Angel Isle

CHAPTER

8

Twelve uneventful days passed. Morning and evening Maja reached back the way they had come, but sensed no tremor of pursuit. The blaze of magic around Tarshu faded into the distance. Or perhaps the ferocity of the battle had dwindled into a kind of stalemate. It seemed barely to matter. Almost, as the miles flowed steadily away beneath the horses’ hooves or their own feet, Maja came to forget the frightening purpose of their journey. The journey became all there was. They would never have to reach its nightmare ending.

She used the long quiet hours to think. Her fantasy life with Ribek at Northbeck mill seemed to recede into the remote, unreachable future and became unsatisfying, so she thought about things more near at hand. At first she was preoccupied with coming to terms with her sense of the magical. When its power and reach had first burst on her it had been almost overwhelming, and, except when she steeled herself to face it, she had needed much of Jex’s full protection to shield her from it. It had been like the first sudden strong spring sunlight that, carelessly faced, peels and blisters the winter-tender skin to an agonizing scarlet rawness. Now she was slowly becoming hardened to it.

Not merely that. Just as the right level of sunlight, sunlight that greets you when you step outside before breakfast with the dew still on the grass and the night chill lingering in the air, makes your skin crawl gently and you sigh with sensual delight, so, she gradually came to find, she relished the magic and mystery of the everyday world streaming round her and through her, the continual half-noticed sense that everything in that world, every pebble, every leaf, every midge, had its own individual purpose and meaning. She did too. She was part of the inward wisdom of the universe.

“You’re living in a dream, aren’t you?” Ribek said, teasing.

“I suppose so. Anyway, you’re part of it.”

“Glad to hear it.”

But how could he not be, when his own Ribek-magic, so confident, brisk, easygoing, tingled continually against her consciousness? She rode pillion with him on Levanter most of the day, and when they walked, both for the exercise and to give the horses a rest, he stayed behind with her for company.

This, of course, suited her very well. One morning several days later she started thinking about him again, not fantasizing about her future with him but soberly considering the nature of her love for him. She knew it wasn’t a childish crush, because she’d already discovered what that was like.

Last summer, her aunt had finally decided that Saranja wasn’t coming back. Or perhaps, Maja now realized, it had been because the unicorn magic was beginning to fail, and it had become urgent that somebody was found who could renew it.

At any rate, a family of second cousins had been invited to stay at Woodbourne—parents, three girls and a boy. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and even Maja had understood that her aunt was hoping that one of the girls might have the gift of hearing what the cedars were saying. The boy had been a friendly, easygoing lad who Maja instantly had decided was the most wonderful person in the world, and had dumbly hung around him at every spare moment she had. Her aunt had noticed, of course, and had told her in front of everyone it was a silly, childish crush, and then shut her in her room without food to cure her of it. Later her Woodbourne cousins had taken the boy behind the barn and beaten him up. The story had got around, and no more families had come visiting. Her aunt had been right about the boy, but Maja’s love for Ribek was not like that.

Nor was it like what she might have felt for the father she had never known. She could only guess, but she knew that it must be different. It was strange for her to be even thinking about her father. Almost before any time that she could remember she had learned not to ask about him. Her mother would only weep when she did, and her aunt would punish her if she found out, or asked anyone else. It was safer never even to wonder about him, to bury all thoughts of him beneath the stories she used to tell herself of wonderful, impossible adventures among monsters and warriors and mighty sorcerers.

But now everything had changed. Her aunt was gone, along with the fears and miseries of her childhood, and the adventure was real and wonderful, and though there was plenty to be afraid of in it she felt she could face those fears, and wonder about her father if she chose. But it wasn’t very satisfying. She knew, or guessed, that the reason she hadn’t been allowed to ask about him was that he had done something too horrible for her to be told, so she found it hard to form a picture of him as the kind of father anyone would want to have. In the end she gave up and simply decided that, whatever he was like, any love she might have felt for him would have been different from what she felt about Ribek. The great thing about Ribek was that from the first he had treated her as an equal. Nobody had ever done that before, and her father would always have been her father, never her equal. She needed somebody to love, not as a fantasy, not as a game, but for real, and Ribek was well worth loving.

And even if she hadn’t had those feelings, Maja would have chosen Ribek to walk or ride with anyway. She admired Saranja enormously. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful. Anybody could have seen she was a heroine—such fire and challenge in her glance, such unconscious pride in stance and movement, even in sleep. Maja was simply in awe of her, and would still have been if these qualities hadn’t resonated from her in the world of magic and vibrated through Maja like continuous trumpet music. But that very fire and fineness made it difficult to be fully comfortable with her all day long, in the way she was with Ribek.

The same was even more true of Benayu. Again, how could it not be? He was a magician. To Maja he crackled all the time, like a fresh-lit bonfire, with his own magical power. The reason they mostly traveled pair and pair, with some distance between them, was to spare Maja the continual mild abrasion of his powers. ( Jex could have absorbed these, but told Maja he preferred a more varied diet. There’d been something about the way he’d said it that made her think that was only an excuse, and actually he was squeamish about feeding off the emanations from a personal friend.) His magic set him apart from ordinary people, and always would do. Poor Benayu.

Late on the twelfth afternoon the landscape changed. For the past two days the lane they had been following had grown in size as other lanes had joined it, all apparently aiming for some point beyond the line of hills to the north. By the time they had finished climbing that final long slope it was a well-traveled road, and when they at last wearily crossed the ridge they discovered in front of them an utterly different world from the placid farming country they’d been traveling through.

“Now that’s something!” said Ribek, reining Levanter to a halt. “Should be quite a bit going on down there, Maja. Nothing by way of Watchers, I hope.”

Maja peered over his shoulder and saw a level plain stretching north, almost a desert from the look of it, burnt brown by the sun even at this lush season of the year. As a sort of boundary between the two worlds, green hills and brown plain, a big river flowed from the west with an Imperial Highway running beside its further bank. The road they were on descended the hill to meet it at a large town. Part of the river had been diverted to form a moat round the gated walls, but the main channel ran through the middle of the town, with docks on either bank, and then became the outer harbor, and beyond that flowed into the sea between a rocky headland on its southern shore and a vast stretch of marsh to the north, through which another Highway dwindled into the distance.

This must be a major port. In the center of the city masts of seagoing craft showed above red-tiled roofs. A faint haze, the dust and smoke of human bustle, lay over it all. And yes, there should be a lot going on down there in the invisible world of magic.

She sensed nothing.

Even at this distance it should be like Mord, twenty times over. Except that at Mord she’d only just come into her newfound sense, hadn’t really been aware that that was what it was. She hadn’t understood what the sense revealed to her, any more than a newborn baby understands the blur of shapes and sounds and smells that reach it lying in its cradle.

Now, though, she had learned to look at a town from a distance and read it with her extra sense in much the same way that she could read its larger buildings with her eyes, its turreted walls, its public monuments, its marketplaces and warehouses and so on. Above the buzz of petty magics—made magics, the work of hedge magicians, but still quite different from the natural magics that flowed from tree and stream, companion and stranger—she would be able to sense stronger emanations, or at least the sudden patches of emptiness that showed where some serious magician had put a ward round whatever he or she was doing.

Not here.

Surely, at least, there should have been an Eye on each of the main gates. All large towns had them, often dating from long before the time of Watchers, but no. From all this city, nothing came back. She took Jex out of the pocket of her blouse and put him in her pouch. Now the natural magics of everything around and behind her came crowding in on her, but she still sensed nothing from down the hill. Nothing at all.

Saranja and Benayu hadn’t stopped when Ribek had and were already a little distance down the slope. Maja felt a brief jolt of magic as, without warning, Rocky skittered sideways and back, something so unexpected from him that Saranja lost a stirrup and was almost thrown. Of course Pogo, a couple of paces behind, shied because Rocky had. He would have had Benayu off if Saranja hadn’t managed to grab his bridle, and then dismount. She waited for Benayu to do the same, handed him Pogo’s reins, and started to lead Rocky on down the road.

Maja felt another, more violent, jolt. Rocky shied, and in the same instant Saranja was flung back up the slope, yelling with the shock of the blow and landing flat on her back. Ribek leaped down and ran to help her. By the time Maja had slid herself to the ground and led Levanter down to join them Saranja was getting shakily to her feet and feeling herself for bruises.

“It wasn’t me,” she muttered. “It was Zald it didn’t like. And Rocky. It didn’t like him at all.”

“And me,” said Benayu in a low, puzzled voice.

He was standing with his back to the rest of them, as he’d been doing since he’d dismounted, turning his head slowly from left to right and back, apparently oblivious to what had been happening to Saranja.

“I can’t feel it. I don’t know what it is. You don’t get wards that big, far as I know, and if it’s some kind of screen it’s nothing like mine and way beyond anything I could manage. It’s telling me if I go any further I’ll die. It isn’t lying.”

“Let’s see what it thinks about me, then,” said Ribek. “You too, old fellow.”

He led Levanter on down the road. At exactly the point where Rocky had shied, Levanter started to do the same, until Ribek halted and turned him.

“Easy, boy, easy,” he said. “You weren’t just copying Rocky again, were you? It’s what Chanad did to you. Come and take him, Maja, and I’ll try on my own.”

He turned, walked twenty paces down the road and came back.

“Didn’t feel a thing,” he said. “Your turn, Maja.”

She had just enough warning—the light fizz of something utterly new to her waking into life, a burning sensation in her arm—to snatch herself back from the invisible barrier. It didn’t mind Saranja, she thought. It was Zald it didn’t like.

The amulet? But it wasn’t magical at all now. Unless the black bead…

There was a large, branched cactus by the road, with a gold ring hanging on one of its vicious thorns and an elaborately decorated head-scarf spread across a flat leaf. Both looked far too good to be left by the roadside. The black bead must do something, only she didn’t know what yet. She hung the amulet on the cactus and tried again.

There was the same fizz, but no pain in her arm, only a feeling that a hand had been placed against her thigh and was pushing her back. Jex? But his magic (if it was magic) was utterly different. She herself couldn’t feel it at all. Nevertheless she took him out of her pouch and hung him on the cactus too. The whole hillside to left and right of her was alive with natural magic, and she could feel the made-magic impulses from Zald behind her, and the permanent light hum that surrounded Benayu, and the rather different ones from the horses, but still nothing at all of that kind from the city below. And nothing from the invisible barrier itself, until she’d passed through it.

Then, instantly, it all was there. And yes indeed, there were Eyes on all the gates, including one set to guard the whole width of the river where it flowed between two massive bastions toward the sea. The Eyes were as old as the walls themselves, and that was very old. But apart from them, nothing man-made. All the natural magics were still there, speaking to her as clearly as those around her on the hillside, the stones of the walls, the majestic, calm flow of the river, the buzz of the citizens’ lives, and much more generally, coming from the whole city below, a sense of ease and freedom that she hadn’t felt anywhere else in the Empire. But still no made magic at all apart, perhaps, from one strange, dead patch close to the nearer bank of the river. A ward inside the immensely powerful ward, or whatever it was that closed the city round? What was the use of that?

“Watchers, Maja?” called Ribek’s voice from behind her.

She heaved herself back to the hillside and returned to the others. As she crossed the invisible line the small sendings from the city below vanished in the blink of an eye. She picked up Jex and the amulet as she passed the cactus.

“No,” she said. “They aren’t here. They’ve not been, not for a long while. A very long while. They don’t do magic here. It’s like the Valley.”

They stood and gazed out over the mysterious city. Behind them, where the road crested the hill, a hoof rattled against loose gravel. They turned. A stout, elderly man was leading two laden mules down the hill.

“Trouble?” he said. “Something stopping you, right? Must be carrying stuff with powers in it—charms and such. Provosts won’t allow that. Best leave it here, pick it up when you come back. He’d be a bloody fool as touched it if it didn’t belong to him. Cactus would rip him to bits. I’ll show you.”

While he’d been talking he’d rolled up his sleeve and removed an intricately plaited armband and settled it into a crook of the cactus.

“Missus has me wear that to keep me faithful,” he explained. “Works a treat, too. Never want to look at another woman while I’ve got it on. Not my fault, I tell her, if I’ve got to leave it behind while I take the wool down to the market, is it? Either that or starve, I say, and you wouldn’t fancy starving.”

“Trouble is we’re not coming back,” said Ribek. “We’re going on through.”

“That case, one of you’d better go down to the city, hire yourself a pass-box at the gate—costs a bit, mind you—bring it back and put your stuff in it. It’ll seal itself shut minute you’re through the barrier, and won’t open again till you’re out the far side. You’ll need to get a move on. Gate closes, hour after sunset.”

“There’s no way round then?”

“Not worth thinking about. Easy enough this side far as the river. Back up the hill, right, and right again at the third real road, then down—take you a bit over half a day to reach the river. Then you’ve got to find a boat, take you over to the West Highway.”

“Surely there’s a ferry,” said Ribek.

“Provosts won’t have it. They want everything going through Larg. But suppose you’re lucky, beyond the river it’s still three, four times further before you reach the North Highway beyond the marshes, and that’s all desert. Spots may look green enough from here after the rains, but that’s all gone into the ground. No surface water. No way you can carry water enough for the horses. And there’s vicious snakes, and little black scorpions—one sting and you’re dead. You’d have to get some of the desert folk for guides. They’re weird—not like us, but they can find water anywhere, only they won’t do it for chance-come strangers. Worse yet going east. You’ll never get your horses down the cliff, you’ve got to find a boat again, and then it’s all marsh and bog crocodiles, and then desert again to the north. Can’t be done.”

“Well, thanks,” said Ribek. “We’re going to have to think. Don’t wait for us. Best of luck at the market, and tell your wife she married a good man.”

“Long as I’m wearing my armband she did,” said the man, and led his mules on down the hill.

“Brute,” muttered Saranja. “You too, Ribek, encouraging him. I hate men.”

“Just backchat,” said Ribek, unabashed. “Bet you he’s as fond of his wife as the next man, and doesn’t do anything more than glance at the city wenches.”

“Wenches,” snarled Saranja. “Oh, forget it. We’re not going to make it down to the city and back up with this pass-box thing and down again before the gate closes. Let’s think a bit. They don’t want magic stuff brought in. We can put Zald and Maja’s amulet and Jex, I suppose, in the pass-box—sounds as if she won’t need them again till we’re through. But that’s no help with Benayu and the horses. And you’d never get three horses across a desert—they need a lot of water. Unless Benayu can do something about that.”

“I might be able to,” said Benayu. “Water’s tricky stuff—it’s a bit different—but if the desert people can find it I should be able to work it out. And I daresay I can undo whatever’s been done to Pogo and Levanter, so you could take them through the city. Then it’d be only me and Rocky to find our way round. That’s a lot of complicated stuff to screen, and I don’t know how much of it Jex is up to absorbing. Maja?”

“I think he’ll say yes. He’s getting a lot stronger. But we’re going to have to spend the night out here anyway, aren’t we? Why don’t we wait and see if he says anything?”

“Sounds like the best we can do,” said Ribek. “And I could go down and see if the river’s got anything to tell me, supposing it can, and get a bit of fresh food, and maybe I can hire a mule and bring out some fodder for the horses, and then we’ll all sleep on it and see what Jex says.”

“Can I come too?” said Maja. “I like it the other side.”

It was wonderfully enjoyable to walk down the long slope with the naked hillside on either side and the town below. The steady, quiet, unconscious sending from rock and plant and creature blended with more pungent and complex human magics to form a balanced and harmonious whole, like the glorious rich dumpling stews Maja’s aunt used to make for special occasions at Woodbourne, which even the permanent rancor and tension of those who ate the food could do nothing to spoil.

The lower slopes were cultivated, with ripening crops. A few sheds and barns were the only buildings outside the walls. Otherwise the fields ran right up to the edge of the moat. The sun was already low before they reached it. Though they were going to need to hurry to buy what they wanted and make it back out of the city before the gate closed, Ribek halted on the bridge and leaned on the rail to listen to what the waters had to say. He had done this so regularly on their journey that Maja had learned, though not to hear and understand their speech the way he could, at least to sense the tone and seriousness of what they were saying. It was like hearing somebody call from another room. Though one can’t make out the individual words, one can hear the emotion that underlies them, anger or amusement or whatever. The moat was only a branch of the main current, but it seemed to be a deeply serious river. Maja leaned on the rail and waited. She was aware of the Eye on the gate. It had registered their presence but not reacted to them.

“They’re still fighting round Tarshu, but it looks like they’re at a stalemate,” said Ribek.

“How does it know? This water can’t ever have been near Tarshu.”

“Clouds have come in over Tarshu and picked up what’s happening, in a vague, cloudy kind of way. They condense into rain over the mountains. You won’t get much sense out of an individual raindrop, but put a lot of them together into a stream and they begin to gather and shape themselves into patterns which they can put into words. It’s mostly just chatter and gossip, like in my millstream, but as the streams join up and become rivers they make more and more sense of the world, until they reach the sea. Coming from the Valley, we don’t hear much about the sea, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a sort of deep, general wisdom in it, too large for our small brains to…What’s up?”

Maja gripped the rail, gasping and trembling. Two or three women were crossing the bridge behind her, laughing over some scandal. Their tone hadn’t changed, their step hadn’t faltered. No new ripple crossed the easy flow of the stream, though if it had felt what Maja had felt the foam would have been sluicing to the battlements of the walls. Something had struck the surrounding barrier a violent blow, close to where Saranja, Benayu and the horses were waiting. Her heart stopped. No, it can’t have been aimed at them. It had come from somewhere far to the south, a single, colossal convulsion, as if a root of the Tree of the World had been wrenched away.

“Tarshu,” she muttered through her daze. “The Watchers have done something new. Huge. Bigger than that tempest.”

Ribek was watching her, concerned. He looked up over her shoulder.

“Stalemate over?” he said. “Watchers will…Hold it—this may be trouble.”

She turned. Three men had emerged from a doorway under the arch of the gate and were coming toward them. They wore red hats like inverted flower-pots, and dark blue belted surcoats. Their leader carried a knobbed cane under his arm. Something else…

“The Eye’s started watching us,” she whispered. “It knew we were there, before, but it didn’t pay any attention.”

The men marched, rather than walked, straight up to Ribek. He faced them, apparently relaxed and untroubled.

“What do you think you’re doing, then?” said the leader.

“Resting, looking at the water. I like rivers and streams.”

“More than looking. Doing something to it.”

“Not unless you count listening. The river was doing something, mind you, but rivers do. They talk, only most people can’t hear what they say. I can. Fact, I can’t help it—it’s something I was born with. Runs in the family. I’m not a magician if that’s what you’re after. Nothing like that where I come from. We’ve picked up a few trinkets since we’ve been in the Empire, and we’re on our way to hire a pass-box so we can take them through the city.”

“All that’s as may be, friend,” said the man. “Not up to me.”

His voice became solemn and official.

“By virtue of my office as Gate Sergeant,” he said, “I am taking you before the Court of Provosts under Standing Order Number Three-a.”

“If you must,” said Ribek with a sigh. “You’d better go back and tell the others, Maja. I’ll join you when I can. With the pass-box, I hope.”

“Kid’s coming too,” said the guard, back in his normal voice. “Maybe she’ll tell a bit more about you than you want to tell yourself. Come along then.”

The two other men moved to take Ribek by the arms. He actually laughed, as if this were just the sort of ridiculous minor nuisance travelers have to get used to. Maja guessed he was weighing up whether he could take all three guards on with his kick-fighting. They were large men, but they didn’t look particularly tough. Two perhaps, but not three, she thought. She hoped he wasn’t going to try it. Anyway, even if he got away with it, it wouldn’t help much in getting them all through the city.

He made one more attempt.

“How much to let my sister go back to the rest of our party?”

It was the Gate Sergeant’s turn to laugh.

“More than you could pay, my friend,” he said, gripping Maja by the shoulder. “Come along, then.”

The street beyond the gate was cheerfully busy, with the working day beginning to ease toward the pleasures of the evening. Still half dazed from the shock that had struck her on the bridge, Maja barely noticed the way people stopped what they were doing to stare questioningly at them as they were led past, as if this was something they weren’t used to seeing.

They reached a large cobbled square, with a fountain in the middle and statues dotted here and there. Part of it was used as a market, its stalls still busy. Three sides were occupied by tall but narrow buildings that seemed to have been built in competition with each other over which could carry the most elaborate ornamentation crammed into its restricted façade. Along the fourth side ran the river, as wide as two market squares and busy with boats and barges.

The building at the center of the side opposite the river was taller and wider than the others, and even more richly curlicued. They climbed the steps. The double doors stood open, but the Gate Sergeant rapped his knob loudly on the right-hand leaf as he went through. The large entrance hall was fully as ornate as the façade, and lavishly gilded. Everything about it spoke of the self-contented wealth accumulated through long, untroubled years. Officials and citizens bustled across it. A functionary moved to confront them, his uniform magnificently swagged and braided. He carried a gold-knobbed staff of office. The Gate Sergeant drew himself up, matching him in self-importance.

“One for the Provosts’ Court,” he said. “Standing Order Number Three-a.”

The functionary’s eyebrows rose.

“Three-a?” he said.

The Gate Sergeant relaxed, clearly having won the contest. He let go of Maja’s shoulder, drew a small leather-bound book from his breast pocket, found a page, and pointed, forcing the functionary to move round and crane to read, reciting the words as he did so.

“‘Apparent magical practices on bridge relating to movement of moat-water. Perpetrator or perpetrators to be taken before the Provosts’ Court. If not sitting, court to be immediately summoned.’ Twelve years, morning after morning, I’ve been reading out Orders soon as I come on duty. Given up wondering what that one’s about. Never been invoked before, far as I know.”

The speech had given the functionary time to recover his self-esteem. He swung away, marched to a side apse, raised his staff and struck it against the bell that hung from the archway. The bell clanged and the bustle in the hall fell to a hush so deep that Maja could hear the last whimper of the vibrations as they died away.

“Standing Order Number Three-a,” intoned the functionary. “The Provosts’ Court is summoned into immediate session.”

The bustle restarted, but was changed. Several lesser functionaries spilled from a doorway and raced off, while many of those who a moment before had been hurrying somewhere now waited in muttering groups to see what happened. A rather more plainly clad official, obviously senior enough not to need a fancy uniform, came up and spoke briefly to the first functionary, who raised his staff in salute and went back to the main door.

The official spoke in a low voice to the Gate Sergeant, who showed him the passage in the leather-bound book but this time allowed him to read it for himself. The official stared at Ribek for several seconds, glanced at Maja, nodded and gestured that they were all five to follow him. He led them across the crowded hall to a wicket set into a large double door.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” he said. “Your men can go, but you will be needed as a witness.”

He led the way through the door into a much smaller, but no less ornate chamber, with a double row of portraits of severe-looking men running round the walls.

“You two sit there,” he said, gesturing toward a carved bench between two windows in the right-hand wall. “Keep an eye on them, Sergeant. We don’t want any trouble.”

“There won’t be any,” said Ribek, amiably. “We are guests in your city, so of course we’ll behave ourselves.”

The official stared at him icily.

“Let me advise you, sir,” he said, “that you have caused the Provosts of the City of Larg to be summoned from their evening leisure and convene in emergency session. They will not take kindly to any display of frivolity. Ah…”

Before Ribek could answer he turned away to greet a plump, bald man who had come hurrying in, panting slightly, and with sweat streaming down his flushed cheeks. The first official beckoned to the Gate Sergeant, and the three of them talked together in low voices.

A younger man came in, placed a ledger on the reading desk by the door and handed a large book bound in black leather to the plump man, who opened it on a table at the center of the room and started to leaf through it. The pages were thick and yellow, and creaked faintly as he turned them. He found what he wanted and started to read.

A gong sounded in the entrance hall and the big double doors were thrown open by two more uniformed men, who then crossed the room and opened another pair of doors in the wall opposite where Ribek and Maja were sitting. Two older men, wearing golden velvet gowns, despite the heat, and strange, floppy black velvet caps with a jeweled brooch at the center, walked through. The man at the desk entered their names in his ledger. The plump man bowed to them as they passed. They nodded to him, and he picked up the book and followed them.

“Proctors,” muttered Ribek, and gestured toward the double line of portraits. “Same outfit all the way along, apart from those fellows in armor over in the corner. Look at the dates on ’em, too. Bottom row’s three-hundred–odd years later than the top row. Fat fellow will be Clerk of the Court—something like that.”

More Proctors followed, in twos and threes. Maja picked up their feelings as they passed—irritation or anxiety or excitement, but from all of them a sort of bewildered surprise. The last one hurried in and through, followed by the man with the ledger. Two men with short pikes came in from the entrance hall and stood guard, the outer doors closed, then the inner ones.

More waiting. The Gate Sergeant now was too nervous to stand still, and paced to and fro until one of the inner doors opened and an arm beckoned to him from beyond. He made an effort, squared both jaw and shoulders and marched through, every inch the steadfast man-at-arms. The doors were too thick for voices to carry, but his inner nerves and fright were signals strong enough for Maja to follow as he marched to the center of the room and halted smartly in front of a long, weighty table—ancient oak, she could tell—and saluted. Someone asked a question. He answered stolidly, telling his story.

More talk, some argument, a decision, and an order. The inner doors opened, and a guard gestured to Ribek to come through. Maja followed him.

The room was much as she had pictured it, in the same grand style as the anteroom but six times the size. Tall windows overlooked the square, and yet more portraits of past Proctors lined the remaining walls. Yes, the Proctors sat in a row of throne-like chairs behind the table, with the Clerk of the Court at one end with his assistant beside him. The black book and the ledger lay open in front of them.

The guard who had brought them led Ribek and Maja to face the Proctors at the center of the table and withdrew. The Proctor at the center of the line tinkled a little bell and turned to the Clerk.

“Please proceed, Master Tongal,” he said.

“Very good, Master President,” said the Clerk. He looked at Ribek.

“Your name, please?”

“Ribek Ortahlson, and this is my half-sister Maja.”

“And the purpose of your journey?”

“I and my sister had been traveling south with our half-sister and brother to negotiate future marriages for them among a branch of our people who live beyond Tarshu. We were halted by the fighting there and decided to return north. But we learned that men and boys using the Imperial Highways were being rounded up at way stations and being impressed into the army. To avoid this we chose to use byroads, and so came to your city. We wanted no more than to pass through it, but we were stopped by the barrier because we were carrying a few magical objects.

“We were advised by a passing merchant that our best course was to hire a pass-box at the gate, to enable us to carry them through the city. We were resting on the bridge—we’ve come a long way, and were tired—when the Gate Sergeant arrested me for carrying out magical procedures and brought me here. May I explain what I was doing?”

“Please.”

With the same quiet reasonableness Ribek told the court what he had told the Gate Sergeant.

“It’s a bit like hearing a bat squeak,” he added. “Most people can’t, because the pitch is too high for them, but I know two or three people who can. There’s nothing magical about that. The same about hearing moving water—it just runs in my family. A big river like yours can be really interesting.”

A Proctor near the other end of the line rapped his knuckles on the table twice. The rest turned to look at him.

“This is a crucial point,” he said. “If the procedures were not after all magical, then there is no need to wake the Sleeper. The Clerk of the Court tells us that he can find no precedent for the use of this clause in the Standing Orders, so we have no guidance. All we can be sure of is that to wake the Sleeper may have the most momentous results, affecting the whole city, our whole way of life. Perhaps the barrier will be removed. Do we really want the dangerous magics of the Empire to come flooding into our pleasant city? Do we want to be drawn into the so-called Watchers’ war against the Pirates?”

A second double rap broke into the mutters of agreement. Heads turned toward the sound.

“A further point,” said the rapper. “If we believe the witness that he can hear the speech of the river—and there is nothing to show that he is not one of the common enough type of lunatic who fancies that he can hear voices—why should we not also believe him that the practice is not magical, or at least not magical in the sense of pertaining to the type of magic against which our city is so fortunately guarded?”

Another rap.

“I wholly agree,” said the new speaker. “Furthermore, if it were magical in that kind of way, surely it would have been stopped at the barrier.”

Rap after rap, with the Clerk’s assistant desperately trying to get it all written down.

“Now look. This won’t do. The instructions are absolutely clear. You’re just trying—”

“Nonsense. We’ve got to do what’s in the best interests of Larg. Are we going to upset everything for the sake of one madman?”

Maja stopped listening. Something was happening. Not here, but soon. Coming. Distracted by the surface events, Maja had paid no attention to what was happening outside the Council Chamber. It was all there, of course, at the back of her consciousness—behind her the almost empty anteroom, to her left the bustling entrance hall with the river flowing majestically beyond it, opposite and to her right smaller rooms, offices and such, perhaps, but over in the far right corner, though the walls there seemed to be no different from the rest of the room, just paneling and portraits, a small blank patch where everything seemed to stop at the surface of the wall.

By now she’d come across enough wards to be able to tell from the very density of its blankness how powerful this one was, and so guess the immense power of the magic it was warding, here in the very heart of unmagical Larg. And what she had felt, what had drawn her attention, was the first faint beginnings of a change, a weakening of the ward, a faint seeping through of the power beyond it. It was unlike anything she had felt before. She started to shudder.

“Hold me,” she gasped.

Ribek put his arm round her and hugged her firmly to his side, but the shuddering wouldn’t stop. Through it she heard snatches of what was going on. The tinkle of the bell, “…motion is that…as either a product of the witness’s lunacy, or not truly magical activity of the sort referred to…and those against…carried with Proctors Benter and Gald dissenting—”

“Hold it! Hold it!”

The Gate Sergeant’s bellow overwhelmed the shuddering. He was standing by her side with pike gripped in both hands as if he intended to use it.

“Orders is orders!” he yelled above the growing hubbub. “Twelve years, morning after morning, I’ve been reading out that clause Three-a there. Made no sense to me, but when it happened I did what it said, ’cause I know an order when I hear one. Same with what the gentleman there read out of his black book. That’s an order, and you don’t argue it to and fro, you do what it says. So now where’s this Sleeper, and how…?”

Maja raised a juddering arm and pointed at the far corner.

“Right,” cried the Gate Sergeant. “Out of the way there…”

Clamor filled the room, only to be stilled in an instant. A thin whisper came out of the air, faint and dry as the scuttle of a mouse in a hayloft.

“I have woken. Bring the strangers to me.”

“Maja—she can’t stand strong magic. It will kill her,” said Ribek in a low, strained voice. He’d spoken to empty air, but the whisper answered.

“I will protect her.”

The shuddering died away. Ribek lifted her into his arms.

“This way then,” said the Gate Sergeant. “It’s where the lassie was pointing, over in this corner. Stand aside, please.”

Maja could have walked, but she needed to cling to Ribek, to his beautiful ordinariness, although something else, something invisible, was now also holding and protecting her. A door had appeared now in the corner, its carving and gilding matching the other doors in the council chamber. It hadn’t been there when she had looked before, but she sensed nothing from it as the Gate Sergeant tried its handle, found it unlocked, opened it and held it for Ribek to carry her through.

“Do I come too, ma’am?” the Gate Sergeant croaked.

“No need,” said the whisper. “You have done well, Sergeant. My blessing is on you and yours, and on this whole, loved city. Farewell.”

The Gate Sergeant hesitated, turned, stopped, turned back, and forced his voice to function.

“You’re going then, ma’am?”

“Yes. The covenant is broken, and when all is settled I may go.”

The Gate Sergeant saluted and closed the door.

“Phew!” said Ribek.

“You can put me down now,” said Maja. “I’m all right. Someone’s shielding me. Like Jex. Only…” Only so much more powerfully than Jex could have done. He would have been utterly overwhelmed by what now surrounded them.

She looked around. They were in a plain, stone corridor dimly lit by ordinary-looking lanterns with unmagical flames in them. No doors opened off it. They went along it, Ribek moving with short, effortful steps as if he were walking through something much denser than air, and then down a flight of stone steps.

“We’ll be well underground now,” Ribek muttered. “Land slopes up from the river. Ah, this looks like it.”

In front of them the passage ended, with an open door on the right. Maja had never heard him sound so nervous. Like a shy schoolboy, she thought. She herself felt utterly unafraid. There was a kindliness in the shield around her, like the mother’s love she had never really known. Hoping to share some of that with him, she took his hand as they reached the doorway.

“Come in.”

This time the whisper came through human lips, a voice full of human weariness. They crept into the room.

It was a very ordinary space, stone-walled, windowless, unadorned. But for the vaulted roof it might have been a storeroom in a well-built farmhouse. At the same time, Maja recognized that it was extremely old, far older than the Council Chamber they had just left, older even than the ancient walls of Larg, almost as old as the hills. And despite the shielding that wrapped her round, she knew it for a place of power.

There was no furniture in it apart from an iron bedstead. On it a dark green bedspread stitched with what Maja guessed were magical symbols, though she was unable to sense them through her shield. White sheets and pillowcase, looking as if they had been laundered yesterday. On the pillow a skull.

No, not quite. A head next thing to a skull, hairless, the almost transparent skin drawn tight over the fleshless bone, the mouth a slit, invisible lips drawn in between toothless jaws, the eyes clouded over with a gray, bloodshot film.

The slit of a mouth opened, revealing the two thin lines of the lips, so dark a purple they were almost black. They barely moved to release their whisper.

“Welcome. I am the Sleeper, Guardian of Larg. Two hundred years and more I have waited here for you, though under the covenant between myself and the Watchers I could not stir to help you. And now, though they have broken the covenant, there is little I can do. All but the last shreds of my power are gone.

“You, child. What is your name?”

“I’m Maja Urlasdaughter,” whispering too, as if in the presence of the dead. “My friend is Ribek Ortahlson. We come from the Valley.”

“Of course. I knew your ancestors, Meena and Tilja, Alnor and Tahl. With Lananeth I was the earliest of the Ropemaker’s helpers.”

“You’re Zara! You’re in the story we tell in the Valley! You were Lord Kzuva’s magician!”

The corpse-face woke with the ghost of a smile.

“I used that name. When our first tasks were done, and the major demons bound beneath the earth, Lananeth chose to return to natural life and die in human time. I stayed by the Ropemaker’s side.

“By then he had other helpers. His is a restless soul. He fretted to be away from his task, back in the life he knew, exploring and learning. With our agreement he bound us into a covenant that during his absences we should cooperate for the general good of the Empire. Time passed, and all seemed well. Before he last left he told me, and no one else, that he had discovered the gateway into another universe, and there was one extremely difficult task that he could at last accomplish there, and there alone. He could not tell when he would return. I was already old and weary, and asked to be released from my binding and my tasks, and he agreed.

“I chose another course from Lananeth. To preserve what was left of my inward self I came to Larg. Over three years I built a barrier of wards around the city almost as strong as those around the walls of Talagh. That done, I laid my powers aside and surrounded myself with ordinariness, as devoid of magic as I could make it. I healed, and taught others to heal, by ordinary natural means. My old colleagues remained in Talagh, increasing their powers. We waited for the Ropemaker’s return.”

The whisper had slowed, become syllable after dragging syllable. It paused, gathered strength and went on.

“He did not return. The Watchers’ power grew. Before they could complete the change and become the Watchers, as they are now, they had a need that only I could fulfill, so we bound ourselves under the covenant, in terms that neither they nor I could afford to break, that I should fulfill that need and that they should have no power or jurisdiction over my city of Larg.

“Again we waited. I grew older. I could have renewed my powers and prolonged my life, but at great cost to my true self. In the end I could do no more than cast myself into sleep and await the next event. It has now come, twice over. You have appeared at the gates of Larg, and in the very day and hour of your coming to Larg the covenant was broken with a force that battered against my wards around the city, and woke me from my sleep. The Watchers will say that what they have done is still within the terms of the covenant, and for that reason I dare not break the pact between us. I know who you are, and what you are trying to do. But still for the sake of this city I dare not help your search. I can give you my blessing, and that is all.”

She paused again. At length, Ribek broke the silence, whispering too in that presence.

“You…you can’t tell us where this gateway is, the one to the other universe?”

“I dare not meddle. I must recall what is left of my powers, and I do not know if they are enough, and I am old and tired. What the Watchers have done is to wake a great sea demon to use him against the fleets of their enemies. In so doing they have woken others, including the storm demon Azarod, whom long ago I bound and cast into the pit. Before anything else he will come to Larg to take vengeance on me and mine. My barrier is weaker over the sea and it will not hold him of its own. Now you must go, while I prepare to do what I can to protect my city. The Proctors will decide whether to give you passage. My blessing is on you. You may tell them that.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Ribek, low-voiced, and moved toward the door. Maja tugged at his sleeve.

“Perhaps Benayu could help her,” she whispered. “Tell her about the dragon. And there’s a demon-binder on Zald.”

He hesitated, then turned back to the bed.

“I…I don’t know if it’s any use, ma’am,” he said. “One of our friends outside the barrier—she isn’t a magician, but she’s got a demon-binder on a jewel called Zald-im-Zald, if that’s any use. And we’ve got someone with us. He had to stay up on the hill outside your wards, because he’s a magician. He knows about storms. We were at Tarshu, on a hill above the town, when the Watchers summoned a tremendous tempest from out at sea to attack an enemy airboat.”

“I saw that tempest in my dream. Someone had spoken the Ropemaker’s true name, and the shock of it almost woke me. I saw the airboat’s fall. I saw a hunting dragon tossed aside like a leaf on the lashing tail of the wind.”

“Benayu did that. The dragon was hunting us, and it was just going to get us when he used a bit of the storm to blow it clean away and kill it. It took a lot out of him, but he did it. If it’s storms you’re planning to deal with…”

“Perhaps. Zald-im-Zald will work only for its owner, and I cannot work with her if she is not a magician. But your other friend…Hold your left hand over my face so that I can breathe into your palm…. Now close it, and keep it closed till you see your friend. Tell him what has happened, and if he agrees let him breathe the breath that I have given you. He will then know my need and purpose and be free to refuse.

“Now go. Tell the Proctors to prepare for a mighty storm. Say that with your friend’s help I will try to protect the city. In that way, if all goes well, they will have cause to assist you as I cannot myself do. Farewell.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Ribek, and turned to the door once more. Before they reached it, the whisper came again.

“The man you are looking for…he was born in Barda.”