The Unmaking by Catherine Egan Page B

ladder.
    “Thank you,” she murmured.
    Rhianu’s footsteps retreated back the way they had come. Eliza felt a clammy ripple of fear creep along her skin. She had been here before and the Oracle had not come that time. She was not much looking forward to what might be simply a long, pointless wait in the dark, alone. But she climbed down the ladder and stood in the darkness. The ground was packed earth, the walls cold stone. The last time she had come here, she had been entirely powerless, with the Mancers hunting her. So much had changed since then.
    By measuring it out in paces, she found the centre of the octagonal room and sat down cross-legged there. She stared into the darkness, thinking about the ravens and what she would ask the Oracle. Her concentration was occasionally interrupted by unwanted thoughts, such as what might be looking at her now in the dark or how outraged Charlie had been at the idea of her marrying Obrad. She tried to shut that memory out, as it just confused her. She was the Shang Sorceress, not a schoolgirl. She had more important things to think about, she told herself scoldingly.
    As it turned out, she had a great deal of time to think. When she began to be terribly hungry, the flagstone above was lifted quietly and a dark package sailed down, landing at her feet with a thud. Then the opening was closed up again. She undid the package. There was bread, cheese, dry fruit and a flask of water inside it. When she was tired, she stretched herself out on the earthen floor and slept.
    Calculating by her meals and the times she slept, three days passed in silence and darkness. The difference between sleeping and waking began to close. She sat upright in a sort of half-dream for hours at a time. Her body ached with stillness. She had almost forgotten what she was doing there when on the third day a blaze of light startled her, the walls groaned, and there before her was the Oracle of the Ancients.
    “Oh,” said the Oracle, recognition dawning in her cold crystal eyes. “It’s you.”
    ~~~

    Foss had not slept in three nights when it happened. A few days earlier, he had shown the Emmisariae and Kyreth his replicas of the barriers. Foss had hoped that the Supreme Mancer or the powerful Emmisariae would be able to see clearly the answer that eluded him but they were as baffled as he was. Whatever reservations the other Mancers had about him, no one doubted that he had the sharpest mind regarding Deep Mathematics. Kyreth pardoned him from the work in the Inner Sanctum and asked that he focus entirely on solving the riddle posed by the Xia Sorceress’s holes. He had spent the past three days and three nights on the brink of understanding and yet it never quite came together. There was a pattern, but it was a pattern that simply didn’t make sense. She had understood their pattern, the orbits and rotations of the barriers, that much was clear. She had solved the puzzle and so she knew there was no way out. She continued making the holes in an elaborate pattern of her own and yet the pattern revealed nothing. Foss paced and racked his brain and did not sleep. No solution presented itself.
    And then one morning she struck.
    It was a great blow to the barriers. Every Mancer in the Citadel rocketed from their sleep. The gong sounded twice, summoning them to the Inner Sanctum. Only Foss did not obey. Shaking, he breathed out a replica of the barriers as they were now.
    Some terrible force had radiated out from within the prison, striking the barriers in nine places. The barriers were far too strong and complex for any amount of force to break them all. But she struck now with nine blows so powerful and so precise that they altered the motion of the barriers. Orbits changed. Rotations reversed. Another nine blows came and he felt it like a violent kick to his heart.
    The Mancers ran to the Inner Sanctum. Kyreth stood in the centre of the main hall, shouting out commands with his Emmisariae around him. They