Angel Isle

CHAPTER

4

Three mornings later they halted and looked down on Mord. So far the road had wound its way south across rolling upland, mostly wooded but mottled with blotches of sheep pasture and here and there a village ringed with smallholdings beside a roaring stream. Now it plummeted, zigzagging down an escarpment at the foot of which lay a neat walled town with beyond it a wide and level farmland plain with a river winding across. Far south, at the limit of vision, rose another range of hills.

All that time Saranja had slept as though she would never wake again, by night wherever the rest of them were sleeping—drover’s hut or farmer’s barn—by day in a cunning horse-litter Ribek had adapted from a broken cot in one of the ruined huts. There was just room for Maja to perch sideways in front of it, but it couldn’t have been very comfortable for Rocky so she’d walked as much as she could. She’d been doing that when they’d reached the crest of the slope.

“Mord,” said Benayu dully, and then stood gazing down at the scene below. He had scarcely spoken an unnecessary word in the last two days, and had marched as though he hated every footstep of the way. They had left him alone, knowing there was no comfort they could offer. Season after season he must have made this journey with Fodaro, cheerful and confident, to sell and buy sheep at the market, and finished standing where they now stood, looking down at their journey’s end. This must have been the bitterest moment of all. At last he gave a deep sigh, squared his shoulders and spoke in a level, toneless voice.

“All right. If the Watchers are going to put an Eye on the road, this is where they’ll be doing it. You three should be all right. I’ve put Zald-im-Zald completely to sleep, and Maja isn’t picking anything up from Jex or the roc feathers. There’s an old ward on the gate, anyway, because the City Fathers like to know what kind of trouble they’re letting in. You should be able to spot that as we go through, Maja. It’s built into the stonework. Then there’ll be all sorts of petty hedge magic going on inside the walls. The Watchers’ Eye will be different. I’ll know as soon as it picks me out, but that will be too late. If you can tell me before…”

There had been a woman in the Valley who had been blind since birth, until one day she tripped on the stairs and hit her head against a newel post and passed out. When she came round she found that she could now see. At first she could just tell light from dark, then colors, then vague shapes which only gradually became clearer. But even then she couldn’t always tell what they were. She had needed to pick up a cup and handle it, as she had done all her life, in order to be sure of what it was.

Maja was just beginning to do this with her newfound ability to sense the presence of magic. First only the awareness of that presence and its strength, then a vague sense of the nature of the magical impulse and its direction, and now, for the first time, its rough form. As they approached the walls of Mord she picked out a heavy, dark vibration, straight ahead. It felt very old and was vaguely arch-shaped, and there was death in it somewhere. She told Benayu.

“That will be the gate ward,” he said. “They’ll have sacrificed a criminal and mixed his blood into the mortar when they built the gate. Strong magic. Nothing else?”

“A lot of little twitterings—I expect that’s the hedge magic.”

“Mord’s full of it.”

That was true. As they made their way through the narrow, jostling streets to the inn where Benayu and Fodaro had usually stayed, it seemed to be beaming out at Maja from all around. She tried to pick out separate pieces of it, but it was like trying to listen to one particular song in a cage full of songbirds. Only once, when they were passing a strange little house, so squashed between its larger neighbors that it was barely wider than its own front door, she felt something different, not a twittering, but a slow, quiet stirring, that seemed to be coming from much further away than the house itself. No, it was reaching her through something—a screen, perhaps, like the one Benayu had put round the drove huts when he was working on Zald-im-Zald. The magic itself was much stronger than it felt this side of the screen.

She told Benayu. He stopped for a moment and looked at the house. There was a faint liveliness in his tone when he answered.

“That’s a ward, not a screen. A pretty good one. It wouldn’t bother the Watchers, mind you, but I’d really need to work at it if I wanted to look at anything beyond it. Nothing to do with us, anyway. There are still a few Free Magicians around. I’m tempted to try and get in touch, but we’d better not risk it.”

“Screens. Wards. What’s the difference?” said Ribek.

“Wards are permanent and all-purpose. They stop anyone seeing what the magician’s up to, and keep out other people’s magic. A good one takes a lot of work to build. But they’ve been around a long time, and the Watchers can use a Seeing Tower in Talagh to look straight through wards as if they weren’t there. Screens are something Jex and Fodaro thought up. I mean they saw that it was theoretically possible, but they needed me to find out how to do it. You have to build into the screen a reverse mirror image of whatever magic you’re trying to hide, so that they cancel each other out when they meet. They won’t keep magic out unless you know roughly what’s coming, but Jex used to be able to do that for us. And they do have the great advantage that you can put a small one around you, so that it stays with you wherever you go. We didn’t think the Watchers had found out about them because they’d need Fodaro’s equations. In fact I’m probably the only person in the Empire who knows how to do them.”

It was strange to hear that astonishing boast in a voice so dull and hopeless.

The inn was in a quiet street near the western gate. Maja stayed with Saranja and Rocky in the inn yard while Ribek and Benayu hired a room for them, and then went with a friendly old ostler to see that Rocky was comfortably stabled while the other two carried Saranja up the narrow, dark stair. It was midafternoon by the time they’d eaten and settled in, and Ribek and Benayu were ready to set out and try to sell some of their jewels.

“You come too, Maja,” said Benayu. “You’ll be useful. We’ll leave Sponge to look after Saranja. He won’t let in anyone he doesn’t know till I come back.”

The trinket sellers occupied only a small section of a busy country market that filled a fair-sized square and spilled into the neighboring streets. For some reason it was not as crowded as the other sections of the market, less rowdy but with subtler and stranger reeks and odors, and lacking the otherwise ubiquitous petty magicians busking their wonders for coppers. But to Maja the area made up for that by the ceaseless murmuration from charms and amulets on many of the stalls.

“The trouble is, I don’t know anything about jewels,” said Ribek. “I can haggle over a bag of grain with the best of them, so I was thinking I could play it by ear, picking up from their tone and gesture and so on how roughly much they were trying to do me for, but now that I’m faced with it…”

“Don’t worry,” said Benayu. “You’ll know all right, because…Stop. Don’t let her see you looking, but that woman at the stall we’ve just passed. She’s trying to sell the stallholder something. Right?”

Maja felt a quick, soft pulse of magic come from him, and then repeat itself like an echo.

“Looks like it,” said Ribek, “but…oh, she thinks it’s a love charm, only it doesn’t work. She’s asking three imps for it, but she’ll be pleased if she gets one and a quarter. He knows that it’s actually a spiteful little cursing-piece—multiply any curse by seven, worth about eight imps in the trade, but he’d expect to get fifteen off a sucker, so he’s prepared to let her have two for it. So they’re both going to be happy with the bargain. You put all that into my head?”

For a moment Maja concentrated on the charm, and realized she could sense its nastiness.

“Uh-huh,” said Benayu, more animated again—it was the chance to use his magic that did that, Maja guessed. “Fodaro often brought me down here to practice, after we’d traded our sheep. He wouldn’t let me do it at home, or among the shepherds. He said that was dishonorable. But if somebody’s trying to cheat you…You can see how useful it is, especially with me picking the stuff out of the dealer’s head and passing it on. Mind reading isn’t that easy—anyone else’s mind is a wildly complicated place, and some are a lot more hidden than others—and all the dealers carry amulets against it, which you have to get past and they’ll lynch you if they catch you trying, so they reckon they’re safe. Even so, Fodaro used to keep an eye open while I was doing it, just in case anyone was noticing what we were up to. They’d need their own magic to that. That’s where you come in, Maja.

“The woman we’re going to talk to knows her stuff about jewels, though they’re only a sideline for her. She’s a crook with the customers, but straight with the other dealers. And the great thing about her is that she’s got a very open mind, very close to the surface. We haven’t traded with her much, in case we ever needed to sell something serious. All right?”

“I think I may enjoy this,” said Ribek, as Benayu led the way on.

They followed him to a stall whose holder was having some kind of friendly argument with her neighbor, but as soon as a customer showed up she left him and came smiling over. She was a soft-skinned, bosomy woman, her face heavily made up to enhance her dark and liquid gaze. She lavished this on Ribek with obvious approval. He responded with a touch of manly swagger.

“And what can I do for you, my dear?”

“I’ve a few small gems I’d like a price on, if you’d be so kind. I was told to come to you because you knew about this sort of thing.”

“A pleasure.”

She cleared a patch on her counter and he laid a folded cloth on it and opened it out to display three stones from Zald-im-Zald’s decorative curlicues. She picked them up one by one and studied them through a lens. Maja could sense a softly cooing vibration starting to come from her—no, not from her, from something she was wearing.

“Thank you for choosing me,” she said. “It’s not often I get shown anything as nice as that little garnet. Very rich, unusual color. The small topaz isn’t bad either, but the larger topaz—it’d be a very nice one if it weren’t for the flaw, this white streak running across it here, but as it is…”

“You haven’t seen a snow-stone before?” said Ribek, not mockingly but with kindly concern. He moved closer to her as if that were his main interest, took the stone and turned it to a precise angle.

“See how nicely it’s cut to show the structure of the snowflake,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ve seen a better one. As for the other ‘garnet,’ that’s a perfectly good ruby, first water, interestingly dark in color, four and a sixth tams, and you’re right that you won’t often be offered as good a one in an out-of-the-way place like this. The same with the yellow diamond, four tams or near enough, not my taste as a matter of fact….”

The stallholder looked up, still smiling, but differently.

“That wasn’t fair,” she said.

“My apologies,” he said, with a gallant turn of his hand. “I’ve found it a quick way to establish a relationship in a strange town. I need to make a sale, because there’s something else I want to buy, but not at any price. I gather you’re the only dealer in Mord who knows enough to be sure you’re getting a fair bargain, so if we can agree figures I’ll give you ten percent off for a quick sale.”

“Fifteen,” she said.

“Twelve and a half.”

“Done. Have you any idea where they come from? They were obviously set into some larger piece.”

“That’s right. I was told it was looted from the hoard of some warlord way out beyond the Great Desert.”

“Mind if I just run my crystal over them? There’ll have been power stones in something like that, like as not. They could have picked a bit of magic up, in which case I’d need to think again.”

“Go ahead,” said Ribek easily, Benayu having already dealt with the problem. “And then perhaps you’d care to join me for a glass of wine while we settle a price…”

“Thought so,” whispered Benayu. “She’s not going to let pleasure interfere with business. She’ll take him to an eating house and point him out to a couple of thugs she knows. They’re going to waylay him on his way back to the inn and take the money off him. I’ll let him know, but the way things are going they may be doing a bit more than having a glass of wine together tonight, and we’re going to need to leave early. Idiot! Who can you trust?”

“She’s wearing a love charm, isn’t she?” said Maja defensively. She had no idea how she knew that was what it was. It just had to be.

“He’s still an idiot. I’d better hang around here for a bit and keep an eye on him. I’ll tell him what’s up and hope he comes to his senses.”

“He isn’t going to.”

“In that case I’ll find a quiet place where we can meet in the morning and tell him where it is in case he doesn’t get back to the inn tonight. You’d better go back yourself now and have a bit of a rest. Even with Jex’s help you’re going to find picking up all this stray magic all the time pretty tiring at first. Do you want me to show you the way?”

“I think I can find it.”

He was right about both things. Already half dazed by the ceaseless petty bombardment from every corner of Mord, she got lost almost at once. In the end by pure luck she came to the inn from the wrong direction.

Sponge welcomed her back to their room with a thump of his tail on the floorboards. Saranja still slept unstirring, so she curled up in one of the other beds and almost immediately herself fell into deep and dreamless sleep. At some unknown nowhere in that peaceful oblivion, a voice of stone spoke faintly in her head.

“Maja.”

“Jex! Are you all right? I can only just hear you. How can we get you back? Can we help? Do you know what’s been happening?”

“No, you must tell me. Normally I exist simultaneously in two separate worlds. When your companion spoke a certain name, the shock of her utterance was such that I was forced to withdraw from your world, leaving behind only an extension of myself, which is now in the shape of the stone pendant you carry. Being stone, it can neither see nor hear, and exists only to absorb some of the magic around you, without which I cannot live.

“Communication between my separate worlds is difficult when I do not exist fully in one of them. We are now in the nowhere between the worlds. I am speaking to you and not to Benayu because the pendant is under your pillow, and yours is the younger and more flexible mind. Even so, it is accessible to me only with considerable effort and only when you are asleep. So tell me now all that has happened since your companion spoke that name on the mountainside.”

It took some time, only there seemed to be no such thing as time in this dream between the worlds.

“You have done well,” said Jex when she had finished. “I grieve for Fodaro, a good man, and brave, and wise. Yes, you can help me, and, since you cannot succeed in your quest without me, you will need to do so.

“First we must restore me to my true balance. Saranja could do this anywhere and at any time, simply by holding the roc feathers in one hand, bound by the strand of the Ropemaker’s hair, and the pendant that you have under your pillow in the other, and then speaking his name. This will set off a major magical spasm similar in kind to the one which originally created the imbalance, and provided that I am ready for the event I will be able to exploit this to restore myself to my natural condition. But the process would send out an extremely powerful signal, more than Benayu can ward or screen, and I will not be there to absorb any part of it. It is certain to attract the attention of the Watchers. They will be already on the alert after the spasms back at the pasture, and the destruction of two of their number who came to investigate the first of them.

“Our best chance is to attempt to conceal the event among a complex of other equally powerful events, if we can. There are some of my kind who exist in the same mode as me. I cannot communicate with them in my present imbalance, but I can listen to what they tell each other. They have some knowledge of the Watchers’ doings. They say that something of the sort that we are looking for appears likely to happen near the eastern port of Tarshu. The Watchers have somehow learned that the Pirates are preparing for a major raid and are gathering to repel it. I suggest that you take me to Tarshu and we will make the attempt. It is some distance, and you dare not travel by magical means, so you must leave Mord as soon as you can.

“Farewell, Maja. I shall not be able to speak to you for a while, other than in an emergency.”

“Good-bye, Jex. And good luck. And thanks. I’ll tell them.”

She was not surprised by his last sentence. Even in her sleep she had been straining to hear. No, it had not been a dream. That was real.

She was woken by the triple thwack of Sponge’s tail at the sound of his master’s returning footsteps. Saranja must have woken to the sound too, and was starting to sit up as Benayu came into the room, slamming the door brutally behind him.

“Where is this?” she said, dazed with her long sleep. “Why’s it so dark? What’s up? You look—”

“We’re in an inn at Mord,” he said harshly. “You’ve been asleep for three days. You ought to be dead, if you want to know. There’s a stone in Zald-im-Zald that was making you tireless, but you pay for it after. Two days ought to have killed you, and you’d been wearing it for ten. I suppose the roc feathers must have kept you alive somehow.”

“Where’s Ribek?”

“Ribek?” he snarled, and told her.

“He swears he can handle these two thugs,” he added. “The woman told them she’d be keeping him with her till dawn, but I took the money off him to be on the safe side.”

“Men!” growled Saranja. “They’ve got just one idea in their heads!”

“It wasn’t his fault really,” said Maja. “She was wearing a love charm.”

“I still hate men. And what if he isn’t as good as he thinks he is and these fellows are too much for him? Where does that leave us? Is there anywhere I can watch from and not be seen, just in case?”

“There’s an archway a little way down across the street. Room for all three of us, as well as Rocky. Then if we’ve got everything packed up we can be on our way as soon as the gates open.”

“That’ll have to do. Where’s the latrines? I’m bursting.”

“I’ll show you—I’ve got to take Sponge out,” said Benayu.

“I’ve got a message for us from Jex,” said Maja. “He talked to me in a dream, only it wasn’t a dream. He says we can’t find the Ropemaker without him, and he told me how we can get him unstuck in a way the Watchers won’t notice. It’s rather complicated. And it’s really scary.”

“Tell us when I get back,” said Benayu more calmly. “We won’t be more than a couple of minutes. I’ll order some food on the way up. Come on, boy.”

Usually when Maja tried to tell someone about what had seemed a vivid dream, all its sharp certainties seemed to go vague and unreal as she spoke. This wasn’t like that. The single stony voice seemed to be still in her mind, putting the exact words into her mouth as she needed them, though in places she wasn’t sure she really understood them. It didn’t take long. Saranja and Benayu listened without interruption. Their meal arrived as she was finishing. By the time they settled down to it the night outside was fully dark.

Saranja ate with a wolf’s hunger after three days and three nights without food, and her whole body wasted by the magic-driven energy-use of the ten days before. Benayu ate in silence, but more steadily now that he had magical matters to brood about.

“Yes,” he said at last. “That’s the best we can do. I’ll settle up tonight and we’ll start before dawn.”