Angel Isle

CHAPTER

22

Still gasping and shuddering with effort, Maja got to her feet, heaved Ribek onto his back and felt for his pulse. Nothing. Nothing. Yes—was it?—yes, desperately faint, but there. She looked up for somebody to tell. Benayu was picking himself up from the turf close beside her.

“He’s alive!”

He stared at her, dazedly shaking his head, stunned either by the fall or what he’d done.

With a boom of wings Rocky landed beside them. For the first time Maja noticed that Striclan hadn’t been riding pillion, with his arms round Saranja’s waist, but in front of her, as if he’d been a child who needed to be held in place. Saranja slid down, deftly caught him as he collapsed sideways, and helped him sit. His face was almost the same horrible pale yellow as the poisoned grass.

“Here’s your banbane,” she told him. “No, don’t try and say anything—you’re still not making sense. Just keep on breathing it in. It’s working. Look, it’s changing color. That’s right.”

She turned to Maja.

“Are you all right?” she said. “I thought we were all done for when Zald wasn’t strong enough. What’s happened to Ribek? Where’s the Ropemaker?”

“He was getting old too fast. Ribek lent him some of his own life so that he’d be strong enough to deal with the Watchers. Then he summoned them, and they came. They knew the Ropemaker’s name. They almost got him, but Benayu managed to hide him somewhere. And Zara and Chanad. They were here too. Then the Watchers turned themselves into a demon—the one you tried to bind. It poisoned the Jexes….”

“Them too? So’s Striclan. He’s pretty bad. A demon breathed on him just as I got there. I’d spotted some bog oaks on the way there so I looked coming back and found him some banbane.”

“Banbane?” said Maja.

“It grows on rotting bog oaks. It’s a bracket fungus. You can use it for snakebite and things.”

“Have you got any more?” said Maja. “It might help with the Jexes.”

“Not enough for all of them,” said Saranja, fishing in one of the saddlebags and bringing out a fawn-colored object about the size and shape of a cowpat.

“I suppose you could try it on Jex,” she said, breaking a piece off. “If it works I could take Rocky and look for more. Break a bit off and put the broken side under his nose so that he breathes the fumes in. If it’s working it’ll start to go orange.”

“Can you look at Ribek while I’m doing that? I can only just feel his pulse. He was fighting to get to the demon and I was fighting to stop him. Then he collapsed, but he kept on trying to go forward.”

“He is asleep,” said Benayu in a dazed voice, as if he were half asleep himself. He shook his head, squared his shoulders and gave the ghost of a smile.

“He’s dreaming about—”

“You mustn’t look! It isn’t fair!”

Benayu wasn’t good at looking ashamed, but at least Maja’s snarl had woken him up.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought…Anyway, it was just an ordinary kind of dream. I don’t think he’s poisoned, just tired.”

“All right,” Maja muttered. “I suppose you had to. Thanks.”

Still unfairly furious, she took a piece of the fungus and settled down beside Ribek with her back, deliberately, to Benayu.

“Jex. Jex. Can you hear me? How are you?”

“Not well, but not as sick as many of my friends. Some of us are dying.”

“I’ve got some banbane. Saranja says it might work. But you’ve got to breathe it.”

“Take me out and put me on the grass.”

She still had him in her grasp when he changed his form. His eyes were glazed and the clear blue and yellow of his scales muddy and dull. The taut and muscular body was as floppy as dead meat. The broken edge of the banbane was oozing with opaque pale droplets and reeked of rotting timber. Carefully she arranged it close to Jex’s nostril-slits, propping it in place with her sandal. His neck ruffles rose and fell in time with his deep-drawn breaths.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, that appears beneficial. Ah, Benayu is fetching some more. Leave me to breathe this piece, while you take pieces to my friends. Some of us are unaffected. They will show you who is most in need.”

“Striclan’s looking better already,” said Saranja. “He kept trying to tell me something urgent he’s got to tell Benayu, but he wasn’t making much sense. Ah. His bit’s started to change color. It forms a crust, Maja. When it’s bright orange you can crumble that off and start again…No, love. Keep breathing. Benayu’s busy. There’s a lot of stuff going on, but it looks as if he’s done for the Watchers. Cedars and snows! Where did you find all that?”

Maja glanced round. Benayu was standing, looking smug, in a pile of banbane up to his knees. It was as if he’d decided he’d fulfilled his vow and destroyed the Watchers and could now keep his promise to himself and revert to the boy he had been not all that long ago, playing with his powers among the sheep pastures.

“Here and there,” he said airily. “Hope it’s enough to keep you busy. Now I’ll see if I can bring the other three back. I’m going to have to take it slowly, as I don’t know what sort of state they’ll be in. They took the full shock of it. I was just lucky I happened to be holding the staff.”

“You’re sure Ribek’s going to be all right?”

“Pretty sure. He’s not been as near the edge as you were. Just let him rest, while you and Saranja do what you can for Jex’s friends.”

It didn’t take as long as she’d feared, anything like. It turned out that when the Jexes had decided to help distract the demon, they’d agreed among themselves that some of them should remain hidden. These now emerged and thronged round Maja and Saranja as they broke off bits of banbane for them to carry to their stricken comrades.

When the first flurry of distribution was over Maja fetched Ribek’s bedding roll and made him more comfortable. His pulse seemed stronger and steadier and there was a little bit of color in his cheeks. Striclan was looking a lot better, very pale still, but no longer that ghastly yellow, and holding himself as if he wasn’t about to collapse any moment. Between breaths at the banbane he was talking in a low urgent voice to Saranja, and she was trying to calm him down.

Now he fell silent and they both sat watching what Benayu was up to, so Maja turned to do the same. He had moved over to the other side of the arena, and somehow cleared a circular patch among the mass of Jexes. He was leaning on his staff in the middle of it. He had changed again. He wasn’t the shepherd boy now, but ageless, human still, but also something other than human, the look that the Ropemaker had worn when he had summoned the Council.

He did nothing for a while, then whispered a few slow syllables. A ripple swept across the Jexes like the ripple of a breeze over ripe wheat. He positioned the staff upright at the center of the circle, let go and watched it sink for a third of its length into the ground. He grasped its top in both hands, bent and blew gently down it as if he were blowing into a reed pipe.

A bulge formed immediately below his hands, moved slowly down the staff and disappeared into the ground. As soon as it was gone he blew again, and another bulge formed and was gone. And again, and again, for some while. At length he stopped blowing, stood upright, took a fresh grasp on the staff and firmly but without obvious effort drove it right down into the turf. Then, as the Jexes made room for him, he stood back outside the circle.

While he waited, the other-than-human look faded away until he seemed to be just another spectator, waiting to see what would happen. Maja assumed that one of the now familiar eggs would appear, and if all was well the three magicians would be alive inside it. Instead, the turf inside the circle shimmered over and a pool of tangled light formed from which a flock of white gulls emerged, screaming, and fled away.

The surface of the pool stirred and something began to rise from it. Chanad’s head, her shoulders, her body down to the waist. Benayu reached out, took her hand and helped her up onto the turf. She turned and waited beside him.

The surface of the pool stirred, but nothing happened. Benayu shrugged and knelt. Chanad knelt beside him. Together they reached down with both hands into the pool, adjusted their grip and with some difficulty lifted out the inert body of Zara and laid her on the turf. The Ropemaker followed, climbing out without help. He was wearing his turban and looked much more like himself than he had after the Watchers had so nearly destroyed him. Immediately he knelt beside Zara, put an arm under her body and cradled her against his chest. Chanad knelt on the other side, took her hands and began to whisper quietly. They were doing some kind of healing, Maja guessed.

Benayu stood watching for a moment, then turned and gave a brief whistle. Sponge went bounding toward him, put his front paws on his chest and reached up to lick his face. Benayu pushed him away, laughing, and walked over.

“That’s your fault, Maja,” he said. “He thinks it’s allowed now.”

“Could you come, Benayu?” said Saranja. “Striclan’s got something important to tell us. It’s a bit complicated.”

“Can it wait a moment? I’m hungry. It seems a long time since breakfast. What do you want?”

“Whatever’s quick and easy. Some of Maja’s broth for Striclan, if that’s not a nuisance.”

“And for Ribek too,” said Maja. “I think he’s waking up, and it’s my turn to be tough with him.”

“And if you could do something about the weather,” said Saranja.

By the time the meal arrived the sky was already clearing and the wind abating as it swung round to the south. The smell of food brought the Ropemaker over. He had changed, still friendly and interested, but less eager and inquisitive, and moving more slowly and with the beginnings of a stoop. He seemed to be aging even as Maja looked at him. It was as though the minutes were weeks and the hours were years. Chanad had stayed nursing Zara, so he carried a bowl of soup over to her, with a chunk of bread and an apricot, and returned. He was frowning, puzzled by something.

“Where’s the old ring, then?” he said. “Can’t feel it. Gave it to you, didn’t I? Memory’s going, along of the rest. Got rid of it already?”

“I think so,” said Benayu. “You’d set it up to destroy itself, and Jex told us the only safe place for that to happen was in the sort of non-space between the universes—what he called ultraspace. I think it’s the same thing as the negative zero in Fodaro’s equations. Neither of them makes any sense to me, but they do it in the same kind of way. Anyway the demon was consuming anything with any kind of magic in it, so I used the equations to fetch a sphere of ultraspace into our universe and keep it there—that was the tricky bit—and put the ring in the middle of it as bait. Then I let the demon have it, but as soon as I released it the sphere had to return to ultraspace. The demon kept right on swallowing so it had to go with it. And then, if I got it right, the ring destroyed the demon along with itself.”

“Tidy,” said the Ropemaker.

“How’s Zara?” said Saranja. “Striclan says the Pirates are all set to attack Larg, so…”

“Too late for her. Can’t do anything. Ready to go. Me too. Time to undo our days. Didn’t want to do it on an empty stomach.”

“Oh, but Larg!” Maja blurted out. “Couldn’t you stay long enough…?”

He shook his head and finished his mouthful.

“Nothing to give,” he said through the crumbs of it. “Taking all the magic I’ve got keeping my teeth in place. Who told you? This chap?”

“He’s called Striclan,” said Saranja. “He was a Pirate spy when we met him, but he’s on our side now. He was poisoned by a demon on his way to tell us.”

“Sure about him?”

“Absolutely.”

“Take your word for it. When’s this going to happen, then? Soon, you say?”

Striclan tottered to his feet and Saranja rose to steady him.

“The day after tomorrow, I believe, sir,” he said in a barely audible whisper, but speaking as formally as ever. “The battle fleet is already on its way.”

“They need a battle fleet to attack Larg?” said Saranja. “There isn’t any magic in Larg. They could take the town with a couple of barges.”

“That is the point. A delegation of the Syndicary—”

“No time for that,” interrupted the Ropemaker. “When I’ve gone. Know who’s running the show? Be with the fleet?”

“I believe so, sir,” said Striclan. “They will be aboard their largest vessel, the All-Conqueror. Admiral-General Pashgahr is the Fleet Commander. Supreme General Olbog, who is in charge of the whole operation against the Empire, will almost certainly be there to make sure the Syndics are impressed by a successful operation against Larg.”

“That’ll do. Show up. Stop it in its tracks. Impress them that way. Right, Benayu?”

Benayu started to shake his head and looked away.

“We’re talking about Larg,” said Saranja. “I know you’ve done what you came to do and destroyed the Watchers, and now you want to go back to shepherding. But we’ve got friends in Larg. You’re a Freeman of the city.”

“Someone else can do it. I’m tired.”

“There’s no time to find anyone else,” said Ribek. “It’s already started.”

“Chanad…,” said Benayu.

“Tired too,” said the Ropemaker. “Take the both of you, anyway.”

Benayu turned to Maja, biting his lip.

“And you’re going to tell me the same, I suppose,” he said.

“Zara gave you something at Larg. It’s inside you, part of you now.”

He stared at her, startled.

“Please,” she said aloud.

“You’ll enjoy it,” whispered Ribek. “Impress them, he said. You can do a lot of fancy conjuring tricks. Just your sort of thing.”

Benayu managed to laugh and sigh at the same time.

“Oh, all right,” he said. “But then we’re going home. I’ll help you seal your Valley off, if that’s what you want, but then that’s absolutely and definitely it.”

“Want to talk to you about that,” said the Ropemaker. “You’re right, lad. Too young to take it all on yet. You go back to shepherding and a bit of hedge magic. Let the Free Magicians have a go at it for a while. It’ll come for you one day, mind, like it did for me. Bound to. But…No, listen to me, lad. And you three too.

“Like it or not, things have changed. We’ve done that between us, you and me. Destroyed the ring, right. Suppose we’d not done that, whole thing would’ve started all over again, Valley sealed off, Watchers gone, demons all over the place, magic running loose, new lot of magicians getting together to sort it all out, getting more and more power, changing their nature…

“See where I’m going? Round and round, round and round, trapped in a time loop, same as I was in the other universe. Told you, didn’t I? Ring does that. Like a rock in a river. Makes a whirlpool. Show you.”

He stopped and sat nodding gently, a tired old man, lost in a dream. Then he pulled himself together and raised his forearm, let his wrist go limp and slowly rotated his hand around it several times, apparently hypnotized by the movement. Maja found herself standing on a bridge over a broad stream, immediately below a weir. Upstream the water flowed smoothly toward the drop. From twigs and leaves carried on its surface she could see where the main current ran between the slacker patches along the banks. Downstream all she could see was unreadable hummocked foam vanishing into a fog bank. She had no need to be told that she was seeing an image of the past changing into the future. The weir was the instant of change. Now.

Close above the weir a boulder jutted up out of the water. Immediately below it, almost on the edge of the drop, a large eddy had formed. On its wrinkled surface circled a feather. It might have been the selfsame feather she had seen on the pool in the oyster-beds at Barda. Round and round, round and round, round and round…

The scene vanished, and she was back on Angel Isle.

The Ropemaker shook his head, sighed, and went on slowly, effortfully, with long pauses every few words.

“Bit of a strain. Even showing you that…Well, rock’s gone now. New times coming. You’re in at the start of it. Not famous, not rich, nothing like that. But you’re here. Planting a seed. What you do, next few days. How you plant it. That’s going to shape the tree. These Pirates. They’re part of it too. Not going away. Right, mister?”

“Certainly their past history would suggest otherwise,” said Striclan. “Even if Benayu were to destroy their whole battle fleet at Larg, they would try again, and with greater forces, elsewhere.”

Another rock in the stream, thought Maja. Another eddy. Round and round, round and round.

“New times coming, I told you,” said the Ropemaker. “Now’s your chance. Change all that. Won’t come again. Good luck.”

In an abrupt gesture of closure he started to brush the crumbs off his robe. Maja stared at him, bewildered. He couldn’t leave them like this, right in the middle of what he was saying. And he hadn’t even…

He looked up, saw her expression and grinned.

“Trouble, Maja?”

“Er…Ribek,” she muttered. “He’s…Can you…?”

“Better repay him, eh? Don’t want you haunting me. Wherever I’m going. Me, I can spare a year or two now. Still got to catch up with Zara. Pay him a bit of interest, maybe.”

Maja heard the last six words inside her head. He laid a bony finger against his nose and winked at her. He had put his last burden aside, and now, as time raced by him, scouring wrinkles and blotches into his skin, rheuming and reddening his eyes, he seemed to be returning almost to his childhood, boyishly cheerful at the prospect of his own going. She smiled understanding and glanced at Ribek, but he didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Owe Ribek a year or two, right?” he said. “Better do that. While I’ve got any. After that, you five hang around. Get your friend better. Going to need him. Knows what’s what with the Pirates. Speaks their lingo. Make a bit of a plan. I’ll send Chanad over. President-elect of Council. I’ll give her my ring to prove it. Don’t go till we’re both gone. Zara and me. Dusk, that’ll be. Like to have you there. Ready, Ribek? Help me up, someone.”

Saranja steadied him as he creakily rose. Maja did the same for Ribek. They faced each other, stooped and weary, Ribek now looking only barely the older man. Saranja made as if to stand clear but the Ropemaker put his hand on her forearm and stopped her. He took Ribek by both hands, drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. Time spooled between them.

Maja could actually watch the process of change as the once tall figure opposite her bowed and shrank into itself, and the flesh wasted beneath the mottled and sagging skin. At the same time, with her arm still round Ribek’s shoulders, she felt him straighten, felt the wiry muscles reclothing the bones, and the slower, firmer breathing, as the whole joy of being active, healthy flesh returned to the shriveled carcass.

It seemed an astonishingly short time before the Ropemaker let go of Ribek’s hands.

“Back to where you were?” he mumbled.

“I feel fine,” said Ribek cheerfully. “Ten years younger than that, if you want to know.”

The thin, purple lips of the old man smiled. Maja grinned and winked at him, but she wasn’t sure the bleared eyes could any longer see that far.

“Say good-bye to you now,” he said. “Won’t be up to it when the time comes. Good thing someone came looking for me. Lucky for me it was you. Soft spot for Valley folk. Ever since Tilja’s time. Very fond of her. Helped me a lot.

“Benayu, lad. Twice the magician I was, your age. Five times wiser. Your friend Fodaro—did well by you. Zara can’t speak. Says to renew her blessings.”

Maja couldn’t speak either, for tears, but she ran and hugged the old man. Saranja, surprisingly, was also weeping-dumb, but when she had helped the Ropemaker back to where Zara lay and eased him down beside her, she knelt and kissed him, then rose and came blindly back. Nobody wanted to talk, so they sat for a long while in silence. Chanad came across without a word and joined them.

At length Ribek gave a deep sigh.

“Well, I suppose we’d better do as he said and start thinking about what happens next,” he said. “How are you feeling, Striclan? You’re going to have to do a lot of the talking, telling us how the Pirates operate, all that.”

“I am certainly well enough now for that.”

“All right,” said Ribek. “Let’s go back to what you were trying to tell the Ropemaker. Why Larg, when there isn’t any magic in Larg?”

“For that precise reason. I think I told you that the Southern Federation was originally an alliance of warring tribes. As time went by these developed into a number of competing interests. There is the Manufacturing Interest, and the Farming and Forestry Interest, and the Military Interest, and so on. However, they have retained the original tribal method of settling disputes. This they call the Constitution.

“Once every six years all the members of each Interest elect a number of Syndics to represent them in the Syndicary, and make the laws and decide what taxes to raise and where the money is to be spent. It was they who decided on the invasion of the Empire, to force it to open its borders to world trade. The invasion was sponsored by the Marine Interest and the Military Interest, for obvious reasons, and the Manufacturing Interest, who foresaw vastly increased expenditure in weapons, which they would make, and so on.

“Other Interests were strongly against the war, but the idea was sold to the public at large with the promise of an easy victory against a backward and superstitious nation. But popular support is rapidly weakening in the light of the fatalities around Tarshu, the full extent of which has yet to be revealed. An influential committee of the Syndicary has been sent to investigate and report.

“The military have been aware for some time of the lack of magic in Larg, but have regarded a possible occupation of the city as an unnecessary diversion of resources. Now, though, they see it as a welcome opportunity to demonstrate to the Syndics that the resistance at Tarshu is the exception, and that large parts of the Empire will fall very much more easily into their hands. If all goes well Larg will offer no resistance at all, thus demonstrating to the tender consciences back home that heavy loss of life among civilians is not a necessary corollary of an invasion. Meanwhile the Syndics will have been able to witness a large operation carried out with military efficiency and complete success.”

“And they’ll go home no wiser than they came. Less, if anything,” said Ribek. “Presumably they’re the ones we need to talk to.”

“They will be a mixed bunch,” said Striclan. “Some will be vociferous supporters of the war, either on ideological grounds or because they are actually in the confidence of the military and have their own hands in the till. Others in the Marine and Business Interests will have lost their original enthusiasm, and are now more doubtful in view of the unexpected cost. Others, in particular the powerful Homemakers’ Interest, will have been against the invasion from the start.

“I gather that we are going to travel magically to the All-Conqueror and either persuade them to call off the assault or to prevent it by magical means. Our first problem will be to get any kind of a hearing. For a start, we will need both to claim and seem to be much more influential than we in fact are. I assume Benayu can alter our dress and appearance….”

“I’d better be a grown-up,” said Maja.

“Perhaps the first thing is for Benayu to go and take a look on this airboat,” said Ribek. “What did you say it was called?”

“The All-Conqueror. She is the sister ship of the one you saw destroyed at Tarshu.”

“That’s a bit of a risk, isn’t it?” said Saranja. “I mean, if it happened once it could happen again, and with these Syndic people aboard…”

“The official version is that that was a freak natural storm, a once-in-a-thousand-years catastrophe,” said Striclan. “There will be hired magicians aboard the All-Conqueror, Benayu, as well as elaborate defenses against magical intrusion.”

“I’ll be careful. Come along, Sponge,” said Benayu.

The two of them vanished.

“I suppose I shall become accustomed to this,” said Striclan.

“I haven’t,” said Saranja. “Even when I’m using Zald I keep thinking, This isn’t really me. You’d better have a rest, Strick. You’re still looking utterly washed out.”

“Striclan’s not the only one,” said Ribek. “Yesterday was hard as they come on all of us, specially Maja, and then how much sleep did we get? Three hours? Four, maybe. We’d all be dying on our feet if this weren’t Angel Isle.”

Sleep came early and deep. Maja dreamed of a ruined city. She thought it was Larg, but there wasn’t anything she recognized, and the river was much too small. Whatever had destroyed it (enemy attack? Earthquake? Or simply the unimaginable touch of time?) had happened years before. It was utterly deserted—nobody in the smashed streets, no birds nesting in crannies, no lizards scuttling among the fallen masonry. She wasn’t even there herself—she was just seeing it from some other place and time. Now something moved, a white horse, Pogo, disconsolately wandering around that emptiness, looking for his wings so that he could find fields and woods and streams, and horses to be friends with. He came to a tall, featureless wall, for some reason still standing. Once there had been a picture on it. A lot of it had flaked away but Maja could still make out some of what Pogo had been looking for, a green slope, two horses grazing beside a lake. Pogo stepped into the picture and joined them. He was a unicorn now, but Maja couldn’t see the top half of his horn, because the paint was missing from that bit of the tree.

She stirred in her sleep, distantly heard voices—Benayu’s was one of them, so he must be back—and went to sleep again. That dream meant something, she told herself as she slid back into oblivion, but she had no idea what.

A faint voice spoke in her head, familiar but changed.

“Maja.”

Jex, but not in his live form, nor that of the little granite pendant. Something softer. Lichen didn’t have ears. She answered in her head.

“Jex! What’s wrong? I thought you were better.”

“I am indeed better, but I am resting, as you are. In my live form I continue to experience bouts of nausea, which of its nature lichen does not experience. How are you, Maja?”

“All right, except terribly tired. What about your friends?”

“They vary. Three of us have, alas, perished, and eight more will take a long while to recover their full health, if they ever do.”

“I thought you didn’t die.”

“Not from natural causes, and very rarely from others. It is equally rare for one of us to come into existence, so this has been a great loss and a great grief. I do not know when there was last such mortality among us.”

“I’m very sorry. I suppose it was all our fault for wanting to find the Ropemaker.”

“If it was anybody’s fault it was mine, for revealing my existence to Fodaro. But I think that when we come to discuss the matter my friends will accept that the increasing power and knowledge of the Watchers was already a serious threat to our way of existence, and would eventually have had to be countered. We could not have done this on our own, so some kind of alliance with one or more human magicians was essential. My choice of Fodaro and Benayu was accidental, but despite these deaths it has turned out to be fortunate.

“Be that as it may, I think we will certainly decide that all future contact with humans, indeed anything that might make them aware of our existence, is to be avoided. I must ask you and your friends, including the magician Chanad, never to speak of our existence, even among yourselves, and as far as possible to forget about us altogether.”

“Oh, Jex, that’s impossible! I won’t talk about you to anyone or say anything about other universes and all that. I think Chanad will understand. But you saved my life several times over….”

“As you did mine, Maja.”

“I can’t forget you! I’ll remember you as long as I live.”

“And I you, Maja. Farewell.”

“Good-bye, Jex. Good-bye.”

She wept in her dream, but woke to find her cheeks dry. The shadows of the circling boulders were long across the grass. There was a patch of yellow and blue lichen on the boulder beside her. She stroked it gently but it didn’t respond.

The others were awake, still discussing how to deal with the Pirates once they were aboard the airboat. Benayu was back from wherever he’d been. They seemed to have pretty well worked out most of their plans. Maja sat up and nudged Ribek’s side.

“Is Benayu going to make me older?” she whispered. “I won’t have to say a lot, will I?”

“You’ll be a grown woman, representing agricultural interests in the Empire. I don’t think the military will be very interested in that. The Syndics might be, as the Empire’s economy is mainly agricultural. Benayu says…it’s too complicated to explain, but you’ll be all right. He’s going to do a much trickier version of what we did with the jewel seller at Mord. They’ll have translators aboard, so Striclan’s not going to let on he speaks their language. If he wants you to say anything important, Benayu can tell you in your mind. He says the magicians they’ve hired are fairly good but nothing special. Normally one of them would spot what we’re up to, but he’ll put them out of action. What do you want to look like?”

“I don’t mind. Only not too young and pretty. And not like I’m going to look when I’m forty.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I just don’t want to know,” she said. (Him knowing was what mattered, of course. No. She’d got to stop thinking like that.) “But can I have white hair?” she added hurriedly.

“Tell Benayu.”

He turned back to the others. Striclan was explaining something about how two of the Syndics were enemies in public but were actually both in the pay of the same big mining company, which wanted to start mining in the Empire. Maja’s attention drifted. She was sitting companionably with Ribek, but being careful not to touch him. Perhaps too careful, she thought. She oughtn’t to need to be careful about it.

In that other existence she’d been planning to go back and live at the mill with him. Now she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t be better to go back to Woodbourne. It depended on what Saranja, and Striclan of course, decided to do, whether they simply rebuilt the farm and lived together there. They weren’t making much attempt to conceal their delight in being back in each other’s company, but it was difficult to imagine them both settling down to the steady, repetitive annual round of life on a farm in the Valley. They were born to be adventurers, both of them. There weren’t any adventures in the Valley.

That made her wonder about her dream again. It had been such a strong vision. Pogo without his wonderful wings, just an ordinary sad white horse. Not magical at all, never any more. And then stepping into the picture, and becoming a unicorn. Unicorns are as magical as they come, but this was only a unicorn in a crumbling picture. Half his horn was already gone. The rest of it, the rest of him, the rest of the whole magical world, would soon be a drift of colored flakes on the cobblestones, until a breeze blew up and wafted it away.

If it hadn’t been for Ribek, would she even have wanted to go back to the Valley, once Benayu had sealed it off as Faheel and the Ropemaker had done? Supposing he did. After what the Ropemaker had been saying she wasn’t even sure about that now. Anyway, there’d still have to be a way of stopping the horsemen coming through the passes. So Ribek would have to go back to his mill. He’d want to, anyway. It was where he belonged. Where she would belong, if all went well. One day.

She thought of all the wonders she’d seen on her journey. Even more she thought of the wonders she’d felt with her strange extra sense. Not the terrible, battering, almost obliterating explosions of pure power, but the little everyday magics inherent in people and creatures and plants and everything in the whole material world. To lose that now, having only just found it—it would be like losing…no, not her eyesight or her hearing, but at least her sense of smell. Think, the smell of an early morning after longed-for rain has fallen on parched fields—never to have that again in your nostrils!

Of course, even if Benayu renewed the magical sickness that had for generations kept the armies of the Empire out of the Valley, that wouldn’t affect her, being female, and she’d be able to come and go through the forest and revisit the world of magic when she wanted, but it wouldn’t be the same as living among its day-to-day wonders. And she would never finish learning how to cope with major magic, not just to endure it, but to explore it and understand it, perhaps even to relish its strange and dangerous energies.

Her rough cousins had loved climbing the largest trees on the edge of the forest, whose branches hung low enough to reach, and where they were not affected by the magic sickness. They would dare each other higher and higher, further and further out along the swaying boughs, and descend gleeful and triumphant. Maja could never have done that, but with Jex’s help she’d been beginning to do something of the same kind with serious magic until Benayu and the Ropemaker had needed to shield her completely from the huge forces unleashed in all that had happened from the oyster-beds of Barda to the destruction of the Watchers.

Suppose she went back to live in the Valley. Sealed again into its seclusion, she would never make that wonderful journey. Was that what her dream had been telling her? All she would have was her memory, a flaking picture on a crumbling wall. Suppose, suppose…

She must have sighed at the thought.

“What was that about?” said Ribek. “You can’t be that bored with adventures.”

She told him.

“Well, it’s worth thinking about,” he said, to her surprise. “I’ve been wondering myself, after what the Ropemaker told us. Watchers are gone. Who knows what’s happened to the Emperor? Chanad’s got the ring the Ropemaker used to summon the Twenty-four, but there isn’t a Twenty-four to summon. Not even a One. All we know is things are going to change. It could be wonderful. It could be hideous. And we won’t know. Frustrating, very, as our friend would have said.”

“Benayu says he doesn’t want to do big stuff, anyway for a while. Suppose he didn’t seal us off in the Valley, then we’d still have the horse people to deal with.”

“Well, maybe. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

“What’s that got to do with the horse people?”

“You haven’t been listening?”

“I told you. I was asleep. I had that dream.”

He grinned at her, but didn’t say anything.

Frustrating, very.

Chanad was coming across toward them. She was obviously still very tired and shaken, but apart from that everything about her, the look on her face, the way she moved and held herself, was quietly solemn. She wasn’t making a parade of it. It was how she felt. They all rose and waited for her to speak.

“They’re ready to begin,” she said. “They would like us all to watch, but not to come too near. It will be clear to you how close we may safely get. They will need help to stand at first. I will steady Zara….”

“I’ll do the Ropemaker,” said Saranja firmly.

“Good. I will give you bread soaked in wine. Put it to his lips before you try to lift him. He will nibble a morsel off and that will give him the strength to stand and move. Then follow me and Zara and we will position them either side of the tablet. When I give you the signal—it’ll be when the sun’s rim is about to touch the horizon—put the bread to his lips again. As soon as both are ready, we can move away. We will stand and witness their going.”

They walked quietly over to where the two dying magicians lay in the shadow of the rocks. Zara was on her back with her hands clasped across her. The Ropemaker was on his side, facing her, slightly curled up, with his cheek resting on the back of his hand, like a sleeping child. Standing, Maja could just see over the top of the rocks to where the round, smoky-orange sun was settling out of a pale gold sky toward the dark hills. Visibly the gap closed.

Chanad took a roll and a small flask out of the folds of her robe. She broke the roll in two, releasing an odor of fresh-baked bread, and poured a little yellow wine into the soft interiors. She handed one half to Saranja, then bent and breathed gently on each of the still faces. The eyes opened. She placed the softened pulp of her half roll against Zara’s mouth and the shriveled lips sucked and chumbled at it. Saranja did the same for the Ropemaker until he turned his head away. The helpers stood back, and they all waited.

“I am ready,” whispered Zara.

“Me too,” said the Ropemaker, and pushed himself up onto his elbow.

Chanad had to lift Zara bodily to her feet and half-carry her across the turf, but the Ropemaker needed only to be helped up and then steadied as he tottered behind them. The others followed. A hollow had appeared in the center of the arena, grassed like the rest of the space, as though it had been there for centuries. At the bottom lay a low stone slab, carved with what looked like a letter in an unknown alphabet. Chanad and Saranja helped the two magicians down the slope and positioned them either side of the slab. Without any discussion Ribek, Benayu, Striclan and Maja spaced themselves out round the rim of the bowl. Sponge was already at Benayu’s heels and the horses came ambling over and joined them.

Again they waited. Maja was facing west. The sun was almost red now, seeming unnaturally huge and near, but dim enough for her to be able to watch it unblinking. Chanad, in deep shadow at the bottom of the bowl, could not have seen it, but when only a sliver of golden sky separated the rim of the disc from the rim of the hills she nodded to Saranja.

The bread had barely touched the lips of the two magicians when they raised their hands and took it themselves. Chanad and Saranja backed away, turned and climbed up out of the bowl. The sun reached the hilltops.

The magicians didn’t stir, but they seemed now to glow faintly as they slowly nibbled the bread, or perhaps that was only an effect of dusk settling into the bowl. They stopped eating, and a rustling whisper rose from the hollow, steady, faintly rhythmic, shaping itself as Maja listened into the sound of two old voices muttering as if in dreams. Gradually the mutter was strengthened into song. They raised their arms in a gesture of invocation. Somehow the space in and above the bowl seemed to begin to revolve, without causing any movement in the windless air, but because it was filled with minute flecks of light, like dust-motes, turning and turning, floating downward and inward, drawn to the two figures standing either side of the slab, sucked in by their quiet song.

Maja knew what she was looking at. It was all in the old story, right at the start of it. This was what had happened to the magician Asarta forty generations ago. She was watching the whirlpool of the years. The motes were all the uncountable instants of those two long lives spiraling back down into the bodies from which they had come. The glow from the two magicians intensified and spread around them, filling the bowl but casting no shadows beyond it. The light contained itself, like a drop of liquid held into a sphere by its own surface tension.

The two voices became distinct. They were almost at the same pitch, but very different, the Ropemaker’s a light, slightly nasal tenor, quavery at first, but true, and soon becoming firmer. By the time he was standing to his full stature it rang with his natural energies and zest for life. Zara’s was deep for a woman’s voice, much darker and sadder in tone, with effortlessly sustained long haunting notes. Their songs were not the same songs, but intertwined gracefully with each other as if they had been made and shaped to do so.

Though there was no wind the whirl of time plucked at their clothing like a fresh breeze, unsettling small bright birds from the folds of Zara’s robes, to flutter and dart around her. The backward-racing minutes twitched and fingered at the Ropemaker’s turban, loosed it and sent it snaking away in a brilliant ribbon of color, and the birds danced in and out of its windings. Laughing through his song he shook loose his fiery shock of hair and it blazed out like sunlight around him.

Their song became laughter, delight in their own youth and strength and the joy of the living world. Still singing, they held out their arms to each other across the slab, gripped hands with hands, and stepped easily up onto the slab. He knelt, bringing their faces to a level. She moved to him, and they took each other in their arms and kissed. Even to Maja it was obvious, from the sudden slight awkwardness after all their assured and purposeful movement through the ritual, and from the long, intense silence breaking the song, that the kiss was no part of the ritual, and that never before in all their immense lives had either of them done such a thing, done it in the love that magicians can never afford.

They separated. She stepped back and he remained kneeling. They raised their arms in front of their faces and moved them closer to each other, all four hands spread and tilted backward at the wrist, forming a shape like the petals of a tulip. The light in and over the hollow, without losing any of its intensity, shrank inward to its center, smaller and smaller, until it became the thing that the hands were holding, all the instants of all their years gathered into a sphere of pure light, that still cast no shadows because it spread no ray beyond itself, an offering up of those lives, the purpose and ending of the ritual.

Quietly they allowed themselves to be absorbed into its brightness, and it floated upward. The witnesses round the bowl watched it go, widening now and fading as it spread across the sky, until it became the light of the newly risen moon. The stone slab vanished and the hollow in which it had lain rose quietly back to level ground.

They stood for some while in silence. Maja’s eye was caught by a movement among the rocks on the further side of the arena. A Jex, several Jexes, a whole rank of them, all round the arena, had returned to their living form to watch the magicians’ going, much as humans might have risen from their sickbeds to witness some astounding event. Rows of lizard eyes glistened opal in the moonlight. Maja had scarcely noticed them before they began to melt back into patches of lichen.

Nobody seemed to want to move or break the silence. Even Chanad, steeped perhaps for centuries in serious magic, seemed awed by what she had seen. At length she walked slowly forward and picked up the remains of the two pieces of roll that the magicians had dropped. She took the little flask from inside her robe and placed it upright on the turf, where the slab had been. As it touched the ground a second flask appeared beside it. She plucked a few stems of grass, rubbed them between finger and thumb, and placed them beside the flasks, where they became a woven grass platter. When she crumbled the two pieces of roll onto it the morsels reassembled themselves into a loaf.

She beckoned and they moved to join her. She gave them each a goblet, and there, still in complete silence, they sat and ate and drank. The bread was the best Maja had ever eaten, and the water in one flask as delectable as the wine in the other. It was a simple meal, but richer and more satisfying than the grandest feast, because it was the final element in the ritual they had witnessed, an act of letting go, their share in the blessedness of the event.