Angel Isle

CHAPTER

2

At the top of a long mountain meadow, with the morning sun full in their faces, sat a man and a boy. Between them on a boulder crouched a squat blue and yellow lizard about the size of the man’s shoe. A huge old cedar rose close behind them, and below, scattered across the bright upland turf, a small flock of sheep grazed, watched by a neat black-and-white sheepdog.

The man was talking to the lizard.

“I think we may have made a breakthrough—or rather Benayu may have.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” said the boy. “I just thought I’d give it a go, running my spell backward through the screen—not exactly backward, more inside out, if you see what I mean.”

“What he did, in effect, was to set up an exact counter-resonance to the active resonances of the spell so that on reaching the screen they canceled each other out. He was lucky, of course, in that the spell was ideally suited to the treatment, but all the same it was a whole level more powerful than anything we’ve managed to screen before.”

The lizard’s voice answered in both their minds. If granite could speak it would do so in such a voice.

“Yes, it will not always be so easy. Each screen must be custom-made to what it screens. But the principle…Wait. A thing of power is coming. You may have brought it here. Hide yourselves.”

Man and boy rose and stood for a moment, staring north, and saw a dark fleck in the pale blue sky above a massive snow-streaked ridge. Tension swept up the hillside. It was as if the placid turf had been the nape of a giant neck, every grass-blade prickling with sudden apprehension. Quietly they walked toward the cedar, laid a hand on its bark and disappeared.

By now the stone where the lizard had been was mottled with blue and yellow lichen, and the place was empty apart from the sheep and the dog, and the small creatures that clicked and chirruped in the sun-warmed turf. The tension remained, electric.

Rocky circled down toward the mountain meadow, apparently empty apart from a flock of sheep and a sheepdog.

“I think this may be where we’re going,” called Saranja over her shoulder. “To start with, anyway. I didn’t ask him to land, and he can’t be hungry yet. There’s got to be a shepherd somewhere around. Perhaps he’ll tell us what happens next.”

The dog below yapped a warning. The sheep started to scatter and the dog raced to round them up as Rocky swung in a full circle and glided in toward the slope, closer and closer, and with a sudden bell-like booming of wings landed some twenty paces below the cedar.

All three riders climbed stiffly down. Rocky folded his wings and started to nose discontentedly at the sheep-nibbled turf, too short to be much use to him. The dog streaked toward them, snarling, only to halt almost as suddenly, but with hackles still bristling.

Maja stared around. Something was wrong. Apart from the spectacular view she couldn’t see anything different from any of the half-dozen lonely and peaceful places where they’d stopped to rest, but the feel of this place was like the twanging stillness before the thunder breaks.

“If there’s a shepherd he’s probably hiding in the wood,” said Ribek, apparently untroubled. “That’s where I’d be, seeing something like us show up. Unless that dog’s magical.”

“No,” said Maja. “But the place…”

“What about the place?”

“It’s…worried.”

They looked at her. Saranja shrugged.

“Rocky chose it,” she said. “We may as well stay here for a bit, anyway. There must be some better herbs in this lot of woods. I didn’t like the look of that leg of yours at all this morning. How’s it feeling?”

“Not too good,” said Ribek. “It’s been throbbing a while. But it’ll do a bit longer. I’ll just see if that stream’s got anything to say.”

Maja helped him limp across the slope. He paused at an odd little pool, an exact circle of still clear water cut into the grass.

“Nothing there for me,” he said. “Somebody made that.”

“By magic,” she whispered, afraid of her own voice.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, and limped on.

For a while he stood by the stream with his head cocked, apparently listening to the ripple of the water over the boulders. Maja had a strange notion while she waited for him that she could actually feel whatever he was listening to. Not hear it, the way he seemed to, but feel it as a sort of soft rippling tickle somewhere at the back of her mind. Momentarily it soothed the throb of tension.

“Well?” muttered Saranja sarcastically, when Maja had helped him back. “What’s the news from nowhere?”

“That tree’s watching us,” said Maja.

Ribek turned and looked.

“Isn’t that a cedar, Saranja?” he asked gently.

Saranja too turned.

“Oh, gods!” she yelled as she strode toward the tree and thumped her clenched fists against the bark. “I never asked for any of this! I tell you I don’t want any of this!”

A breeze woke in the stillness of the afternoon and whispered among the needles of the tree. Just as with the stream, Maja imagined she could somehow feel its mutterings in her mind. Saranja listened to them, frowning and biting her lip, and strode back unappeased.

“All right,” she said. “So this is the place, and we’ve got to wait. Same from the stream, I suppose. And I’m starving, and there’s almost nothing in the saddlebags.”

“There’s mutton,” said Ribek with a jerk of his head toward the flock. “Only I don’t like the look of that dog.”

Maja jumped with sudden shock. A moment later, with a faint sound of air abruptly displaced, a basket landed on the turf beside them. The smell of fresh bread added itself to the mountain odors.

“And you don’t want any of that either?” said Ribek. “What do you think, Maja? You’re jumpy about something?”

“I think it’s all right,” muttered Maja. “It was just the way it came. And this place.”

“Still worried? Any idea what about?”

Maja concentrated. The worry-feeling was like an itchy patch of skin round an insect bite that causes it, sometimes almost too small to see, but…yes…there.

“Rocky,” she said.

“What are you two talking about?” said Saranja, still sounding inwardly furious.

“Maja seems to be extra sensitive to magic,” said Ribek. “That’s why things like putting Rocky’s wings on shake her so badly. That must be really big magic. I bet that cedar is watching us, too. You’re not going to trust her about the food?”

“I’m not that pig-headed,” said Saranja.

They settled either side of the basket and checked through the contents. Ribek took out a mutton chop, shrugged, bit and chewed.

“Tastes fine,” he said. “But I suppose it would. Help yourself, Maja.”

She took one too. No thrill of magic came from it, though it tasted still warm from the grill.

“Well, you haven’t grown donkey’s ears,” said Saranja sourly, and started to eat. She continued to brood as she munched.

“What now?” she said. “Just sit here and wait for the Ropemaker?—Is there any reason, by the way, why we can’t just call him Ramdatta?”

The whole landscape answered her. The three syllables throbbed through Maja as if she’d been a hard-struck bell. Rocky lifted his head and neighed, a sound that seemed to shake the hillside. Birds exploded from the wood and wheeled clamoring above it. Something thumped onto the turf behind them. They turned and saw two figures sprawled on the ground beneath the downsweeping branches of the cedar. These now rose groggily to their feet, shaking their heads as if to clear them.

All three travelers stood to face them. They saw a man in early middle age, stocky, muscular, with close-cut curly brown hair, a smooth, unreadable face, clean-shaven but with remarkably hairy legs revealed by the odd leather kilt he was wearing. His skin was golden brown tinged with olive. Next to him stood a gawky boy with a strong family likeness despite the difference in build.

“One moment,” said the man, and strode past them with the boy beside him, then stood staring out southward across the immense landscape. They could feel the tension too. Maja could see it in their poses, and feel it humming from them. They relaxed at last, and the man shrugged his shoulders and sighed as they turned to face the newcomers.

“That name,” he said. “Don’t say it again, please. Your horse is more than signal enough of your presence here. Can anything be done to mitigate that?”

Maja could hear the strain in the quiet, slow-spoken words.

“I can take his wings off,” said Saranja. “Maja says he doesn’t feel at all magical without them.”

The man glanced at Maja, frowning.

“Maja seems able to feel magic,” said Ribek. “She knew you were in the cedar.”

Saranja picked an apple out of the basket, cut it in quarters with the knife from her belt, walked down to Rocky and offered him a piece of it, which he took neatly from her open palm. She waited while he munched, gave him another piece, teased at his mane and moved to his shoulder, and gave him the rest of the apple. She reached for the wing-roots and stroked her hands gently up the massive bones.

“Hold me,” said Maja, and braced herself against Ribek’s side.

This time she was ready and could pay attention to the actual event. For a few moments the fierce electric tingle seemed to vibrate through the whole mountain on which they stood, and through her too, as if she’d been a boulder on that mountain. She watched the wings shrink into themselves, dwindling to a pair of golden plumes which Saranja could ease free, and Rocky became his other self, no more than an unremarkably handsome golden chestnut. He followed Saranja up the slope, clearly hoping for another apple, and not thinking anything at all strange had happened to him, but was distracted by a pile of fresh clover that had appeared on the turf beside him. When it was over Maja realized that the mountain pasture was almost at ease, though deep beneath the turf something remained. Something extremely strange.

“I hope that’s better,” said Saranja, turning toward where the man had been. But by now he was crouching beside a large blue and yellow lizard that had appeared on the rock close to where they had been sitting. It seemed to be having some kind of fit. Spasms of shuddering overcame it and its eyes kept closing to vertical slits and opening again.

“Much better,” he said over his shoulder. “Thank you, and let us hope it is not too late.”

“We would have known by now, wouldn’t we?” said the boy, obviously as anxious as the man.

“Probably,” said the man with a sigh, and rose to his feet.

“I must apologize for the informality of your reception,” he said, pulling himself together. “I am Fodaro, and this is my nephew Benayu. That’s his dog, Sponge. And this on the rock here is Jex. The name you spoke must have affected him even more powerfully than it did us, but he seems to have done his best to protect us before that happened. Evidently he has not yet recovered from the effort. The food is to your taste?”

Maja stared at the lizard, bewildered. She’d assumed it must be some kind of pet, but it didn’t sound like that. She couldn’t feel anything like the magical vibrations coming from it that she’d felt from Rocky when he had his wings on, though there was a sort of silent humming from both the man and the boy. They were still really scared of something too—something, she guessed, that might have noticed the explosion of magic when Saranja had spoken the Ropemaker’s name, and Jex had been trying to protect them from that happening. Yes, and they’d have known by now if it had done so….

Ribek glanced down at her. His face seemed unusually drawn. She realized that his leg must be hurting more than he let on, but he caught her expression, laughed, shrugged and spread his hands. He was as bewildered as she was.

“The food?” he said, turning back to Fodaro. “Just what we needed. Thank you very much. I’m Ribek Ortahlson, and my friends are Saranja and Maja Urlasdaughter. They’re cousins, but I’m not related to them. In fact we barely know each other.”

“Those are your true names?”

“What on earth is the point of a false name?” said Saranja. “That’s who I am.”

“Hm. And you appear not to be yourselves magicians?”

“Not as far as we know,” said Ribek. “There’s very little magic where we come from.”

“But the horse…?”

“Rocky’s different,” said Saranja. “He doesn’t belong there. At least his wings don’t. I put them on for him, but I’m not a magician. The feathers told me what to do. It’s a long story. Thank you for the fodder, by the way.”

“My pleasure,” said the boy.

She turned and stared at him.

“You too?” she said, as if this were the last straw.

“The talent runs in the family,” said Fodaro, “though his is in some ways different from mine. He takes more after his father, my brother-in-law.”

“And, um, Jex?” said Ribek.

“Jex is something else,” said Fodaro.

Ribek waited for him to explain, but he changed the subject.

“May we please look at your feathers?”

Without hesitation Saranja drew them out of her belt-pouch and offered them to him, but he held up both hands in a gesture of refusal and simply studied them as she held them, his nephew coming to his side to do so too. Their breathing slowed as they stared, while Saranja twisted them to and fro to let them see every aspect.

“Astonishing,” whispered Fodaro. “Can you tell us what they are?”

“Ask Ribek. I’m still trying not to believe it.”

“I’m not,” said Ribek. “After all, I believe in the Ice-dragon. They are roc feathers, according to the story we tell in the Valley, which so far has proved a pretty good guide, judging by what’s happened to us in the last few days.”

“Roc feathers. I have never seen one. But yes, of course. And the hair that binds them? That is something of another order.”

“It belonged to…to the Ropemaker—the fellow whose name Saranja said just now, but mostly he’s called the Ropemaker in the story we tell in the Valley.”

Fodaro didn’t respond, didn’t even move. It seemed as if he had stopped breathing. Benayu stared at him frowning.

“You know the Ropemaker’s true name?” he whispered at last, speaking the words even more slowly than before. “You carry a hair of his head? But you know nothing of magic? What brought you to this place? How do you come by a horse with the wings of a roc? Are you, at last, who I think you are?”

“Rocky brought us here,” said Saranja. “We were just running away from the Sheep-faces, but he seemed to know where to go. Until I found the roc feathers he was just an old nag who insisted on following me, but then everything changed and Ribek showed up and I knew what to do because of the story. Then the Sheep-faces came looking for us, but Rocky was faster than they were so we got away, and after that we just came where he took us.”

“Come to that,” said Ribek, “I think we’re entitled to ask who you are and what you are doing here.”

Fodaro relaxed enough to manage a smile.

“We are in much the same boat,” he said. “We too are running away, or rather hiding. Until you came we believed we were here to take advantage of certain magical aspects of this place to conceal ourselves from our enemy, and to develop Benayu’s powers with the help of Jex. I cannot tell you more about Jex because we have promised not to, but I’m extremely worried about him, both for his sake and ours. We need him well.”

He turned to Saranja.

“Will you try something for me?” he said. “I’ve never seen him like this before. He should have started pulling himself together by now, but if anything he’s getting worse. This may not work, but it’s the best I can think of. Kneel beside him, and when you are settled untie the quills, lay them close in front of him on the boulder, without the hair—don’t let that touch him. Leave them there only an instant. Don’t even whisper the name—just think it, and then pick them up and retie them at once. I’m sorry to have to ask you. I wouldn’t if I thought it was safe for anyone else to do this.”

Saranja actually grinned at him, if a bit sourly.

“If it works, it works,” she said. “I just don’t have to pretend to like it.”

With deft, careful movements she did as he’d told her. The feathers rested on the rock for little more than a heartbeat, but for that splinter of time the hillside again seemed to twang with tension. The lizard gave a convulsion that almost toppled it from its boulder. And then Saranja was rewinding the long gold hair round the quills, and the hillside was at peace, and the lizard was no longer shuddering but crouched in the sunlight with its eyes closed and the slow come-and-go of its breath gently stirring the ruffles of its neck.

Saranja slid the feathers into her pouch and rose. Fodaro held his spread hands above the lizard, as if warming them over a fire.

“Well, he’s here, at least,” he said. “But not yet as fully here as we need him to be.”

“Would that work on Ribek’s leg?” asked Saranja, obviously impatient with such abstractions. “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it, Ribek, by the look of you?”

“Not too good, but it can wait. Depends how urgent everything else is.”

“Not that urgent, I hope,” said Fodaro. “But Jex and the roc from which your feathers came are of a different order of being from ourselves,” he said. “A human hurt requires human healing, whether physical or magical. Benayu will see to it…. No, better not for the moment. I’m sorry.”

“I’d rather let Saranja take a look at it first, in any case,” said Ribek wearily. “I’m sorry, Benayu. I don’t distrust what you do the way she does, but I’m not used to it, and I prefer to stick with what I know. And there’s always a price, if you’ll excuse my saying so. Where Saranja’s been these last six years the men did precious little besides fighting each other, so she knows about wounds. Mine wasn’t too good when she dealt with it this morning, but your mountain water is clear and clean. I’ll ask it to help. They’ve all got a bit of deep-earth healing in them, water sources, until we start poisoning them lower down.”

He turned and limped over to the stream. The other four followed him. The two magicians watched for a while in silence as Saranja unwound the ragged bandage as far as she could, cutting off a bit of the loose end and using that to sponge and soften the clotted blood until she could pick the next winding free with her knife-point. It was clear from her movements that as he’d promised she knew what she was doing.

“Yes, you are right,” said Fodaro suddenly. “Any use of magic demands a price from the user. Out there, in the Empire, a serious magician would have demanded silver for healing a wound like yours—gold, even, if the wound was badly infected. Up here, though—”

“‘Would have demanded’?” interrupted Saranja without looking up, but Fodaro waited as she eased the last winding away and began on the blood-drenched pad that covered the torn flesh. The blood was still oozing, and the scabbing for the most part soft enough for her to peel the pad gently away. Ribek’s breath hissed between teeth and lip, but he didn’t flinch. The wound was a tear rather than a slice, not deep but angry-looking, running slantwise across the upper part of the calf. Saranja sniffed at it and frowned.

“Do you know what you need?” asked Benayu.

“Should do. Ribek told you. Mothermoss would be nice, but I’ll be lucky to find it here. There should be harmsain in the wood, though. Here, Maja—clean it up best you can, while I look. When you’ve finished, put a pad over it—here—and wrap it up to keep warm.”

She dampened one of the cleaner bits of bandage, folded another into a wad, gave them to Maja.

“Don’t go too far,” said Fodaro. “It’s still possible that you may need to leave in a hurry.”

She nodded and walked off toward the trees. Benayu glanced enquiringly at his uncle, who shook his head.

Ribek had caught the look.

“Let her find what’s there, if that’s what she wants,” he said. “I’ll do. We aren’t used to this sort of thing. There was almost no magic in the Valley. Saranja’s family can hear what the cedars are saying, and mine can listen to moving water, and that was about it. There was a chop or two left in the basket, wasn’t there?”

Benayu fetched the basket and then joined Fodaro, and crouched with him beside the lizard. They talked in low and worried voices. Ribek ate slowly while Maja worked away at his wound, which had clearly been troubling him more than he had let on. Then he hunkered away from the stream, stretched out in the sunlight and closed his eyes. By the time Saranja returned with a sheaf of twigs and leaves he was fast asleep, and Benayu had a small fire going beside the little circular pool, with a metal pot suspended over it.

Saranja eyed this, frowning.

“How did you know?” she said, instantly suspicious.

“Maja told me you’d need it, and Fodaro says we’d better lay off magic—even silly little things like lighting a fire—for the moment. So I did everything else your way, fetched the pot and the flint with my own hands, I mean. There’s good clean water in the pool. What have you got?”

“Nothing I was looking for. Most of this is only a bit better than nothing, but the bitter-bark’s fine, only it’s got to be an infusion.”

She picked out a bunch of twigs bound with a rag, and used this to handle them as she peeled the bronzy bark from the white wood. Maja reached to help.

“Watch it,” she said. “The raw sap is poisonous. You can use a couple of other sticks to put the bark in the pot. Keep it stirred, and just simmering if you can. Are we actually in a hurry, do you know?”

“There’s remarkably little we do know, these days,” said Fodaro, looking up. “Less than ever now, until Jex comes to himself. He exists simultaneously in two…places. That’s all it’s safe to tell you. But normally he can communicate through his other self with creatures of his kind elsewhere in the Empire and tell us what’s going on out there. In the meanwhile perhaps you could tell us this story which you’ve mentioned from time to time. It could very well be useful.”

Saranja sighed.

“I suppose I’ll have to,” she said. “Better get it over. We’ll let this cool now. Put me right, Maja, if I get it wrong. It’s been a long time.”

She lifted the pot from the fire with a stick and wedged it behind a boulder, then moved with the other three into the shade of the cedar, and they settled down close above the lizard.

“You’ll have to check with Ribek,” she said. “Everyone in the Valley tells it a bit differently, but his family and mine are the only ones it really matters to.”

“The Valley?” asked Fodaro.

“It’s over there,” she said, pointing west. “I don’t know how far. We came a bit roundabout, because first off we were escaping from some Sheep-faces in an airboat…. Forget about that—I’ll draw you a picture and explain later.”

She picked up a twig and started to scratch an outline in a patch of bare earth.

“Rocky flies incredibly fast,” she went on, “and that second day he kept going till it was too dark to see. Then we slept on a sort of ledge in the mountains and flew on all next day, with one short break by a river. We slept again halfway up a mountain and got here, when? A bit after midday, about?

“Anyway the Valley’s completely cut off from everywhere else, and has been for—oh, I suppose it’s got to be twenty generations, however long that is. But it wasn’t always. According to the story, we used to keep getting invaded by wild horsemen from the north and—just as bad, if not worse—the Emperor’s armies coming up from the south to drive them back. In the end things got so bad that we decided to send a sort of delegation to look for a powerful magician to stop this happening. She was called Asarta—”

“Asarta.”

Maja heard the stone whisper in her mind, coming, it seemed, from unbelievable distances away. Saranja must have heard it too. She shuddered.

“I don’t know if I can take much more of this,” she said. “I don’t mind giving Rocky his wings and taking them off again, for some reason, but otherwise…And I really hate it when it happens inside my head. In the story there’s an ancestor of ours—mine and Maja’s—called Tilja, who could undo magic. That was the only part I used to like.”

“Many people in the Empire feel the same,” said Fodaro. “There’ve been waves of lynchings of magicians over the years. Go on with the story. Your people went to this magician—I know her name, of course, but not much else. What did she do?”

“She didn’t. She’d finished her work and was just getting ready to leave, to ‘undo her days,’ according to the story, so she sent our people on to a magician called…Can I say his name?”

Fodaro shrugged.

“It will not have been his true name,” he said. “But it will still have resonance for Jex, as Asarta’s did. Try mouthing it only. You can tell us later.”

Maja watched the lizard as Saranja’s lips moved. It did not stir, but again she heard the whisper in her mind, no louder than before, but nearer, somehow, more resonant.

“Faheel.”

Then silence. Saranja hesitated a moment, sighed resignedly and went on.

“She gave them a ring to take to him, and in exchange he sealed the Valley off for another twenty generations. He summoned the Ice-dragon to block the northern passes with massive snowfalls, and—I’ve always thought this bit sounded particularly stupid—some unicorns into the southern forest who brought a kind of disease with them that made any men who tried to go in among the trees fall sick and die. Women were all right, though. See what I mean, stupid? There was always one woman in my family who could hear what the cedars were saying, and she had to go into the forest each year when the first snows fell and sing to the unicorns and then feed them through the winter. And there was always one man in Ribek’s family who could hear what the streams were saying, and each year he had to climb up to the snow line and sing to the snows to bring the Ice-dragon back for another winter.

“Well, that lasted another twenty generations, and then it broke down again, so four of us—Tilja and her gran from our family and a boy called Tahl and his grandpa from Ribek’s—went off to look for this Faheel person…Bother. No, it seems to be all right to call him that…Anyway, after a lot of tiresome magical adventures…I think I’m leaving out something important, Maja….”

“The Watchers?”

“Oh yes. Everything in the Empire was very tightly controlled. You couldn’t travel anywhere without having a way-leave. You couldn’t even die without a license from the Emperor. And magic—oh, gods! I suppose I’ve got to start believing in all this stuff—that was controlled by a bunch of super-magicians in Talak…am I saying that right?”

“The city is differently pronounced in different parts of the Empire,” said Fodaro. “Up here in the North we mostly call it Talagh. You were about to tell us what you know about the Watchers.”

“Oh yes. They were supposed to be controlling the magic in the Empire, only they were all at daggers drawn with each other but that didn’t stop them cracking down hard on anyone using magic without permission. Faheel had set the Watchers up to stop people doing that, but it went on in secret, and the system got out of hand, so everyone was scared stiff of the Watchers, who were meant to be there to look after them, and meanwhile Faheel had disappeared.

“But Tilja’s gran had—wait for it—a wooden spoon, of all things, carved from the wood of a peach tree that had grown from the stone of a peach out of Faheel’s garden, and the darned thing knew where he was and if you said his name over it would swivel round and point that way. The trouble was that sent out a magical signal which put the Watchers on to them whenever they tried. But they just managed to get away each time and in the end they found Faheel on an island out in the southern ocean, but of course he was incredibly old and tired and longing to give up, but he couldn’t until he’d found someone to pass the famous ring on to.”

“In what way famous?” said Fodaro.

“He could control time with it. I’ll come to that in a minute. Anyway, Tilja told him about a magician called the Ropemaker they’d met on their journey. Faheel decided he was the one he’d been waiting for, but they looked at a sort of magic table he’d got and saw that the Ropemaker was in the palace at Talak and just about to be made into a Watcher. So to stop that Faheel used the ring to hold time still for the whole Empire while he and Tilja were carried up to Talak by this roc and he destroyed the Watchers. But before—”

“One moment,” said Fodaro. “‘He destroyed the Watchers.’ Does your story say anything about how he did that?”

“Yes, but it makes even less sense than anything else. Everything got bent out of shape. There were a lot of towers. They were all straight if you looked at just one of them, but they weren’t straight with each other. Something far off looked bigger than something nearer. Shapes didn’t fit together with themselves. In the end the sky came forward until it was inside out and swallowed the Watchers up. And if you know what any of that means you’re welcome to it.”

Fodaro was staring at her, oblivious to her outrage. Benayu in turn was staring at him with his mouth half open in astonishment.

“As it happens, I do know what it means,” said Fodaro slowly. “It is unbelievable, though not in the way you think. Anything else you can tell me about it…?”

“I don’t think so. Maja? No, we both know the same version, but Ribek’s is a bit different in places. You’ll have to ask him when he wakes up. Shall I go on?”

“Please. So, having destroyed the Watchers Faheel gave the Ropemaker the ring?”

“No, because before he could do that another magician who wanted the ring—he was one of the secret ones—Tilja called him Moonfist—he took Faheel by surprise and nearly killed him, but Tilja managed to use the ring to stop time again and get him back to his island. Then before he died he gave Tilja the ring to take to the Ropemaker.

“They had a lot more stu—I’ve got to stop saying that—they had a lot more adventures before they found him, of course, and he gave them the power to seal the Valley off again and sent them home. Tahl and Alnor couldn’t go through the forest because they were men and the sickness was back, but they had a tiresome old mare with them called Calico, and the Ropemaker put a couple of roc feathers—the ones I just showed you—onto her shoulders and turned them into wings, so that she could fly them home. And I think he actually managed to hide the Valley completely this time. I spent six years out on the other side of the desert among the warlords, and nobody had any idea it was there….”

“One moment,” said Fodaro. “There were magicians there, among these warlords? And magical objects?”

“Yes. Why? Magic didn’t work so well out there, but—”

He interrupted her with a gesture and glanced at Benayu, who nodded.

“Only a minor puzzle,” he said. “Later, perhaps. Please go on. Nobody among these warlords knew of the existence of the Valley….”

“That’s right. I don’t think anyone in the Empire does, either. In the old days, before the Ropemaker, the Emperors kept trying to send armies through the forest to recapture what they called their Lost Province—that’s in the story—so they must have known about it then, but I’ve never heard they’ve tried anything like that since.

“But the magic must have stopped working now because it was only supposed to last for twenty generations and they’re up. My family kept count, and my mother always told me I might be the one who had to go and look for the Ropemaker and ask him to renew the magic. I couldn’t stand it. Why me, for pity’s sake? I never wanted anything to do with any of it in the first place. I thought it had ruined my life. So I ran away, and that turned out even worse, so as soon as I got the chance I ran back. So there I was, looking at the ruins of my old home, when I found the feathers among the ashes, and I realized that all this had been planned somehow, long ago. I’d even picked up an old horse to put the wings on, and there was Ribek limping up the road. And at that point Sheep-faces turned up in their airboat looking for us. Ribek says that no one had ever seen anything like that in the Valley before. Which shows that the Sheep-faces had only just found out the Valley was there, and—”

“Sheep-faces?” said Benayu. “They’ve got to be the same as the Pirates, haven’t they?”

“It sounds like it,” said Fodaro. “I want to know more about this ring, as well as anything you can tell me about the destruction of the Watchers. I’ve heard rumors about that, as a matter of fact, but I’ve never heard about anything like the ring, not even a rumor. But you tell us about your Sheep-faces first. This may be more immediately important. What do these airboats look like?”

“I’ve drawn you one,” said Saranja.

She’d been scratching away at her picture all the time she’d been talking. They studied it while she told them about the Sheep-faces.

“Yes, they’re the Pirates all right,” said Benayu. “That explains a lot. I wonder if even the Watchers know all that.”

“Watchers!” said Maja. “But Faheel…”

“Destroyed the ones he had originally set up, just as Saranja has told us? Indeed he did. But magic is wild, dangerous stuff. All sorts of evils follow its uncontrolled use. The Ropemaker was forced to set up some kind of a system to replace the Watchers. He built in safeguards and for a while it worked well enough, but then he vanished, no one knows where, and over the centuries his system became perverted, just as Faheel’s had done, though in a different manner, and then people started to call them the Watchers again….”

“That’s what you were worried about,” said Saranja, “that they might have seen us arrive on Rocky?”

“Yes, but if they had they would have been here by now, I think. It depends how much of the magical impulse Jex managed to absorb. That’s one of the things he does.

“Where were we? The Pirates. Well, some of our coastal cities have been subjected to raids by a swarm of Pirates using airborne craft, Saranja. That’s all anyone has been officially told. We haven’t been told, for instance, how widespread these attacks have been, nor that as well as the usual destruction and looting that Pirates have historically gone in for, these ones seem also interested in suborning or kidnapping magicians for some purpose of their own. I needed Jex to tell me that. It’s been going on for thirty-odd years now, and emergency measures are in place. These include the central licensing and conscription of first-and second-level magicians, who have hitherto only required local licensing, in order to defend the Empire—in fact a complete crackdown on all unauthorized magic, which is something the Watchers have long been waiting to put in place, and will now have widespread popular backing in a national emergency. That’s why Benayu and I are here—not just to escape the conscription, but to find means to resist it, and in the end, perhaps to overturn the whole system of Watchers.

“Furthermore the Ropemaker has disappeared, just as Faheel did, and now here you come like your ancestor Tilja to find him, and help him to destroy the Watchers and find his successor and restore the world to its natural order for another twenty generations.”

He seemed to have relaxed enough to be amused by the notion, and Saranja’s uncooperative glare.

“Where do the Pirates fit in with all that?” said Benayu.

“I have no idea. Perhaps Jex will tell us when he wakes and is fully back here.”

“Your friend’s just coming round, Saranja,” said Benayu. “I’ll get you some clean bandages. There’s something nasty in that cut still, under a sort of flap near the top on the left.”

Maja looked across to where Ribek lay by the stream. As far as she could see he hadn’t moved but now he yawned and stretched contentedly and sat up.

“I’ll look,” said Saranja as she rose.

By the time Benayu returned with the bandages Ribek was on his back again, his eyes closed, his face gray-white and covered with sweat. Saranja was on her knees beside him gently using her thumbs to press the wound closed. Blood dribbled down his calf.

“Thanks,” she said, without looking up. “Cut me a few small squares for swabs, will you, Maja, then a soft pad, and then the longest strip you can make, about a handsbreadth wide, and slit the end a foot or so down the middle. That was hell for Ribek, but worth it. I think I got all of the muck out, but the bitter-bark will take care of anything I’ve missed. He’d be in a fever without. Now, tip a bit of it onto the squares and squeeze them out and hand them to me one at a time. The same with the pad, and then while you’re waiting roll up the bandage, starting with the slit end.”

She settled to work. Benayu went back to Fodaro and they started talking earnestly together. Maja was holding the pad ready for Saranja to take when everything changed. She cried aloud and was almost knocked sideways as the familiar quiver trembled across the mountainside. Rocky neighed as if facing an enemy, the sheep scattered again, bleating, and the dog raced to bring them back. By the time she recovered Benayu and Fodaro were standing, their faces tense as they stared out toward the southeast. Almost at once they fell into what looked like a furious argument, all the fury on Benayu’s part, Fodaro grim and anxious.

“Any idea what this is about?” said Ribek. “Did they tell you anything while I was asleep, Saranja?”

“Lots, but not about this. But whatever it is, it’s urgent. These Watcher people are coming or something. Let’s get this done with. Bend your knee, if you can. Now put your hands where mine are. Right. Now…”

They had finished, and Ribek was standing shakily, leaning on Saranja’s shoulder, when Benayu came hurrying back. His face was working, and at first he could barely speak for grief and anger.

“You’ve…you’ve got to go,” he said. “Can’t explain. No time. Straight down. See that tall pine at the bottom? Bit to the right of that there’s a track. Down there till you come to the drove road. Right there. Three miles on, there’s a bridge with a village on the other side. Wait in the trees till you’re sure there’s no one about and then hide under the bridge. I’m bringing the sheep. When you hear the sheep bell coming, one of you come out and wait in the trees with Maja. I’ll tell you what to do next. If I don’t come, wait till it’s almost dark, then Maja must hold Jex in her hand and Saranja hold her feathers just in front of him and breathe gently across them into his face. With luck he’ll wake up. If he does, do whatever he says. If he doesn’t, don’t try to help by saying the name. Just do whatever you think best. Here, Maja. Hang him round your neck, and sleep with him under your pillow. He may be able to shield you a bit.”

Before Maja had time to look at what he’d given her he had turned and was whistling to the dog.

It was a small amulet of some pale mottled stone, remarkably heavy for its size, carved to the shape of a squat lizard. There was a ring on its spine with a chain through it, allowing her to hang it round her neck.

“I’ll help Saranja saddle Rocky,” said Ribek. “See what you can find by way of food, Maja.”

She hurried back toward the cedar, where she found Fodaro stooped over Saranja’s drawing of the airboat with a twig in his hand, apparently scratching what looked like magical symbols above it.

“Is it all right if I take the basket?” she said. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

“No. Join you when I can. Tell your friends to look after the boy. He matters, not only to me. Don’t let them hang around. I want you well along the drove road before anything happens.”

“We’re just going. Thanks for the food, and good luck.”

Fodaro grunted, but didn’t look up.

Saranja was helping Ribek up into the saddle by the time she reached them.

“Well done,” she said. “Pack it into that saddlebag…. Right. Up you go, too.”

Maja grabbed hold of Rocky’s mane as Saranja took the bridle and started down the slope at a steady jog-trot.

Half way to the trees they passed Benayu and the dog, herding their flock in front of them. The clank of the bellwether’s bell seemed extraordinarily loud in the oppressive silence. Benayu’s face was expressionless. He gave no sign that he’d seen them go by.