The Ropemaker

7

The Pirrim Hills

Four evenings after leaving Ellion’s house they reached Songisu. The way station was an enclosed square with a pillared arcade running round three sides, divided into separate booths for the travelers. It was larger than the ones they’d stopped at before, but everything else was the same. Lananeth had warned them what would happen. The clerk took their money—four drin for the fee, two for the bribe and one for the unofficial bribe—and stamped their way-leaves, and then demanded a surcharge before he’d hand them back. Alnor answered with a blast of barely controlled anger and a threat to report him to Steward Ellion, and he shrugged and gave in.

Tilja rubbed Calico down while the other three settled into one of the booths, then joined Tahl to go and haggle for food and fodder at the stalls. All this already seemed easy and familiar.

Waiting for Tahl to finish bargaining, she fiddled with her hair. From the first day of their journey, she had had trouble with it. Ma had always cut it just above shoulder length and tied it in two bunches at the back, but Lananeth said she was too old to wear it like that in the Empire, and she must braid it, secure it with a little beaded tie, and then coil it up at the back of her head and fasten it in place with a pin, with the blue pinhead at the center and the two blue beads below to show that she came from a fourteenth-grade household. Her scarf then went over the top of her head, once round under her chin and over the top again, with the ends hanging down in front of her shoulders. There were two small blue beads and a larger one on the tassels each side. All these beads meant that way-travelers from lower grades could see that they must be careful not to jostle her as they passed.

Unfortunately girls in the Empire wore their hair longer than Tilja’s. She could just about braid it, but there was almost nothing to coil, especially as she couldn’t see what she was doing, so someone else had to do that and pin it in place, and even then it started to come undone almost as soon as she moved. By the time each day ended her neck was stiff with trying to hold her head as still as possible so that she didn’t have to stop every half mile and ask Tahl to coil her up yet again. He did this neatly and without fuss, teasing only a little, but it was a nuisance and made her feel a fool.

Worse, it made her sure that she was giving them all away. Sooner or later some nosy stranger was going to ask about her hair. Tahl had already come up with a story about it getting full of tar and needing to be cut short, but Tilja was certain that as she stammered with the lie the stranger would notice everything else that was wrong about her, her curious accent, and how she kept getting tangled in the ends of her scarf, and didn’t look comfortable in her long skirt, and didn’t seem to know stuff that even small children knew. The other three looked fine to her. Tahl wore his little blue-beaded hat at a jaunty tilt, and laughed, and smiled, and was interested in everything; Alnor’s own natural dignity suited his grander uniform; and Meena would have looked like Meena whatever she was wearing. No, Tilja was the one who was going to let them down.

In fact there was far more danger from one of the other three. For instance, yesterday morning they had passed an area of sparse scrub, with goats grazing for what they could find, and then suddenly they were walking between small fields full of young crops, beautifully clean and tidy, with little one-room huts scattered about, and every now and then a water-filled ditch running as straight as a ruled line on either side of the road as far as the eye could see.

They had come to a bridge over a fair-sized stream. Here Alnor, who had been striding steadily along beside Calico with his left hand on the saddle flap for guidance, halted abruptly. Calico plodded sullenly on until Tilja dragged her to an equally sullen standstill. Tahl took Alnor’s hand and led him to the bridge rail, where they stood side by side, leaning on the rail, as if they were gazing into the distance. There wasn’t anything special about the place that Tilja could see, only the slow-moving stream, wriggling away between the fields, and every so often someone working an endless rope that dipped below the surface and drew bucket after bucket up the steep bank and tipped them into the ditch at the top. That was how the ditches were filled, she realized, and that was why the fields ended as suddenly they did, because it was as far as the water could be made to flow. Without those hoists, and the hundreds of peasants toiling at them all day long, this great, rich area would have been as barren as the parched plain beyond it.

How long, Tilja wondered, since those ditches had first been cut and the land made fertile? Centuries, she guessed. Again, just as she had in the little warded room in Ellion’s house, she felt the size and weight and age of the Empire. All those generations of toilers coming out of their shabby huts morning after morning to spend their days turning the selfsame water hoists, the ropes and buckets wearing out and being replaced, the men and women growing old and dying, never having left these fields, and their children taking up the toil to live the selfsame dismal, empty lives. Standing there, she could feel the Empire around her, above her, below her, before her in time and after, a vast, vague oppression, like a fever dream as huge as the universe.

Alnor woke her from her trance by turning suddenly away from the rail. Tahl led him back to Calico’s side.

“What was that about?” asked Tilja as she took the bridle and dragged Calico into an unwilling walk.

“Just listening to what the stream had to say. It was just local gossip, but you remember Alnor said it might be only our river he could listen to or do anything with? It isn’t. And I could hear it too. Alnor says it’s always easier with two of you, but even so I’m only just beginning to understand ours. Ours giggles and chatters. This one just mutters. But I could hear every word, and it seemed to get clearer and clearer.”

“That was you two pulling the magic in, just listening to it,” said Meena. “Not that I could hear what the water was saying, but I could feel the power starting to get sucked in round us, just like one of those dust devils Lananeth was telling us about. And if I could, so could anyone else who’s got the gift. Strikes me we’re going to need to watch our step pretty well all the time, if we can make something happen like that without us even meaning to.”

Alnor grunted agreement. Tilja stared around as she walked on. She had, of course, felt nothing, but she didn’t doubt what the others were saying. And Meena was right. Yes, now she remembered that just before Alnor had turned away from the rail, she’d been gazing at a woman in one of the fields a couple of hundred yards away, who’d straightened from her hoeing and stared toward the strangers on the bridge. In the daze of her trance Tilja had sensed that the movement meant something. Perhaps that woman too had felt what Meena had felt, an ingathering of magic, starting to swirl into a shape, like a dust devil.

While they were eating, a man came round the booths, stopping at all the occupied ones in turn. He was burly, with a short, square beard, and wore a strange, square hat with a heavy brim. He carried a sort of pike in his hand and had a long knife stuck into his belt—the first real weapons Tilja had ever seen.

“Going south?” he asked when he reached their booth. “To Goloroth?”

“We go to Talagh,” said Alnor.

“Good,” said the man. “I am Zovan. I lead the convoy. Your place is seventh in the line. The fee is one forin for the token, plus four for the bribe, plus two.”

This was, amazingly, the correct amount. Tahl counted out the coins and Zovan gave him a wooden token.

“Be ready,” he said. “We leave at sunrise, and those that aren’t there get left. We won’t be going that fast—there’s some on their way to Goloroth—but we don’t stop if you fall behind. We don’t like losing folk but once you’re off the convoy it’s not our lookout if you find yourselves dumped at the roadside with empty pockets, and the kids taken off to be sold. Got it?”

“We have it,” said Alnor, confidently. The man nodded and moved on.

In the gray dawn light they found their place, about a third of the way from the front of the convoy. Zovan came round collecting the tokens. Eight or nine other men, armed as he was, were scattered along the line. Right at the back came a group of several elderly people and an equal number of children, paired off, old and young. Calico was the only horse in the convoy.

The way station lay between the small town of Songisu and the foot of the Pirrim Hills. Sunrise flung its gold light along their upper slopes, leaving deep-shadowed folds between the spurs. The frontier of light seemed to race toward the plain as the world tilted into day. Zovan shouted. A guard clattered his wooden paddles together. The gates of the way station were heaved open and the convoy filed out toward the hills.

As Zovan had promised they went at an easy pace, and slower yet as the road began to climb. Alnor, born to mountains, strode effortlessly up, but Calico was stupid and balky, trying to stop and browse at every clump of wizened stalks beside the way. Tilja was weary with dragging and driving when at midmorning Zovan called a halt to let the old people at the back catch up.

“That’s the worst of the climbing,” he told them, “but from now on you’ve got to stay together. And if you do fall behind, don’t give up. Keep going. We’ll be stopping a couple more times, so you’ve a good chance of catching us up, but not if you sit down by the road waiting for someone to come and help. It’s a long way to Goloroth, remember, and you’ve only just started. Those of you that are going south’ll get a day’s rest the other side of the hills. And now’s the time to say good-bye to the North West Plain, any of you that won’t be coming back. This is the last you’ll see of it.”

Tilja rose and looked north. As they’d wound up the hillside the distances had seemed to spread and spread behind them, and now from this height she felt that she ought to be able to see as far as could be seen before the curve of the world hid all that lay beyond. But no. Where were the mountains, that even from the southern fringe of the Valley at Woodbourne seemed to tower above it? Gone, gone beyond sight, and the Valley itself and the forest. You wouldn’t have known they were there.

But they are, she told herself. And I’m not saying good-bye to them. I’m going home.

The fog came down without warning. At one moment they were under clear skies on an almost level track that had been winding for several miles along the bottom of a valley, wooded with ancient pines. Next, they rounded a corner and could see nothing beyond a soft pale wall of cloud and the shadowy loom of the next few trees. The line jostled to a halt as the cloud rolled over them. Tilja could no longer see the head of the column nor, looking back, the tail of it. Zovan’s call echoed through the murk.

“Happens up here, this time of year. Nothing to worry about. Close up and keep up. All here? March.”

The guards repeated the orders down the line. The pines and the fog swallowed their voices.

They plodded along through the dankness, Tilja leading Calico with her eyes on the back of the man in front of her. She could barely see the next person along the line. The track was well kept and she wasn’t watching her footsteps, so she was utterly unprepared when Calico’s bridle was wrenched from her grasp and something massive rammed into her shoulder and sent her sprawling forward and sideways. She broke her fall on her elbow and scrambled up.

Everyone seemed to be shouting. Calico was lying on her side with her hoofs flailing as she struggled to rise, but a piece of loose rope that must have been lying on the path had somehow wrapped itself round her legs and brought her down, and now it was refusing to let go. Meena was lying on top of Alnor on the bank beside the path. Alnor’s right foot was trapped under Calico’s saddle. Tahl was trying to snatch at the rope. The rest of the convoy was beginning to edge round on the other side of the road, desperate not to get left behind.

Tilja had once seen Ma deal with Tiddykin when she’d caught her foreleg in some loose brushwood and fallen and panicked as she’d tried to kick herself free. Tilja yelled at Tahl to wait, grabbed the bridle, turned and sat heavily down on Calico’s head, hissing as loudly as she could between tongue and teeth, and calling her by her name. Calico heaved once more, then gave up as Tilja clung on. Tahl darted in and unwrapped the tangling rope.

Still gripping the bridle, Tilja rose and let Calico scramble to her feet, where she stood snorting and shuddering while Tilja hissed and murmured to her and Tahl ran round to help Meena and Alnor. Meena had rolled herself over and was sitting up, feeling her hips and legs. Alnor was lying on his back, retching for air.

“Meena, are you all right?” Tilja called anxiously.

“Won’t know till I stand up,” she answered. “Shook myself up a bit, but the old boy broke my fall. Winded him good and proper, by the look of him.”

Tahl was kneeling beside Alnor, trying to lift him by the shoulders. Alnor was making feeble motions with his hands to say he wanted to be left where he was. The tail of the convoy, pairs of old and young going to Goloroth, hurried past. Some of them didn’t even look, but one old man caught Tilja’s eye and shrugged apologetically, telling her he’d have liked to stay and help if he could. The guard at the tail of the line stopped.

“Rough luck,” he said. “How’s the old fellow? Think he can walk?”

Alnor grunted and somehow rolled himself up onto one elbow and felt for his left ankle with his other hand.

“I’ll do,” he croaked. “Just winded. Could have been worse. You go on. We’ll catch up. We can move faster than you’ve been going.”

“Right you are,” said the guard. “There’ll be a rest point two, three miles along, but Zovan won’t want to hang around there, not with this muck slowing us down. Never seen it this bad.”

“One moment, young man,” said Meena. “You can help me back up onto this stupid beast before you go. Gently now. My hip’s bad enough, best of times, and Lord knows what else I’ve done to myself.”

Good-humoredly the guard hoisted her up to the saddle and strode off into the murk. Tahl found Alnor’s cap and put it back on his head. They waited another few minutes while he finished getting his breath back, sat up and felt himself over more thoroughly. Tahl picked up the frayed bit of rope that had caused the accident, stared at it for a moment, frowning, and tossed it into the trees. Alnor rose groggily to his feet and stood, testing his weight on one leg and then the other. With his hand on Tahl’s shoulder he took a few limping steps.

“You all right?” said Meena, for once not trying to hide her concern. “I daresay this animal’s up to the two of us. Time she earned her keep.”

“I’ll do if it gets no worse,” he answered. “We must move now, or we won’t come up with them.”

So they started along the path, Tahl and Alnor in front and Tilja leading Calico by the bridle. It felt strange, after the companionable shuffle and chat of the convoy, to be moving through this silent, closed world, the only sounds their own footfalls and the drip of the fog from the branches. Before long Tilja saw that Alnor was limping more heavily, and leaning his weight on Tahl’s shoulder at each step, but he still strode fiercely on. His halt was so sudden that she almost allowed Calico to blunder into his back.

There was a man in the path ahead of them, standing straddle legged, blocking the way. He had a cudgel over his shoulder and a long knife stuck into his belt. Then movements either side of the path and five more men, also with cudgels and knives, came out of the trees.

Tilja’s heart slammed once, then hammered. Her stomach and limbs filled with the chill of the fog. She half heard Meena muttering fiercely above her. The men closed silently in.

“My grandfather’s blind,” said Tahl, urgently. “He’s hurt his—”

He was cut short. Tilja turned, but before she could see what had happened she was seized from behind, a bag was thrust over her head, a hard hand was clamped against her mouth and held there while someone else grabbed her arms and lashed her wrists behind her back. The hand left her mouth and gripped her elbow while other hands were thrust in under the bag and her scarf was forced between her lips and teeth and the ends tied behind her head.

“Lay off, you goat-get!” snapped Meena, above her. “There! How d’you fancy that!”

Tilja heard the swish and thwack of Meena’s cane, a curse from the man she’d hit, a yell of pain from Meena and a slithering thud. A moment’s silence, and then more heavings and rustlings, and mutters of command.

“They’re the fourteeners all right,” said a voice. “Get the old bag back up on the horse, and we’ll go.”

Now one hand let go of Tilja’s elbow while the other turned her and forced her into a blind shuffle back along the way they’d come, jerking her upright when she stumbled. To her immense relief, she heard Meena’s muffled groan from behind her. It was not much help, but it was something to cling to as she stumbled on, gagging again and again on the cloth in her mouth.

The man who held her stopped, heaved her onto his shoulders and carried her up a steep slope. She could hear curses and blows as Calico was forced to climb. Then the ground seemed to level out and she was set down and forced to stumble up a much rougher and narrower path than the one below. The sounds around her changed, and she guessed that they were now out above the trees, with the slope rising to her left and falling away to her right. Sometimes they climbed, but not so steeply that she needed to be carried again. At last she was told to stand still, her arms were retied, and she was pushed down and dragged into some kind of enclosed space and made to sit on a rough earthen floor with what felt like natural rock against her back. Her ankles were lashed together before they pulled the hood from her head and untied the disgusting gag. She retched but couldn’t vomit. Her mouth was too dry. Before she recovered a hand grabbed her hair and forced her head back. Something was thrust against her mouth.

“Drink,” snapped a voice.

She gulped. Water sluiced down her chin and blouse. The flask was snatched away without warning and instantly the scarf was stuffed back into her mouth. In the few seconds while it was being tied, unable to move her head, she rolled her eyes from side to side, desperate to know where she was and what had happened to the others. There was rock opposite her and rock above, darkness to her right and daylight to her left—a small, low-roofed cave. She could see part of Tahl’s legs further in on her right, and Meena and Alnor propped against the opposite wall. Then the hood was shoved back over her head, and she heard the other three being given their turns at the flask.

Footsteps left the cave. Ages passed, in aches and cramps and soreness. She managed to slump herself sideways and by nudging her head against a rock projecting from the cave floor loosen her gag a little. She could hear Tahl wriggling for comfort, and Meena’s soft groans. Poor Meena. She must be in agony—Tilja’s own intense discomfort would be nothing beside it.

It was almost dark in the cave before the hood was again removed and two men fed the captives turn by turn on some sort of porridge, hooded and gagged them and took them stumbling out, one at a time, to relieve themselves on the open hillside.

Then again they were dumped in the cave, but it wasn’t long before Tilja heard footsteps and brusque commands, telling her that another captive had been brought in. This time before the men left, one of them mercifully took the hood from her head.

Not that there was much to see. It was night, with stars showing at the narrow entrance to the cave. Almost at once these vanished as a boulder was rolled into place to seal the captives in, and then, to judge by the sounds, wedged into place with smaller rocks. Footsteps faded into silence.

Still sick with the same unchanging misery and fear, she lay down and wriggled for some kind of comfort. Beside her she could hear Tahl also shifting around, but it turned out he had other ideas. Something shoved against the back of her head, and she gave a protesting grunt. Tahl’s grunt answered somewhere in the darkness close by. Clumsy fingers probed among her hair, found the knot of her scarf, started to tug and tease. There were strands of hair in the knot. She winced at the pain. Tahl in his turn grunted as he pricked a finger on her hairpin. She felt the knot loosen, and now he had it free, and she could spit the cloth out and suck and swallow to work the saliva into her mouth and round.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “I’ll try and do yours.”

She worked her back against the wall and managed to wriggle herself up, and then he let himself topple sideways so that she could turn, feel down the back of his head and find the knot of his gag. With endless pickings and pokings she managed to undo it.

“Thanks. That’s better,” he whispered. “I’ll see if I can untie you.”

“We’ll never get away.”

“We’ve got to try.”

They found a position where he could get at the cord that lashed her elbows together, but the moment he started to work at the knot a soft, grating voice spoke in the darkness.

“Wait. Not time.”

At the first syllable Tilja had frozen rigid. She stared into the darkness beside the entrance.

“Who are you?” whispered Tahl. Tilja could hear the tremor in his voice.

“Traveler. Like yourselves,” came the quiet answer. “Let those fools sleep. Then we go.”

Tilja heard a grunt from Meena.

“That’s my grandmother,” she whispered. “Can I take her gag off?”

“No noise.”

Carefully Tilja worked herself across the cave floor toward where the sound had come from. She found a leg by touch, turned herself round and by slithering herself up against the wall managed to reach the gag and untie it. Meena muttered savagely under her breath for a little, then whispered aloud, almost sobbing with pain.

“Get my legs undone if you can, girl, whatever the fellow says. This hip of mine’s a nightmare.”

“Is that all right?” Tilja asked into the darkness.

“Wait,” answered the darkness. “Yes. Now.”

Tilja felt her way to the knot, and found it already surprisingly loose. Meena groaned softly as she eased her leg around. Tilja could hear Tahl working at Alnor’s gag.

“Wait still,” murmured the stranger.

That was hard, with their bodies half free and their minds filled with half hope. At last he spoke again.

“We begin. Stay where you are. Do not be afraid. Make no sound.”

For a little while nothing seemed to happen. Then the cord around Tilja’s ankles loosened and fell away. She felt a movement at her back, though she was leaning against the cave wall with no room for anyone to reach behind her. She realized that the cord around her elbows had also come untied, and then, with a spasm of shock, that it was now wriggling around, as if it had been a living creature trapped between her body and the rock. She jerked herself away from it and it fell loose. She heard it slithering off into the dark.

The cave was full of those slithering sounds moving toward the entrance. There were moonlit chinks around the boulder blocking it. They changed shape as the cords wriggled out into the night. Something odd was happening to Tilja’s clothing. It too felt alive. Yes, parts of it, the cords of her cloak and skirt, the lacings of her blouse, were twitching as if they wanted to follow. Only the lashings round her wrists stayed firm.

“All free?” murmured the stranger.

“My wrists are still tied,” Tilja whispered.

She heard his grunt of puzzlement. An odd numbness began to seep up her arms, unconnected with the dull pain of the lashed cord. There was another grunt from the stranger and the numbness vanished.

“Think about it later,” he muttered. “Boy can untie you.”

Tilja rose and turned to let Tahl get at the knot. He too gave a snort of surprise as the rope came free.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

The numbness returned for a moment as something touched the back of her hand.

“No, drop it,” said the stranger.

Tahl let the cord fall and it slithered away like the others.

“Don’t ask,” he whispered. “Explain later.”

Yet again they waited in the darkness. Tilja’s mouth was dry as her body readied itself for flight. She heard the scrape of rock against rock. Something was dragging the wedges clear.

“Shall we help roll it out?” whispered Tahl.

“No need,” said the stranger, not bothering to whisper, but speaking still in his odd, jerky style, with long pauses, as if his mind were somewhere else. “The ropes do it . . . they must tie themselves together . . . find an anchor . . . take strain . . . they are ready . . . ha! Pull, my children!”

At his call the prisoning boulder seemed to leap from the entrance and go crashing down the hillside.

“It is done,” said the stranger, with a sudden, startling laugh that went braying out into the still night. “Cave along that way. Rob the robbers, hey?”

A shape moved into the cave entrance, and Tilja almost cried aloud. It was an enormous head, so large that it almost blocked the opening. It was turned sideways, so that she could see the jut of nose and chin near the bottom, and the outline of a shoulder below, but above them swelled a great ballooning growth of skull. The thing crawled out into the open and vanished.

“You go first,” whispered Meena. “It’ll take Alnor and me a while.”

With sick dread Tilja crouched her way to the entrance, hesitated, crawled out and stood. A white mass of fog filled the valley below them, but the moon was high overhead, paling the stars. The stranger was there, a tall, thin shape in the moonlight. At the top of the neck was a normal human face, eyebrows, eyes, a long nose, smiling mouth, pointed chin and wisp of a beard, and above that the monstrous bulge she’d seen from the cave.

She had backed away and was swallowing a scream before she realized that she had misunderstood what she was seeing. The huge mass above the face wasn’t part of the head, it was a sort of headdress, fold on fold of cloth wound into a cunning shape, like an enormous patterned knot. The man was smiling at her, a normal human smile. But he was still a strange figure in the bright moonlight, seven feet tall or more with his headdress, but thin, and gawky as some long-legged insect.

“Hurry now,” he said. “Out of forest by sunrise.”

“I’m not going anywhere much, not without a horse,” said Meena from the cave entrance. “My hip’s that sore. And Alnor’s ankle’s not so good, either. Calico ought to be somewhere.”

“Horses under the trees,” said the stranger. “Cave first.”

“I’d better come that far,” said Meena. “The so-and-sos found my leather bag, and I’ve got to have my spoons back. And our money and stuff, too. Give us a hand, girl. Alnor? . . . Then you wait here, but I’ll need the boy.”

Leaning heavily on Tahl and Tilja and grunting at every step, she hobbled along the hillside. The stranger was already well ahead of them. For a moment they saw his awkward figure lit by something other than moonlight, before he seemed to disappear into the cliff.

“Meena,” whispered Tahl urgently. “When he was doing that stuff with the ropes in the cave, did you feel anything? Magic, I mean?”

“Can’t say I did, now you mention it,” muttered Meena. “But then I wasn’t minding much beyond this darned hip. What—”

“Shhh. Later,” whispered Tahl as a light flared into the darkness from where they had seen the stranger vanish. Reaching the place, they found it was a much larger cave, with the embers of a fire just inside the entrance, and beyond that the stranger holding in his hand a short piece of rope whose frayed end blazed steadily, but with almost no smoke, like a good wick in a lamp. Around him lay the bodies of the robbers, all on their sides, with gags in their mouths, their arms and ankles lashed and their legs drawn hard back behind them and tied to the wrists. Some struggled and wriggled, some lay still. A mound of baggage and other stuff was piled at the back of the cave. From where she stood Tilja could see the saddlebags. She followed Tahl in, stepping over the bodies of the robbers, and picked up the bag they had brought from Woodbourne.

“I can’t see your green bag, Meena,” she called after a quick search along the pile.

“Hold it. Tell you in a moment,” Meena answered.

By the light from the stranger’s rope Tilja saw her close her eyes and concentrate. In the same instant she saw the stranger stiffen and look sharply round toward the entrance.

“He’s got it,” Meena called. “That fellow there. Opposite you and two to your left . . . yes, him.”

The robbers had been bound where they slept. Each of them had his own small pile of loot stacked beside him. The man grunted angrily as Tilja sorted through his belongings. She found the green bag, looked inside and saw that the bundle of spoons was there, and the wooden Valley coins, but the metal ones were gone.

“I’ve got them,” she called. “But he’s put our Empire money somewhere.”

“And ours,” said Tahl.

“Wait,” said the stranger. “Find what I can.”

With the flaring rope held above his head he turned slowly round, and pointed with his free hand at one of the bound men, and then another.

“Cord round his neck,” he said. “His . . . his . . . under pillow . . .”

Tilja knelt by the first of the bound figures. The cord was tucked down inside the man’s jacket but seemed to be twitching vigorously as it tried to haul itself free, but the man himself was thrashing around, grunting furiously, so she couldn’t be sure, and when she laid hold of it, it seemed to be ordinary lifeless cord. She pulled out the purse and moved on. When she and Tahl had finished working their way round the cave, they gave the six purses they’d found to the stranger, who weighed them in his hand, passed three back to Tahl, kept two for himself, and tossed one down onto the floor of the cave.

“Good,” he said. “No more time. Cords’ll loosen when this burns out.”

He dropped the burning rope onto the floor of the cave and led the way out. Tilja gave Meena the green bag, but as she hefted the saddlebag to carry it down the slope she heard a movement from below and saw the dark shapes of three horses coming out from under the trees and starting up. She could tell which one was Calico from the fuss she was making. Then, as they came up the slope, she saw that the first two each had a lead rope wriggling ahead and was following it docilely up, but Calico was fighting against two ropes, which were taking it in turn to snake up the slope and wrap an end round a fresh hold while the other one hauled her on. Even in the thrill and terror of escape Tilja remembered how it had taken several strong men to force Calico onto the raft, and laughed aloud. The stranger joined in with a raucous bellow, more like a donkey’s bray than laughter.

“At least someone’s happy,” said Meena. “Now where’s my horse seat? Run down, girl and have a look . . .”

“On its way,” said the stranger, as the harness came scurrying up the slope, dragging the horse seat behind it. It stilled as Tilja picked it up and buckled it on, but the other two sets fastened themselves in place without human help.

“Ready?” said the stranger. “Bring the horse, child. Now, madam . . .”

Calico quietened at Tilja’s touch and let herself be led up. The stranger’s angular, big-boned arms hoisted Meena into the saddle with no apparent effort. Tilja held the saddlebags in place for him while he fastened them on. She had half expected him to do this by magic, but he used his hands, lashing and knotting as anyone else would have done, but very deftly, with none of the apparent clumsiness of his other movements.

By now Tahl had brought Alnor limping across. The stranger helped him onto one of the other horses, then bent and picked up several coils of rope that had somehow appeared, and loaded them onto the third animal.

“All ready?” he said. “Anything else? What, child?”

Tilja started. Unconsciously, from force of habit acquired over the last few days, she had patted the back of her head to check that her coil was in place, and found her hair all disheveled. Now she was feeling hopelessly around for the fastenings. She was oddly distressed by the trivial loss.

“My hairpin and tie,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

“I put the pin in the back of your cloak,” said Tahl. “I didn’t feel the tie.”

“Wait,” said the stranger.

He stood for a few moments, bent and picked something up and handed it to Tilja.

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “My hair’s too short. It keeps coming undone.”

“Give.”

She handed the hair tie back. He put it his palm and seemed to stare at it for a moment while he scratched at the back of his neck with his other hand. Then he rolled it briefly between fingers and thumbs.

“Turn,” he said.

She turned, and felt his fingers flickering through her hair, and the hair seeming to comb itself out, and braid and coil silkily under his touch. In almost no time at all he slid the pin home. Automatically she put up a hand to pat it into place, but he caught her wrist.

“Don’t touch,” he said sharply.

“I’m sorry. I . . .”

He stared at her for a moment, frowning, then gave that odd little grunt and let go. She realized that there had been something very peculiar about his grasp, as if she’d been able to feel its pressure but not the actual touch of his fingers. No, that wasn’t quite it, but . . .

“New one on me,” he said, flexing his hand as if he were trying to ease a stiffness out of it. “But don’t you tie it yourself. Won’t work. Get your grandma to do it.”

“Anyway, thank you,” she said. “That’s wonderful.”

“Sell a lot of hair ties,” he said.

His startling laugh was still ringing across the valley as he grasped his horse’s lead rope and strode off across the hillside.

At first they hurried along in moonlight bright enough for them to pick their footsteps on the rough path. Tahl led the second horse, ridden by Alnor, whose ankle was now almost too painful to take his weight. Tilja, Meena and Calico came behind. For once Calico was no trouble, with the other horses to follow. She didn’t even balk when the stranger turned aside and started down the slope.

As soon as they were in the darkness beneath the trees he stopped. After a brief pause a light flared, like the one he’d lit in the cave. He handed a piece of blazing rope to Tahl and lit another for Tilja. As soon as she touched it it went out. He gave one of his expressive grunts—not of surprise this time, but something else—took it back, lit it with a flick of his wrist and handed it up to Meena without a word, then lit a third for himself and led the way on. The light was just enough for them to see their way but seemed to strengthen when they dipped into the fog. As they reached the bottom path Tilja heard a rustling noise close by her feet. Looking down, she saw several lengths of rope flowing rapidly past her. The stranger stopped.

“Don’t wait,” he said. “Don’t think the fools will follow, but never know. Catch you up.”

The knowledge that the bandits were now free gave Tilja’s weary legs fresh strength. Hurrying past the stranger, she saw one of the ropes start to climb up his leg like a twining vine while another one was already coiling itself into his hand. As soon as they were well ahead Tahl slowed his pace and waited for her.

“Listen,” he said. “In the cave, when I untied your wrists, as soon as I’d got it loose the cord came alive, but when I touched your hand with it it went dead. The man told me to drop it before I could try again.”

“He says it’s something about me. Just before that he was trying to make the cord undo itself, and I got a funny numb feeling in my arms. I’m going to ask him as soon as I can.”

“Be careful. You know the rope that tripped Calico? It felt like the ropes in the cave—alive, I mean, until I’d got it loose. Then it went dead.”

“Because you were touching it?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think it was because it had finished what it was there for.”

“Are you sure of this, Tahl?” said Alnor.

“Not dead sure. I think it was like that, but it was only a moment or two. I just thought . . . Tell you later. Here he comes.”

Tilja dropped back and to the side to let the stranger come striding past.

Night and the journey seemed unending, unchanging, the darkness, the dripping trees, the fog. Tired beyond tiredness, Tilja plodded on. For the first few miles fear of pursuit had kept her going, but by now she had used up all those reserves of energy and knew she couldn’t travel much further without rest. Then the path dipped, they came out of the fog as suddenly as they’d walked into it, and she saw a vast plain stretching in front of her, with the first pale wash of dawn showing along the eastern horizon. At the foot of the hills a few spots of light pricked the darkness. The stranger halted and they stopped on either side of him.

“Way station,” he said. “Be there by sunrise.”

“We owe you our thanks, sir,” said Alnor. “Without you we would still be prisoners. And yet we do not know your name.”

The stranger laughed.

“No name,” he said. “Don’t use one. Just Ropemaker.”

“You must’ve got one, though,” said Meena. “Just you’re not saying.”

He laughed again.

“Well,” said Meena. “Like Alnor says, we owe you a bit, but I’ve a question to ask you all the same. I know it’s dangerous to talk about this kind of thing, but it strikes me we’re all in this together. That was a lot of powerful stuff you were doing with your ropes back there up the hill, and none of us felt a thing, not like we’d expect to, Alnor and Tahl and me. When something like that’s going on, we get this kind of a feeling . . . doesn’t happen where we come from, so we’re not used to it, but there’s no mistaking . . . you get what I’m asking you?”

He didn’t answer at once but turned, not to her but to Tilja.

“You felt nothing, girl?” he asked quietly.

“No. I don’t. I can’t . . . it doesn’t matter.”

Perhaps it was just that she was so exhausted, so far from home, so shaken by their adventure, but she could hear the bitterness and sadness in her own voice and knew she was lying, and knew the others knew. It was as though she had been standing under the cedars with Anja all over again. Her inability to feel the presence of magic, in the same way that the others felt it, truly did matter, for reasons she was quite unable to grasp.

The Ropemaker’s huge head was a dark mass against the paling stars. She couldn’t see his eyes, but he seemed to be staring at her. Then he gave a brief, yapping laugh and turned to Meena.

“Not warded, ma’am?” he asked her.

“Don’t know how,” she told him. “Like I say, it doesn’t happen where we come from.”

“Spoon of yours—that’s warded.”

“Lananeth did that for us. She said it would be safer.”

“Right. Won’t get it into Talagh with you, though. Need more than that. Might meet someone on the way, too. . . . Only country stuff, those wards. . . . Give it to the girl, ma’am. There’s something about her—don’t understand it myself. New to me. Don’t know if it’ll stand up to the wards they’ve got at Talagh, but it’s the best you can do. Strap it against her skin, under her sleeve. May be safe like that. All right? Got to be getting on now, heading north, convoy to catch. No hurry for you—yours goes tomorrow. Day’s rest for the old ’uns. And you take that horse, sir. Be more than a day or two before you can walk on that leg of yours. Sell it when you’re done with it. Been a pleasure to meet you. Luck be with you, then.”

Meena’s mouth had barely opened to protest before he had turned and was striding down the slope, waving a spidery arm in acknowledgment as they called their farewells after him.