Angel Isle

CHAPTER

20

Change. What…? Her hands…a flow of warmth…feeling…other hands gripping them, the warmth pouring through, into her arms, spreading through her body…

Then sleep.

Then a voice, known but strange…

“Maja. You can wake up now. Wake up. You’re going to be all right.”

She opened her eyes, clenched them shut against the midday glare, and forced them open. Ribek was kneeling over her, a dark silhouette, features almost invisible. But…

She snatched her hands free and pushed herself violently up, almost clashing heads with him.

“You couldn’t’ve done that a couple of hours back,” he said.

His voice had a strange, effortful wheeze in it. She stared.

Stared at an old man, stoop-shouldered, rheumy-eyed; with a bald, mottled scalp fringed with wispy, silvery hair; smiling lips thin and purple, with a dribble of spittle at one corner; wrinkled cheeks sunken above toothless jaws. She flung out an arm to support him as he sank onto the turf beside her, laid her head on his shoulder and wept for both lost lives. He caressed her shoulder with a trembling hand.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve just lent…”

“I don’t want it!” she said furiously. “You didn’t ask me! I’m going to give it right back!”

“Done that already,” said a voice above them—the Ropemaker. “Other universe, weren’t shielded, were you? Couldn’t be. Time different there, remember? Out of balance with our time. Years leaking away. Still doing it, even back here, on Angel Isle. Ribek lent you his years, just to hold you, while Benayu sorted it out with his equations. Then he took them back and lent them to me.”

“No!”

She shot to her feet. So far she’d had eyes only for Ribek, but now she saw that the others were standing close in front of them, watching and waiting. She swung to the Ropemaker. He’d changed too—changed back to the age he’d been when she’d first seen him.

“Give it back if you say so,” he said gently. “Tell you first?”

“Oh…All right.”

“Kept saying, not enough time, remember?”

“I thought you meant time till whatever was going to happen next.”

“That too. But talking about myself, mostly. Time’s almost up. Back there trapped in my egg, wasn’t any time going by. Same time over and over. Each time I went round, back to the same age I’d been last time. Didn’t get any older. Back here—you’ve seen Zara—that’s how old I am.”

“But you don’t look…”

“Angel Isle. Betwixt and between. Wouldn’t last even here. Feel the pull of it already. Couple of days, at most. Still got to disempower the Watchers, right? Think Zara could take that on, the way she is now? Me, like this—need Benayu’s help, as it is.”

“But…but…Why Ribek?”

“Because,” said Ribek, and started to struggle to his feet. Saranja moved to help him.

“I’ll do it,” said Maja furiously.

Oh, he weighed so much less than he should have!

He turned to face her and took her hands.

“Listen, my dear,” he said. “Back there, in Benayu’s egg, it was the other way round. You wanted to go and follow the magical trail to the Ropemaker, unshielded from its power, because it couldn’t be done any other way. I said no—I care deeply about you, and I knew what it would do to you. I was right. You said you had to do it. You were the only one who could. It was why you were there. And if you didn’t, the Watchers would find us and that would be even worse for you, as well as for the rest of us. All that was true, but I still didn’t want you to go. I simply had to accept it.

“And it’s true now, only the other way round, except for one thing. It won’t be as bad for you as it was for me. I knew that you might find him but we might still lose you—that very nearly happened. Now if we fail, that will still be unspeakable for all of us. But if we succeed, he will repay his loan, and I’ll have lost nothing, so nor will you. Please will you accept this? I did.”

By the time he’d finished he was wheezing for breath between every few words. Maja couldn’t speak. Weeping again, she nodded and helped him ease himself back onto the turf.

“Thank you,” said Saranja. Being her, she would have offered to lend the necessary years instead of him, of course. There must have been some reason why not. Something magical, probably. And being her, she wouldn’t have said.

Maja settled again beside Ribek, put her arm round him and curled herself up next to him with her other hand on his thigh. He laid his own hand on it and squeezed it gently. Good practice for later, she thought, when he really is old. She knew she was cheating as she cuddled against him. He cared deeply about her—he’d said so—but not in the same way she cared about him. He was an old man, needing human comfort, closeness, love, and was letting her fulfill that need, as well as her own.

She glanced across at the others to see if they’d noticed, but they seemed to be taking it for granted that that was how she felt about Ribek. Benayu and the Ropemaker were talking together, low-voiced. Benayu was trying to explain something about Fodaro’s equations—for what was going to happen next, probably. Jex was on a boulder beside them. Every now and then both human voices would stop, and Maja could hear, faintly, his granite murmur inside her head. Saranja was listening.

Now they moved apart. The Ropemaker raised his hands, touched the ring on his left forefinger and spoke quietly. The pale, cloaked figure of a woman carrying a narrow-necked urn in the crook of her arm appeared in front of the encircling rocks. Even in the full light of that stormy morning she seemed to glimmer as if lit by a full moon under starry skies. She stood the urn on a flat boulder beside her and turned. It was Zara, Zara in the form she had assumed on the hill above Larg when she and Benayu between them had bound the demon Azarod into the rock. But she too had changed. Now she looked wraithlike, almost transparent, though the urn she had carried seemed solid and heavy enough.

The Ropemaker took both her hands in his and kissed her on the cheek. She greeted the others and joined the discussion.

Maja was distracted by Ribek, who had fallen asleep almost instantly, the way old people do. He was mumbling something uninterpretable. Maja wished she could have got into his dream, the way she’d been able to do in the egg. Not in this universe, even on Angel Isle. Probably just as well. There was a movement on the rock behind her. She glanced round and saw Jex. No, Jex was still where he’d been, with Benayu and the others, and this one had purple blotches.

“Hello,” she whispered. “You must be one of Jex’s friends.”

“Greetings, Maja. We are here to help you destroy the Watchers before they themselves destroy both your universe and ours.”

We…? Yes, there was another one, a little further along. And another and another. All round the arena they were flickering into existence. Scores of them now. Hundreds. Crouching there, waiting.

Waiting for what? For the Watchers to arrive. Whatever powers they poured out against the Ropemaker, the massed Jexes would simply absorb and channel away, while he, thus shielded, destroyed them. And she and Ribek and Saranja, Benayu and the Ropemaker, were waiting for them too, not running away any more, not hiding any more, but waiting to destroy them, here, on Angel Isle. Soon.

Saranja’s voice broke through.

“Wait! Something’s happening to Striclan….”

She pulled Zald out from under her blouse.

“I told him how to call for help,” she said. “He wouldn’t do that, unless…I could take Rocky. Do you need me here?”

“Know where he is?” said the Ropemaker.

“Zald will find him.”

“Let’s have a look….”

He craned over Zald.

“Hm. Fair distance. Demon stuff. You’d better deal with it. Nothing much you can do here. Going to have to hurry. Can’t come myself. Lot of stuff to get ready here. Tell you what. No, keep it out. Hold it steady. Right.”

Maja saw him draw the black box he’d been playing with earlier from under his robe, open the lid and hold the box cupped in his right hand. He laid the forefinger of his other hand on one of the stones in Zald and curled the middle finger of his right hand over to touch whatever was inside the box. It was only for a moment, and then he closed the box, put it away and laughed.

“Even that simple, still makes me sweat a bit,” he said.

“What did you do?” said Saranja.

“Held time still where your fellow is till you show up. Get there, touch the stone, whisper my name, start time again.”

“Shall I bring him back here?”

Maja didn’t hear his answer, because Ribek had muttered a grunt of discomfort in his sleep and shifted his position as if to ease an aching hip. By the time she’d worked the bedrolls round him to cushion him as much as possible, and adjusted herself to the new position, Saranja was mounted and ready to leave. She was making no attempt to hide her eagerness and excitement, and Rocky seemed to share her mood. In the strange light of Angel Isle horse and rider glowed like a cloud at sunset.

She gave the reins a shake. Rocky settled back onto his hindquarters, spread his wings ready for the first driving downbeat, sprang into the air, and they were away, dwindling fast beneath the stormy sky.

“Amusing collection of stuff, Zald,” said the Ropemaker casually, as if this were any ordinary day and there was time for chat. “Tricky locks. Take a bit of thinking about to get at the amber.”

“Do you know what it’s for?” said Benayu. “Someone told us it’s for summoning some kind of major power.”

“Not to say know. Have a guess. Amber’s from the north, right? Cold there. Ice and snow all year. Would’ve saved me a deal of trouble, Maja’s time.”

“Oh yes, of course. That’s what…You don’t think we could’ve used it now?”

“Too much to handle, everything else going on. All set then?”

“I still need the staff. Shall we do that now?”

“See how it goes,” said the Ropemaker.

He turned to face Benayu, who nodded to show he was ready. They crouched side on to Maja and facing each other, and placed their right hands together, palm to palm, close above the turf, then moved them steadily back and forth as if they were rolling a cylindrical object between the two palms. A swirl of light, bright in the cloud-gloom, appeared above the two hands. The Ropemaker grasped it with his left hand and fed it in between their palms, apparently twisting it between his thumb and the side of his forefinger like a housewife feeding wool onto the spindle of her spinning.

At the same time Benayu was doing something very similar from below, close against the turf, seeming to draw his material directly out of Angel Isle itself. Shielded though she was, Maja felt the steadily growing pulse of powerful magic—two separate magics, utterly different from each other yet steadily weaving themselves together, like two different tunes being played at the same time and somehow weaving themselves together into a single piece of music.

Slowly the four hands rose upward, and now Maja could see the second swirl, not of light as she knew it, but of something else that Benayu was feeding into the process in the same manner, non-light, light from another universe, drawn somehow through the sealed touching point below them and into this one.

It continued to stream upward as the hands rose further, difficult to see, never what or where it had seemed to be only a moment before. But through its vagueness she thought she could sometimes discern some kind of central shaft, extending and extending from the steadily rising hands down to the ground.

When the two magicians were standing erect with their hands level with Benayu’s shoulder, the two swirls, light from above and non-light from below, dwindled and vanished in between the moving palms, allowing Maja to see the staff they had created between them. She recognized the pearly, half-luminous glimmer of the substance it was made of, grayer than gray, the light of two utterly incompatible universes so entangled together as to compose a single solid object—an egg, a staff—that could survive in either set of dimensions.

Benayu and the Ropemaker were fully upright and the staff rose vertically from the turf between them, but its vertical was visibly not the same as theirs. It obeyed some other set of physical laws.

Benayu grasped the top of the staff with his right hand. The Ropemaker clasped it in both of his and Benayu laid his left hand over them. They closed their eyes and stood for a while, Benayu pale with concentration, the Ropemaker’s restless energies stilled to a single focus. Then they let go, leaving the staff erect. It struck Maja that the turf of Angel Isle was far too thin to hold it steady. It must penetrate well into the underlying rock.

“Should do,” said the Ropemaker. “Couldn’t have managed it on my own.”

“Nor me,” said Benayu. “And anyway, it was Fodaro, really. And Jex, of course.”

“Right. All set, then? Ready, Maja? No telling how this’ll turn out. Surprise ’em a bit, maybe, but they’ll have stuff to spring on us too. Better have the horses over with you. Sponge too.”

Maja started to scramble to her feet, but as if led by invisible grooms Levanter and Pogo came ambling over and lined themselves up beside Ribek. Sponge trotted across and settled at her feet. Disturbed by the sudden bustle Ribek grunted, opened his eyes and peered blearily at the scene in front of him. It seemed to take him a moment or two to remember where he was.

“What’s up?” he mumbled.

“I think the Watchers are going to arrive soon.”

“Right. He told us while you were asleep. He’s going to summon the Council and tell them he’s back so they aren’t bound to cooperate any more and they can have their animas back; Zara’s brought them. In that urn. Bargaining counter if worse comes to worst. He doesn’t think they’re going to accept it.”

“And then what?”

“He didn’t say. It’ll come to some kind of pitched battle, I should think. Close call. He’s stronger than any one of them—any three or four, I daresay. But all twenty-four, even with Zara and Benayu to help…”

“And the Jexes.”

“Jexes?”

“Look.”

She pointed. He peered frowning. It was as bad a moment as any she’d experienced since she’d first woken to find him so changed. That those keen and cheerful eyes should have so blurred! But before she could begin to explain the Ropemaker nodded to her, turned, moved a couple of paces away from Benayu, squared his shoulders and with a series of sweeping and deliberate gestures transferred one of the several rings on his left hand to the center finger of his right.

He changed neither shape nor size nor stance, but instantly he was a different man, no longer the eccentric, quizzical wanderer, but a focus of authority and power, with knowledge of and command over things seen and unseen. He gestured to Benayu, who gripped the staff, raised it a foot or so clear of the turf, struck it down and let go. The jar of the blow spread through the rock beneath with a steady roar, not the grinding thunder of collapse but a purposeful rumble as the rocks beneath returned to their places and rebuilt the tunnel between the universes.

The Ropemaker nodded and turned slowly, moving his arms in front of him as if he were coiling in an invisible rope, and Maja could sense the magic of the whole world streaming in once more as the ward that had protected them since they had returned to Angel Isle was taken away. When he had finished, Benayu touched the staff gently and stilled the thunder from below. The Ropemaker raised his right hand, palm forward.

“As Chief Magician to His Imperial Majesty,” he said, “I summon the Council of the Twenty-four to convene this day on Angel Isle.”

He used his ordinary speaking voice, as if confident that his words would reach the ears they were intended for anywhere in the Empire.

Twenty leagues inland the villagers of Obun were celebrating the departure of their new god. They had very little experience of gods, and perhaps this new one would have been better than the previous one, but they were happy not to have to find out whether this was the case.

They had met their first god a little less than a month earlier, when almost all of the inhabitants of Obun were trooping up the road to start the melon harvest. As they reached the melon fields a strange creature barred their way, a pink lizard with a body the size of a hay wagon and an absurdly small head with a human face that could have been male or female. It was wearing a golden crown.

“I am your god,” it had told them in a prim little voice. “You may worship me by the name of Slowoth. I like a quiet life, and will see that you get the same provided that you cater for my simple needs. All I ask is one human sacrifice every month at the full moon. Man, woman or child, in reasonable health and not already at death’s door. It does not need to be one of you. A passing stranger will do. That is all. It has been a pleasure to meet you.”

There were murmurs of discontent, but before anyone could speak the creature turned its head to one side and exhaled, almost deflating all its gross body. Only a few wisps of its breath drifted toward the villagers, but several of them vomited at the stench, and as for the field by the road which had caught the main blast, every plant withered on its stem and the unharvested melons collapsed into slime.

“I think you would be wise to do as I say,” said the creature, “or you will not eat well this winter.”

It turned and waddled away, leaving a slimy pink trail.

The villagers discussed the matter unhappily. Several of them were not especially popular, but none were sufficiently hated to be sacrificed without qualms. Two roads led into Obun, both of them joining the Imperial Highway at points several leagues apart, so passing strangers were not an option since nobody came to Obun who didn’t have business there, and there wasn’t any.

The obvious answer was to kill the creature. Tog remarked that it shouldn’t be too difficult, since it had neither claws nor fangs to speak of, and was at once thanked for volunteering to do the job. He was, in fact, the obvious choice, since he was a burly fellow and had neither wife nor children but did have a good axe.

The villagers woke next morning to find their god in the market square with Tog’s body on the ground beside it, drained of all its juices. In its chilly, polite voice it thanked them for their zeal in providing a sacrifice so promptly, but pointed out that the full moon had only just passed so it would take Tog as a late payment on that account and would expect another installment next month. It should be paid at noon, here, in the market square.

The days dragged miserably and rancorously by. A number of families tried to leave, rather than risk any of them being chosen, but the monster met them in the road and herded them back. On the eve of the full moon they agreed to draw lots next morning. It was already dark when the exhausted stranger staggered into the village, not coming up either road but down from the hills. He had been in a hurry to reach Barda, he said, and had taken a short cut.

The villagers welcomed him and offered him food and a bed for the night. The stew they gave him was pungent enough to conceal the slight tang of the powder that the herb-mother had added to it. He woke shortly before noon to find himself lashed to a stake in the deserted market square. Nobody had cared to stay in sight, in case the god rejected their offering and chose one of them instead, but many eyes watched through cracks in shutters and doors.

The stranger wrestled with his bonds, not in a mad frenzy but systematically. He loosened a wrist enough to be able to dip a finger into a belt purse, but withdrew it and wrestled some more. He had his left arm almost free and a knife in his hand when the god waddled into the square. The stranger glanced at it and sawed at a rope. If he had woken only a few minutes earlier he would have freed himself in time. As it was the monster reached him as he was bending to cut his ankles loose.

It paused a couple of paces from him, waiting for him to finish the job, and then exhaled delicately. He collapsed.

At that point the new god arrived. There was a minor mystery about how this happened. According to most accounts she simply swooped down from the east, but the only house in the village with an upper story faced in that direction, and the witnesses at those windows had a clear view of the sky. They all declared that at one moment there had been nothing to be seen but storm clouds, and at the next there had been a woman riding a winged horse immediately above the opposite roofs.

That is a minor matter. She undoubtedly appeared, gave a great shout, and as the god reared up to pour out its poisonous breath, lashed out with a fiery whip which curled around it, then swung her horse round and round it in the other direction, binding it, tighter and tighter. The gas squeezed from its lungs and ignited into a roaring flare.

She landed, leaped from the horse, heaved the inert stranger across her saddle bow, and mounted. The horse thundered aloft. She shouted again and hauled on the whip, and the god rose spinning into the air. At her third shout the cobbles of the market square split apart, the vanquished god plummeted into the roiling fires below and the cobbles closed neatly together as woman, horse and stranger sped away eastward.

As has been said, the villagers of Obun didn’t know much about gods, but they decided that it takes a god to vanquish another god, so the woman must be one. She seemed to have done them a good turn, but perhaps she had simply wanted the sacrifice for herself, in which case they didn’t want her coming back for another one. At any rate, they were relieved to see her go.