Angel Isle

CHAPTER

5

The stars were barely beginning to fade as they followed Benayu through the warren of darkened streets. Saranja had padded Rocky’s hooves, so that even he made barely a sound. Somewhere near the market they turned into the pitch darkness under an archway and waited. Maja took Rocky’s bridle, leaving the other two free to act, if they needed to.

A little later they saw two men come silently along the street and stop near an ornate porch, further along on the opposite side of the street, and in their turn start to watch as if for something to happen beyond them. Time passed. At last a door opened, sending a glow of soft light out into the night. The two men disappeared into the shadows of the porch. Ribek came out of the lit door and turned. A woman followed him onto the doorstep and bent to kiss him, then retreated. The door closed, and Ribek strolled toward the five watchers, whistling softly.

He was just past the porch when the two men rushed him, their bare feet almost noiseless on the paving. He seemed unaware of their attack until, at the last instant, he skipped to his right, swiveling as he landed, with his left leg swinging out to hook the first man’s feet from under him. His momentum carried him smoothly into a single dance-like step and counter-swivel, with his right foot punching neatly into the hollow at the back of the second man’s knee. The man yelled as he fell. The first man was halfway to his feet when Ribek kicked him in the abdomen and he tumbled forward, his curses replaced by retching gasps.

“It’s called kick-fighting,” said Ribek, informatively. “Your friend warned me you’d be waiting for me.”

He left them, walking fast and no longer whistling. As he passed the archway the others came out and fell in beside him.

Approaching the south gate of Mord, Maja became aware of its gate ward, very like the first one, but less old and without the underlying presence of blood. At the same time, almost concealed by it, she sensed an intense, steady, focused beam of magic. Yet another Eye. Faint, as if coming from far away, but at the same time powerful—the same effect she’d felt emanating from the strange little house they’d passed soon after entering Mord. There was something else about it. Unlike the other Eye and the one at the northern gate, it wasn’t built into the masonry of the gate, but added later. Much later.

She tugged Benayu by the sleeve.

“I think there’s two Eyes on this gate,” she whispered. “One of them’s warded, though. And I think it’s new.”

He stopped and concentrated. The others waited.

“I can’t feel anything except the old gate guard,” he said. “But if you’re sure there’s something there that must mean it’s got a powerful ward, so you’re right. Bother. You three are probably safe to go on, but you’d better split up. Ribek can take Sponge, and Saranja and Maja can wait a few minutes and then ride Rocky through. I’ll come my own way and meet you further down the road. Don’t wait for me. I can travel faster than you, and we want to get on.”

The dawn mists had melted away into a clear still morning when they came to a small stand of lime trees growing close beside the road. As they passed it a pigeon came gliding down onto the roadside turf, strutted for a moment and became Benayu.

“Know I was there, Maja?” he asked.

“I didn’t feel a thing—not even when you changed.”

“Great. Shape-shifting’s small stuff, mind you. You didn’t notice my screen, either? Then we’re getting somewhere. I’ll need to find out a lot more about screens if I’m to operate at all out in the Empire.”

They headed south all morning, stopping for their midday meal at the bridge over the river that they had seen from the escarpment. This meant both river traffic and road traffic, so there was a small market, with stalls selling food for man and beast. There was also a horse dealer, buying from travelers who’d come this far by road and were now journeying on by water, and selling to those going the opposite way. Saranja looked the horses over and Ribek made a show of doing so, while Maja and Benayu watched from the side. Using the same technique that they had with the jewel dealer in Mord, they bought a couple of nags, and saddles and harness from one of the stalls, so that henceforth all four of them could ride.

The new horses’ characters emerged as the days went by. Pogo was a flighty gray gelding, inclined to shy at trifles whenever he was bored. Levanter was an amiable idiot. If a horse could get something wrong, he got it wrong. Rocky was manifestly glad of their company, but at the same time tolerated no nonsense from either of them, and kept them in line quite as much as their riders did. Pogo was immediately besotted by him, while after a few days Levanter seemed to decide that his best hope of doing the right thing was to copy whatever Rocky did. This worked reasonably well once Ribek had learned to allow for it if he wanted him to do something else.

Late that first afternoon the road reached the southern limit of the plain. They had just moved in under the first trees when Maja stiffened, suddenly aware of something large and powerful coming swiftly from the south. It was horrible. She recognized it at once, the same sudden nausea of the spirit that she had felt just before the explosion back at the sheep pasture, while she and Ribek and Saranja had been waiting to cross the old ford.

“Benayu!” she shouted. “Watchers coming! Fast! That way!”

He stared south for a moment, then slithered from the saddle, closed his eyes and stood motionless, pale with concentration. Maja could sense his protective network weaving itself around him. Still concentrating, he reached out and pulled her inside it.

“All right,” he said. “Grab hold of Jex in your other hand, Maja. Hang on to your feathers, Saranja. You should be all right, Ribek. Just take Pogo…Now!”

The wave of change swept down over the woods and broke across them like silent thunder, felt as a sudden electric tension in the air, enveloping Benayu’s screen for one aching moment, and then gone. The jar of it pulsed down Maja’s arm to the hand that held Jex, who seemed for that moment to soften into living flesh and then was granite again. Rocky neighed and kicked. She opened her eyes to see Benayu close beside her, breathing heavily, pale and sweating, and beyond him Saranja and Ribek struggling to control the horses. That wasn’t the only reason why they looked shaken.

“They’re doing a sort of generalized sweep as they go,” muttered Benayu. “Checking out any serious magicians they pick up. How did it feel, Maja?”

“Your screen? All right, I think. Not as if it was anywhere near breaking.”

“Why now, all of a sudden?” said Ribek. “It’s four days, isn’t it?”

“I don’t get it,” said Benayu. “And Maja says that second Eye on the southern gate was new. I don’t think that first fellow I trapped in the cottage would have been up to putting it in. You’d have known, Maja, wouldn’t you, if any more actual Watchers had shown up?”

“Yes, I think so. Only not if they came in secret.”

“They weren’t making much of a secret coming just now,” said Saranja.

“Somebody put the new Eye in,” said Ribek.

“I don’t think it was Watcher stuff,” said Maja. “That’s got a funny yucky feel. I felt it just now when they went over.”

Benayu sighed in anxiety and frustration and shook his head.

“No point in guessing,” he said. “All I know is the further we are from Mord, the better.”

The road wound mainly uphill through wild country, ancient woods, tangled with undergrowth and half-fallen trees, alternating with stony, scrub-covered hillside. They met a few travelers going north, but apart from one or two battered roadside sheds didn’t see a building until they came in the dusk to an official resting camp, with fees and bribes to pay, but food and fodder to be bought, and other travelers for Ribek to question casually about the possibility of crossing the country southeastward to visit a sister he hadn’t seen for sixteen years. She lived at a town called Parangot, down beyond Tarshu, he said. He was told he’d need to make a long twelve days’ journey south before he found a good Imperial road, twice as much making the crossing and then, well, it depended how far south of that his sister lived. They hadn’t heard of Parangot. Not surprising, as he’d made it up, but someone happened to mention that it was a good thirty days on from where they were to Tarshu.

As they slept under the stars Jex spoke in Maja’s dreams. His voice seemed only slightly less faint and strained than before.

“I have important news. Some of my friends are now aware of me, and have spoken directly to me, though I still cannot answer or question them. Our road south is closed to us. The Watchers have been wholly preoccupied with preparations to meet the coming attack on Tarshu, and were not prepared to lose any more of their number until that was finished, so sent only a junior magician to investigate the loss of two of themselves beyond Mord, and then a more experienced one to investigate the first one’s disappearance.

“This work is now finished. My supposition is that meanwhile this second man must have discovered something that they believe to be connected with the coming assault by the Pirates. Hence the urgency with which fresh Watchers have now arrived.

“Once at the pasture, they will speak with the shepherds and look into their minds, and search for magical traces in the cottage where Fodaro lived with Benayu. I think we must assume that they will then know whose brother Fodaro was, and from that perhaps guess whose son Benayu may be.

“Furthermore, they have set up checkpoints on this road at which all travelers are rigorously examined. You must leave it as soon as you can. Other roads south are less strictly watched, apart from random checks at way stations of licenses to practice magic. Tell the others.”

“Yes, of course. You sound stronger.”

“I am, a little. Fortunately I was prepared for the moment when the Watchers passed over us south of Mord, or it might have been a setback.”

“Benayu pulled us inside his screen, but I still felt it. And you changed for a moment, didn’t you?”

“It was useful to me. I will be able to protect you more effectively.”

“Can anyone—one of the Watchers, for instance—tell that you’re there, tell you’re doing that?”

“Not as far as I know. Over the generations we have learned to hide ourselves. It is essential for our survival.”

“And supposing I don’t want to be shielded for a bit…?”

“Tell me so in your head and I will withdraw for a while. Farewell, Maja.”

“Good-bye, Jex. Come again when you can.”

The others heard the bad news without surprise.

“They must have found the picture of the airboat Saranja drew,” said Benayu.

“Fodaro would have destroyed it, surely,” said Saranja.

“When I last saw him he was scratching magical signs round it—at least that’s what they looked like,” said Maja. “Trying to put them off the scent, I suppose.”

“Good idea,” said Ribek. “Just like him to think of it. Not his fault it didn’t work out. You know, Benayu, the more I learn about Fodaro, the better I like him.”

At a lonely place south of that camp Benayu dismounted and climbed a little distance from the road. Maja sensed a steady, prolonged tremor that seemed to move in a circle around him but then none of the expected shock of magic as he became a raven. He rose, circling, and flew south.

They had their midday rest on a grassy bank beside the road. A few travelers passed in either direction. Some of them were wearing the standard dress of the Empire, familiar from the story told in the Valley, the men in little conical caps with upturned brims and a tassel, loose brown jackets and baggy knee breeches; the women in long skirts and long colored scarves with tasseled ends wound twice round over their heads. The tassels on both caps and scarves were decorated with blue beads, by which one could tell the wearer’s grade in the elaborate social system of the Empire.

“I suppose we’re going to have to dress like that,” said Saranja.

“I don’t know,” said Ribek. “Nobody seemed to bother with it much up in the mountains. I expect Benayu can easily fix it if we have to.”

The horses grazed contentedly in the noon stillness. Saranja sat, chin in hand, brooding. Ribek slept, snoring lightly. Maja was happily exploring the new fantasy life that had been gradually growing in her mind over the last few days. It was very different from her usual fantasies, because this time it actually seemed possible. She wasn’t a dashing adventuress with her own wonderful charger and magic sword, nor the poor captive of some evil slave trader, who made a daring escape from his clutches and became a key witness to bring him to justice and free his other slaves. It was far simpler than that. She was only a few years older, and Ribek had asked her to marry him and come and live with him at Northbeck and share the place where he belonged. From time to time as they journeyed she’d been asking him an innocent-seeming question and he’d answered unsuspecting, giving her another detail to flesh the fantasy out.

Now she was busy forming a picture of his older niece, not the one who had lent her the warm coat but the one who looked after the ducks that lived on a platform in the stream to keep them safe from foxes, when she sensed a familiar blip of magic somewhere behind her and knew from the feel of it that Benayu had returned. A few moments later he walked out of the trees.

“I’ve found something,” he said. “I don’t know that it leads anywhere. It keeps seeming to peter out, but then it picks up again. We’d better take it anyway. There’s a checkpoint at the next village. This isn’t an Imperial Highway, so you don’t normally need a way-leave to use it, but that’s what they’re asking for here.”

The path certainly didn’t look very promising when they reached it—a rough logging track, with a stack of felled trunks beside it waiting to be picked up by the timberwain. Sure enough, it seemed to end at the place where the trees had been felled, but they pushed on between the tree stumps and came out onto an open hillside, trackless but easy going, climbed to a ridge and found what seemed to be a footpath winding southward into the hills, though there was not a building in sight or anything to show who might have made it.

The same for mile after mile, their path time and again seeming to stop in the middle of nowhere, only to renew itself. It was well into the afternoon and Maja was deep in her fantasy again when she realized that for some time now she’d been growing increasingly uneasy. The others seemed to feel it too, Benayu with surly silence, Ribek with pointless chat, answered by Saranja with an indifferent shrug or grunt. The horses and Sponge plodded listlessly on. Something was wrong—something missing, Maja eventually decided. It was like total silence. Even in ordinary silence, when there’s no particular noise reaching your ears, there are always very faint background sounds, nothing you’d normally notice, but there. Total silence is a blank, so empty that you can almost hear it by its very absence. So now. All natural objects have magic in them, too faint to notice but still giving out its own slight vibration. Not here. Nothing from the boulders, or the patches of scrawny shrubs and coarse grass.

Emptiness, barrenness, silence. It was like the landscape of some of her dreams. They were behind her, snuffling along her trail. She had to know.

“Can you stop shielding me, Jex?”

She felt the change in her head, but not in the unnatural stillness.

They passed a shallow stream, tumbling down over water-worn rocks.

“Can you hear what it’s saying, Ribek?” she asked.

He cocked his head to listen.

“Nothing,” he said. “That’s odd. I’ve never come across it before. Sometimes they don’t make much sense, but they’re babbling away all the same.”

“I think perhaps there’s some kind of screen—or do I mean ward?—over the whole area,” she said. “I can’t feel it at all, but it’s blanking everything out. I think someone’s watching us and doesn’t want us to know.”

Benayu roused himself, reined Pogo in, closed his eyes, bowed his head and concentrated.

“Not a screen,” he said at last. “I didn’t think it could be. And it isn’t like any kind of ward I’ve ever come across, but there wasn’t much serious magic in the mountains. Anyway, there’s something. I can feel it stopping me getting through, but that’s all. It’s just playing with me. It’s a lot stronger than I am.”

“I don’t think it’s anything to do with the Watchers,” said Maja. “It doesn’t feel…bad. Or good. It’s just there.”

“It doesn’t scare you?” said Ribek.

“No. It’s a bit like being back in the Valley, only more so.”

“I’d better scout ahead again,” said Benayu. “Ready, Maja?”

He bowed his head and she steeled herself for the shock of magic. Nothing happened. After a few moments he straightened and looked around as if half stunned.

“It won’t let me,” he whispered.

They looked at each other in silence.

“Nothing else for it,” said Saranja decisively. “We know we can’t go back to the road. Might as well carry on.”

They did so, Maja hunched in the saddle, eyes closed, shutting out everything except the magical silence, feeling for the slightest variation in it…a faint magical twitch from somewhere ahead…later another…

“It’s choosing where the path goes,” she said.

They halted and looked at each other. Ribek shrugged.

“If Maja’s right, it doesn’t make much difference what we do, does it?” he said. “Suppose we try to turn round, whoever’s doing this can still choose where the path goes, and we’ll finish up where we would have done anyway. So we might as well push on and get it over with. If it’s a trap, it’s a trap.”

“I don’t think it’s a trap, exactly,” said Maja. “It’s just…interested in us.”

“The horses don’t seem to be bothered by it,” said Saranja. “On we go, then.”

The sun was almost on the horizon when they came to a place like any other they’d seen all afternoon, a shallow fold in the ground, the near side scrub and boulders, a dismal little stream dribbling along the bottom, and scree-strewn slope beyond. Sponge trotted ahead, tail high, ears pricked, alert and interested. He splashed through the stream, started up the slope on the other side, halted, crouched a moment, turned and slunk whimpering back. Benayu dismounted and knelt to comfort him. Sponge huddled into his arms like a frightened puppy.

Again the others looked at Maja. She shook her head.

“I didn’t feel anything,” she said. “Only—I don’t know—perhaps the ward or whatever it is is hiding something stronger now.”

“Well, there’s one way to find out,” said Ribek, dismounting.

They watched him cross the stream and start confidently up the other slope, only to stagger suddenly, as if he’d been struck by an invisible fist, duck down, covering his head with his arms, turn and rush back toward the stream. Almost at once he caught his foot on a boulder and fell sprawling but crawled frantically on.

Saranja ran to help him to his feet and bring him shuddering and sweating back to the others. They waited while the shudders died away. At length he straightened and shook himself.

“Pure nightmare,” he said. “Nothing there, no monsters, nothing like that, just—just the thing itself. Anyway, I can’t face it again, and nor can you. Looks like we’re going to have to go back after all.”

“There’s a stone in Zald, isn’t there, Benayu?” said Saranja, starting to pull the jewel out from under her blouse. “Why don’t I give it a try?”

“It’s that one there,” said Benayu. “Ready? Now, touch it with the middle finger of your left hand—no, keep it there, and circle the fingertip over it, three times to the left and then three to the right. You won’t feel anything yourself—you’ll just have to hope. I don’t know if it’s strong enough, mind you. That’s really powerful stuff making this happen, and a really powerful ward stopping us feeling it.”

“No harm in trying,” said Saranja.

They watched her cross the stream and start up the slope. About where Ribek had crumpled she slowed—not, apparently, because there was anything slowing her but out of natural caution. Nothing visible happened, but Maja sensed a surge of complex energies moving with her on up the slope. After a little while she turned and came back.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” she said. “Perhaps it’s stopped, or perhaps it just doesn’t like men. It wouldn’t be the only one.”

“It was trying to get at you,” said Maja, and explained.

“Perhaps I’d better lend you Zald,” said Saranja. “Then you could go and see if you can tell where it’s coming from.”

Inwardly Maja cringed. Even protected by Zald-im-Zald, to face what Ribek had faced! And alone!

“Wouldn’t work,” said Benayu. “Zald is yours, Saranja. Apart from the woundsain, it imprinted on you, since you almost sacrificed your life to it. I’ll see if I can get it to release the stone, and then you can go together, holding it between you. Do you think you can cope with that, Maja?”

“I’ll be all right, with Saranja there,” she muttered.

But what about Jex? “Better not start shielding me again, Jex, or perhaps the stone won’t work. It may be too much for you anyway.”

Hand in hand, the two of them crossed the stream and started up the slope. The little stone lay comfortingly against Maja’s palm. She could sense the quiet flow of magic streaming up her arm, spreading through her body and radiating out a little way beyond. There was an almost musical chiming, a complex pattern of interwoven threads of power, as they passed through some kind of magical barrier, and then the wave of terror surged round them. Innumerable talons of power clawed at their protecting aura. Answering power flowed from the stone and stood firm. With an effort Maja ignored the storm around her and concentrated on the source of the attack. There seemed to be nothing hiding it from her now.

“There,” she said, and led Saranja up and to the left.

They reached a shallow basin a few paces across, lined with almost identical round smooth stones, each about the size of a man’s head. All but one of them, halfway up the further side of the basin, seemed inert, but the whole attack flowed from that one.

Amazed at its power, Maja led Saranja toward it and pointed. Saranja gazed at it, shrugged, stooped and touched it tentatively with the fingertips of her free hand. The surface of the stone trembled, seemed to melt and flow, and became a face, both childish and ageless, soft, smooth, the color halfway between flesh and stone. The full lips parted and a narrow, tubular, dark purple tongue slid out and extended until its tip could probe into nostrils and ears, and delicately pick the sleepy-dust out of the corners of the golden eyes, and then withdrew. Without the fear-defying stone against her palm, Maja would have found the whole process too horrifying to watch.

“Yes?” whispered the sweet lips.

“Will you let us through, please?” said Saranja.

“Who are you and what is your purpose?”

“We’re Saranja and Maja Urlasdaughter. The others are Ribek Ortahlson and Benayu. I don’t know his parents’ names, but his uncle was called Fodaro. We’re on our way to Tarshu.”

“Fodaro we know of. You say ‘was.’ He is dead?”

“The Watchers killed him. They’re looking for us. We don’t want them to find us. That’s why we came this way. Will you let us through?”

“Go back a little. Watch.”

They climbed to the rim of the basin and turned. Maja clung to Saranja’s hand to steady herself against the whirlwind of magic that formed as the rocks that lined it began to flow and change shape. They became mason-hewn stone that piled itself rapidly into a building. The basin widened and filled with water, and now she was looking at a squat gray tower rising from the middle of a circular lake. The keystone of its arch was the face that had spoken to them from the boulder, carved in stone.

The doors opened and a woman stood under the arch. She was dressed in a plain brown cloak, and apart from the blue jewel suspended from her neck she looked like some farmwife who has just brought a load of produce to a country market, middle-aged, short, plump, round-faced but small-featured, smiling. She would not, Maja thought, have looked out of place in the Valley, where no magic had ever been known.

A bridge appeared at her feet and she stretched out both arms in greeting but made no move to cross it.

“Welcome, cousins,” she said. “There was a woman once called Tilja Urlasdaughter. I am her remote descendant. My name is Chanad. I will call your friends.”

Her voice was soft and level, the words very precisely spoken, as if every syllable was precious. They turned and saw Ribek and Benayu look suddenly toward them, and then start to lead the horses confidently up the slope.

They ate in a comfortable room with a steady fire glowing in the grate. Chanad carried in plates, mugs and cutlery on a tray. Maja was puzzled. Even with Saranja holding her steady she had barely withstood the swirling blasts of magic that had accompanied the appearance of Chanad’s tower and continued with increasing force as they had crossed the bridge toward it. But once in under the arch all that was gone. All she could feel was the faint background buzz that told her that outside the tower it was still there. The answer, when it came to her, was so unexpected that she blurted it out.

“It’s got a ward on the inside too!”

Chanad looked at her, eyebrows raised.

“Indeed it has,” she said. “But I’m surprised you’re aware of it. A ward that betrays its existence is as useless as no ward at all.”

“I’m not,” said Maja. “I mean I can’t feel the ward itself. But I can just feel all that stuff going on outside it, so I guessed it was there. It was like that coming. Everything’s got a bit of magic in it, rocks, trees, animals, streams—it’s so gentle you don’t notice it, but I noticed when it wasn’t there, so I knew there had to be something.”

Chanad stared at her.

“I have heard of such people,” she said. “Magicians, of course, can sense the presence of magic, but they need to create the means by which they do it, and then to learn how to use it. A few people are born with your ability, as a natural gift, but they very seldom survive infancy. The magic around them—the magic in everyday things, and simple hedge magic—is too strong for them to endure at that age.”

“There wasn’t any magic where I was born,” said Maja. “I never felt it till just a few days ago, when I watched Saranja putting Rocky’s wings on. That really shook me. I’m getting used to it, I think, but just coming across your bridge—I couldn’t have done it without Saranja.”

“You will meet far stronger than that where you are going, if you are who I think you may be. If I am right, I will provide you with what help I can. I am the last of the group that called ourselves the Andarit, the Free Great Magicians. I knew Fodaro, and grieve for him. A good man to the last—a very good man. Too good to be a good magician. Benayu’s mother and father were my colleagues. When we made our move against the Watchers we knew that we might not succeed, and I was chosen to survive until another chance should come. Ancient tradition told us that if it came at all it would be from the north.

“So between us we devised this tower, where I am able to ward myself from the corroding power of my own magic, which, with nothing else to practice upon, would otherwise have eaten me away over the years. I have an unwarded workroom at the top of the tower, but I perform no magic anywhere else within these walls, and do not even step onto my bridge if I can help it. We made all the area around into a magical blank space, as seen from elsewhere in the Empire, large enough to absorb and dissipate any magic I might perform from this center. If the Watchers in Talak were to concentrate their attention on the area they would find me, but they rely on their Seeing Tower, which is not designed to respond to an absence of magic.

“From here I watch the roads leading east and south out of Mord, and bring toward my tower any travelers who interest me. Almost all I return to their road fairly soon, taking from them any memory of where they have been.

“You were unusual, in that one of you—Benayu, I now know—became a bird and began to explore in this direction, so I laid a path for him to find, and you followed it. Later, to my surprise, you seemed to become aware of what was happening. When Benayu tried to take bird form again I stopped him, but nevertheless you came on. Finally I put a barrier of terror in your path, to see how you would react before I let you through. You not only overcame the barrier but came directly to my place of hiding. Only when Saranja told me your names did I understand who you are and why you are here, and know that my time of waiting is at an end. So welcome again.

“First, you can tell me your story while we’re eating. Easiest, perhaps, if we all fetch our own food and carry it through. Since I knew you were coming I’ve had time to prepare something. I like to cook, and I seldom get the chance to do it for anyone more than myself.”

They helped themselves to a pungent-smelling stew, hunks of coarse fresh bread, and green beans. There was sharp pale cider or water to drink, and a creamy mix of honey and brandy and soured goat’s milk and spices for dessert.

“I think you take more pride in your cooking than you do in your magic,” said Ribek.

“I suppose I do,” she said. “It is one of my ways of staying human. Now, tell me what brought you here. Perhaps you’d better start with what you know about our ancestor Tilja Urlasdaughter. Everything begins with her.”

They took it in turn, first the story from the Valley, then what had happened since they had all met, and then their own plans. She stopped them only once, to ask them, just as Fodaro had done, about Faheel’s time-controlling ring, of which she too had never heard.

“Yes,” she said when they had finished. “All that fits in with what I already know. It is astonishing how remembered truth comes down through time. As I said, the only major exception is Faheel’s ring, on which your story hinges. You tell me it stopped the movement of the sun across the sky, the march of the waves across the sea, the breath in the mouths of all the living creatures in the world, for the length of time it took for the roc to fly Tilja and himself from his island in the southern ocean all the way to Talagh. And yet when Tilja, with her gift of annulling magic, closed her hand around it, in that instant the sun and the waves moved on and the creatures of the world went about their business, unaware that there had been any interval between one breath and the next.

“That must be an object of prodigious power. I have never heard of anything remotely like it. I wonder if the Ropemaker ever used it again, after that first time. It sounds as if he may have been a bit afraid of it.”

“That’s what Fodaro thought,” said Benayu. “He’d never heard of it either. And he was a scholar of magic, he used to say. He knew it all, but he couldn’t do it all. Do you think the Watchers know about it?”

“If they do, and if they can find it, then there is no hope,” said Chanad. “That brings me to the chief thing that I have to tell you, which is that the nature of the Watchers has changed from that in your story. Those had been set up by Faheel to police the use of magic throughout the Empire, but they failed in their task because as time went by they became savagely competing powers. Such is the corrosive effect of strong magic. Even among the Andarit I could see this beginning to happen. I could feel it in myself.

“Very few of us are free from it. Faheel had known it in his youth, but had put it aside, and in the end was forced to destroy his own creation because he could not control it in others.

“The Ropemaker was different. He was never interested in power. His passion was knowledge. He would far rather have remained a free agent, wandering the Empire at his own will, seeing and hearing. Until you told me your story I had not known how he was forced to take control, and begin to sort out the chaos that followed the fall of those earlier Watchers—other magicians warring for power, in their ignorance and frenzy releasing forces they could not control, demons roving the land unchecked, sand dunes threatening to engulf whole cities for ransom, and so on. He could not do this without helpers, so he chose those who came to hand and whom he thought he could trust.

“To begin with they worked as an informal group, but when the first urgent tasks were done some decided to leave, while most agreed to stay and help to maintain the order they had achieved, each with their own responsibilities in a more formal structure, though they did not then call themselves the Watchers.

“Knowing how the original Watchers had become corrupted, he persuaded them to bind themselves into a magical covenant to cooperate for the general good of all the peoples of the Empire. This worked well enough, thanks—I now realize—to his mitigating presence in the covenant, since they did not feel him to be in competition with any of them. Then, some two hundred years ago, he told them that he would be away for a while. He gave them no explanation other than that there was something he must do, and do alone. Months went by, and seasons, and years, but still there was no word from him. They searched by all the means at their disposal, but he seemed deliberately to have left no trace.

“So the covenant remained in being, and their natural urge for power was constrained into a joint urge of ever-increasing force, until the time came when they put their individual selves aside and became what they are now, a single entity, a single shared nature and thought system. What one knows, they all know. What one desires, all desire. Their joint mind creates a single purpose. They cannot be destroyed one by one. They replace a missing member with a fresh recruit who cannot help but join them and then becomes identical with all the others. And thus conjoined they are far more powerful than the Ropemaker, or even Faheel, or any of the other master magicians in their prime. The Emperor and his officials function as they have always done, only where Watchers allow them to do so.

“Elsewhere they ruthlessly adapt the system to their own needs. It is still the case, as it was in the time of your story, that nobody can die within the Empire without a license to do so, in order that the Empire should not be flooded with the natural magic released into the world at every human death. Those who could not afford the license and the cost of the rituals to control that magic had to travel to Goloroth, the City of Death, in the far south, where they boarded rafts which were floated out on the Great River and were carried out into the ocean. There they died and their magic was harmlessly released. The first part of this system remains as it was, but now when they pass through the inner gate of Goloroth their lives are simply taken from them, and their personal magic is funneled back to feed the power of the Watchers in Talagh while their lifeless bodies walk on into the Great River and are carried away.”

“That’s the nastiest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Saranja. “I’ve always thought the system in our story was bad enough, but that’s obscene!”

“I suppose they say they haven’t broken the covenant,” said Ribek, “because they exist for the good of the peoples of the Empire, so the greater their power the greater the good?”

“Exactly,” said Chanad. “But it is the general good, remember. They will ruthlessly sacrifice any number of individual citizens of the Empire, just as an individual Watcher will sacrifice himself or herself, in order to achieve it.

“They are like the demons of old. Demons are, as it were, embodied lusts, rage, greed, cruelty, spite, brains without minds, terrible. The Watchers are an embodied lust for domination. Limitless domination, first of the Empire, then of the other nations of this world, then of worlds elsewhere in this universe and universes beyond it, if any there be. Somewhere along that course they will meet their match and destroy themselves, and the Empire, and perhaps the whole world with them. They must be stopped. You set out to find the Ropemaker, three of you for the sake of your Valley, and Benayu to take his revenge for the death of Fodaro, but you are here for greater purposes than that. Even the Ropemaker cannot stop the Watchers on his own, but somehow, between us, we will achieve it.”

Maja looked at her friends, appalled. She had simply not thought about it like that. At the start she had just been running away, as she had done all her life in her dreams. Only by accident had she found that she was now looking for the Ropemaker, and then by further accident that she was going to help Benayu destroy the Watchers. Even at their most frightening their adventures hadn’t mattered much to anyone except themselves. Who else cared all that much about what happened to a miller and a farmer’s daughter and two children?

But now there was a world to save. Finding the Ropemaker would be only the start.

Ribek must have had the same thought. For several moments he looked unusually serious, then shook his head in disbelief.

“It’s a bit more than we bargained for,” he said, smiling slightly, as if at the absurdity of the enterprise.

Saranja flushed and tilted her head defiantly.

“Well, if it’s what we’re here for we might as well get on with it,” she said.

“I’m going to destroy the Watchers,” said Benayu firmly. “When I’ve done that I’m going to go back to shepherding, and a bit of hedge magic. Anything that happens after that—someone else can deal with it.”

“I wish you well, Benayu,” said Chanad. “But you will find that you are unable to do as you wish. Your own powers will either compel you or destroy you. But first, as I say, you must find the Ropemaker. Where do you propose to start? You have some kind of plan, or clue?”

They looked at each other, uncertain.

“We have a plan of a kind and a clue of a kind, but I’m afraid we’ve been told not to tell anyone what they are,” said Ribek. “Not even someone like you. All I can say is that we need to get to Tarshu.”

Chanad actually laughed.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Benayu has some major magic to perform, connected with your search, and instead of attempting to hide it from the Watchers in some remote province you are taking the risk of disguising it as part of the explosion of magic that will erupt when the Watchers try to repel the coming Pirate invasion. I agree with you. It is much your best chance. But you will need to hurry. Tarshu is almost a month’s journey from here.

“It is no use my coming with you. My presence would betray you almost at once. I dare not even watch your progress for fear of leaving a trace. The best I can do for you is to open a road for you to leave here, and to give the two horses you bought greater speed and strength, and fetch you way-leaves to allow you to use the Imperial Highway to Tarshu. You will need a story to account for your journey. Suppose you older two are brother and sister, taking your half-sister and her brother to her betrothal in Tarshu. This is a common practice among the great trading clans. It is a way of keeping the bloodlines pure when the clan is scattered throughout the Empire.

“I’ll also prepare an amulet to shield Maja from the effects of magic. What she has faced so far is already wearing her out, and she certainly won’t survive the storm of battle magic you’re going to find around Tarshu, not to mention whatever Benayu will be up to. Even my amulet may not be proof against such shocks, but it will be a lot better than nothing.

“Now, out of curiosity, I would like to know how Saranja and Maja came so easily through my barrier of fear. You were holding hands, and I think you were carrying some kind of magical object between you. Is that right?”

Saranja took the fear stone out of her pouch and laid it on the table.

“I’ve got a sort of all-purpose amulet,” she said. “It’s called Zald-im-Zald—”

“Zald-im-Zald!” whispered Chanad, shaken for the moment out of her composure. “How on earth…? That I have heard of. It is said that Asarta made it when she first came into her powers, but it has been lost for centuries. May I please see it?”

Saranja drew Zald out and laid it in front of her. Like Benayu, Chanad didn’t immediately pick it up, but sat in silence, simply studying it as if it had been a book, while Saranja told her how she had come by it.

“Benayu must put the fear stone back,” she said at last. “There is an intricate balance of the constituent parts, which it is dangerous to disturb. It is an extremely useful object, and you should know as much about it as possible. Benayu can tell me what he has found out and I will see if there’s anything I can add. While we are doing that perhaps you others will take the used dishes back into the kitchen.”

They did as she asked, and Maja was amused to see that Ribek was very pernickety about getting things clean, while Saranja was the slapdash one. They came back to find half a dozen books piled on the table. Chanad had two open before her and kept referring back and forth, reading from one and then leafing to and fro through the other. Benayu was looking listlessly at a third one, obviously passing the time while he waited for her. They settled down and waited too, until Chanad sighed and looked up.

“It must be over two hundred years since I last tried to read Solipsi,” she said. “And it was never an easy language at the best of times. But let’s start with the big piece of amber at the center, because it’s so different from the rest. At a guess it’s a summoning stone of some kind, but it would take more time and effort than I can spare to overcome the locks and find out what it summons. Something hugely powerful, but it would be extremely dangerous to try to use it without knowing its purposes.

“This one that puzzled Benayu is rather amusing. It’s an old demon-binder. You wake it in the ordinary way, and then it will tell the wearer how to use it.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” said Benayu. “It isn’t going to happen to us. There aren’t any demons to bind these days.”

Ribek laughed.

“In my recent experience anything can happen to us,” he said.

“There were demons in the story, weren’t there?” said Saranja. “When Tilja and the others were on their way home, all sorts of horrible monsters appeared, and even on the Imperial Highways people had to travel in convoys with a good magician to guard them.”

“Those were just petty demons,” said Chanad. “Mostly they were raised by inexpert magicians, ignorant of what they were dealing with, and their first act was to destroy those who had raised them. But there were worse than that. A few really powerful hidden magicians, like the one Tilja called Moonfist, refused to accept control and wanted all the power for themselves. But the Ropemaker and his helpers were too much for them, so as a last throw they deliberately summoned some of the great demons from deep under the earth and tried to use them against him. But demons are not like that. They cannot be used or controlled. They too destroyed their summoners and stalked the Empire, until the Ropemaker and his friends bound them one by one, and split the earth apart and cast them into its innermost fires and sealed them there.”

“That’s one of the reasons the Watchers gave for destroying my mother and father,” said Benayu. “They said they were planning to loose the demons again.”

“And if they catch me they will destroy me and say the same thing,” said Chanad calmly. “You too, Benayu. You are in revolt against their rule. They are clearly too powerful for you. When you see your cause is hopeless, why should you not attempt to loose the demons? That is their argument.

“But now I have work to do. I must make Maja’s amulet, and fetch your way-leaves and so on. It is better for me to do these things from the safety of my tower than for Benayu to continue to risk them on the open road. And you must rest, and in the morning I will set you on your way to Tarshu.”