza’s empty tray, the little legs folding up neatly.

“Come on, lah,” she said. “Let’s get you washed and then have a stroll, shall we?”

Eliza turned hopefully towards Kyreth once more. “But my da will come? I’ll see him?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Soon, Eliza.” He gestured for them to leave, and Eliza followed the woman out the door, which rippled and disappeared when they closed it behind them.