The Ropemaker

10

The City of Death

My, it’s getting strong here,” Meena muttered as they waited in the still, dense heat outside the walls of Goloroth. She clutched at Calico’s saddle to steady herself as if something invisible had suddenly cannoned against her. Alnor was already holding firmly on to Tahl’s shoulder, and ahead of them an old man staggered and fell, caught in the same gust. Tilja could feel nothing, and that in itself told her that Meena had been talking about magic.

“It’s like a current round a rock,” said Tahl. “It can’t get in, so it swirls all round. I don’t think there’s going to be any magic in Goloroth. I bet those walls are warded, like Talagh.”

“There’s got to be,” said Meena. “He’s in there. There’s nowhere else left.”

Only an hour before, when the low brown walls of the City of Death—so much smaller than they had expected—had first come in sight, she and Tilja had slipped aside from the road, in among the reeds, and there for the last time asked their question. Axtrig had still pointed south, straight at Goloroth. And Goloroth lay beside the mouth of the Great River, at the southernmost tip of the Empire. There was nothing but ocean beyond it. Unless Meena was wrong about what Axtrig was telling them, Faheel must be inside those walls.

“Perhaps that’s why he chose it,” said Tahl. “Good place to hide—no one would think of looking for him here.”

They were waiting in one of the lines that had formed to enter the city. There were several gateways in the otherwise blank wall. To either side of them officials sat at long tables. As each pair, old person and child, reached the head of the line they waited until a place was vacant at one of the tables and then went up to be interviewed by the official, who spoke to them briefly, wrote their answers in a ledger, wrote again on a sheet of paper and handed it to the child. The child then turned back and the old person went off alone through the gate. Chairs with carrying handles were brought for those who had difficulty walking.

Even here, under the walls of the City of Death, as everywhere else in the Empire, there were traders looking for a profit, selling food and supplies for the return journey, or offering to buy possessions that the travelers no longer needed, now that they had reached the end. Some of these too were sensitive to the gusts of magic. Tilja could see them automatically adjusting their footing as they carried on with their business.

Slowly the line in front of the gate edged forward. As it did so children came walking back, some solemn, some weeping, some seeming simply dazed that the thing was over and now they had to make their own way home, alone. Meena and the others seemed too preoccupied with fighting the invisible buffetings to notice, but Tilja became more and more anxious as she watched what was happening at the head of the line on their right.

Mostly the procedure went smoothly enough, but every now and then either the old person or the child would say something to the official at the table, and perhaps even begin to argue as the official shook his head, and then two other men would come up and lead the pair aside to say good-bye to each other, and though they might cling to each other and weep, before long the men would part them gently and lead them off in their separate directions. Tilja didn’t see a single child go on into the city. Neither Meena nor Alnor seemed very put out when she told them.

“I’d been wondering about that,” said Meena. “But no point meeting trouble till trouble meets you, I always say.”

“I also have been thinking about this,” said Alnor. “I am less certain than Meena that the man we are seeking is within the city. If he is here, perhaps he will do what we ask, and then help us to return. If so, well and good. If not, I do not care what happens to me. But if he is not here, then we have no choice but to search further on. Who knows what lands may lie south across the ocean? After all that has happened to us, I am fully convinced that our search will be rewarded, and that in the end we will find him. If I have to travel south on a raft, so be it. He cannot be very far. Every time Meena and Tilja have used the spoon, I have felt the pulse of magic more strongly.

“But let us for the moment assume that we find him here, and he is prepared to help us not only leave the city, but find Tahl and Tilja and return to the Valley. We cannot go home without his help. We would be questioned at every stage. So for the moment the best thing would be for you two to wait here for, say, five days, and then start north. Somehow, I do not know how, we will meet again.”

“Best we can do,” said Meena.

“I don’t want to leave you,” said Tilja. Despite Alnor’s confidence, she felt that when in a very short time they parted at the gates of the City of Death, she would be saying good-bye to Meena forever.

“Nor me,” said Tahl. “And anyway I want to see what happens. I mean, after getting this far . . .”

“I want to come with you,” said Tilja, already close to tears.

“Looks like we’ve got no choice,” said Meena.

“We’re still going to get in somehow,” said Tahl.

“What about Axtrig?” said Tilja. “She’s asleep now, but . . .”

“Think she’ll stay that way? Long enough for me to get her in, at least?”

“I don’t know. When I carried her into Talagh . . . you couldn’t have done it then. I only just managed it. But she’s different now. She’s asleep—like she used to be in the Valley. And you got her in past Lananeth’s wards. She didn’t really wake up till you said the name.”

“Well, I’ll still be needing her, risk or no risk. Leave it till last thing, and you put her into my bag, and we’ll just have to hope. . . . Ah, don’t you take it so hard, girl. I’m not like these others, come to the end and ready to go. I’ve had a good life, and I’m thankful for it, but I tell you it’s nothing like over, not yet. Come along then, cheer yourself up and say good-bye like we’d be seeing each other again tomorrow, which very likely we will.”

Uncomforted, Tilja fought with her tears until they reached the front of the line. There she watched Alnor and Meena take their turn at the tables, barely noticing the astonishing fact that there wasn’t anything to pay, no fee, no bribe, no extra, not one drin.

They moved aside to say good-bye, and the way Meena returned Tilja’s parting hug told her that inwardly her grandmother was feeling the same sense of grief and loss. Last thing of all she unstrapped Axtrig from her arm; Meena drew the leather bag out from under her skirt and Tilja slid the old spoon in with the other two. She managed to hold herself together while she said good-bye to Alnor also, and then watched tensely while the two of them helped each other through the gate. As they disappeared a blast of loose magic hurtled by, scattering the waiting lines, but nothing else happened. She led Calico back beside the way the way they had come, suddenly blind with tears.

Someone was speaking to her. A man’s voice.

“Thinking of selling that beast, missie? You’re from the north, by the look of you, so you’ve a long way to go, and she’s nothing like worth her feed all that time. Much better sell her now. I’ll give you a price you won’t be sorry for.”

Tilja could only shake her head, but Tahl butted in, asking questions as usual.

“What do you do with them when you’ve bought them?”

“Wait till I’ve got a string together, then take them up to the market at Ramram.”

“We don’t want to sell her, but how much to look after her for two or three days?”

“Well, now . . . what’s in your mind?”

“We want to see if we can get into the city and be with our grandparents until they actually have to go.”

The horse dealer laughed aloud.

“Some people!” he exclaimed. “No accounting . . . I’d have run a mile to get away from my own grandma. Look, sonny, there’s a lot of rules in the Empire you can get round, one way or another. But there’s one about Goloroth you can’t. Man or beast, once you’re into Goloroth you don’t come out alive, not until you go south yourself on the Great River. . . .”

“That can’t be right,” said Tahl. “I mean, what about that man there? He’s just helped someone in, and now he’s come out again. They’ve got to have someone besides the old people going south, to clean the streets and cook the food and run things. It wouldn’t work, else.”

“That fellow’s not coming out,” said the horse dealer. “No more than just beyond the gates. None of ’em are, who you’re asking about, not until they go south on the rafts themselves. What do you think would’ve happened to you two, supposing your old folk had gone and died on the way here?”

“We’d’ve been sold into slavery,” said Tahl.

“Right—but not until Goloroth had taken its pick of you. It’s in all the dealers’ licenses, they’ve got to send us a quota of the kids they pick up from the way stations. And the reason you haven’t seen gangs of kids on the road alongside of you is that them that run it don’t want it getting about that’s what happens, so they move ’em at night, and ship ’em in this last bit by the river. Hang around down there till after dark, and you’ll see— only I wouldn’t try it. You don’t want to get taken inside yourselves, now, not after what I’ve just told you.”

He bellowed with laughter at the notion. Tahl caught Tilja’s eye and raised his eyebrows. Without thought, she nodded. Anything to be with Meena again, right to whatever end was waiting for them.

“How many days’ feed do you think our horse is worth, supposing we ask you to take care of her for a bit?” asked Tahl.

“Seven, and that’s being generous,” said the horse dealer instantly. “It’s only because I like your faces.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Tahl. “She’s got years of work in her.”

“And a mean eye with it,” said the horse dealer. “Look, three days, and I’ll be on my way to Ramram. You pick her up before I go and you can pay me for what she’s had. Otherwise I’ll take her when I go and when she’s had her seven days I’ll sell her for what I can get. Same with your bedding and stuff if you like.”

Tahl looked at Tilja again, and again she nodded, more soberly now, understanding the danger but at the same time sure in her heart that this was not how the adventure was meant to end.

“All right,” said Tahl. “It’s a deal.”

“You thinking of doing what it sounds like?” said the man.

“Don’t ask,” said Tahl.

“Crazy,” said the horse dealer as he took Calico’s reins, but this time he didn’t laugh.

For days Calico had plodded sullenly south, disgusted with the journey, with the heat, with the food, with everything around her, and clearly blaming it all on Tilja. But now, as soon as she realized what was happening, she gave a wild and piteous whinny and tried to wrench herself away. But the horse dealer was used to difficult animals, and cursed and wrestled her into obedience and led her off, still forlornly whinnying. The sound pierced Tilja through and through. She had never imagined that she actually loved Calico. There couldn’t, she’d felt, have been many less lovable horses in the world. But Calico was her last link with Woodbourne, and she was gone.

Goloroth was built of the mud on which it stood, on a headland at the main mouth of the Great River, whose broad, smooth flood swept out beside it. From a spit of shingle Tilja and Tahl watched huge rafts being floated down on the current. Each of these was actually made of a hundred or more small rafts lashed together. Just below the spit they were poled ashore and untied, and the individual rafts were then floated on down a separate channel into the city.

Much further along Tilja could see a jetty with a line of people waiting, tiny with distance. One after another the small rafts were brought to the landing stage, two or three people were helped to board, and men on the jetty then poled the raft along and shoved it into the main current, which swept it swiftly off so that those on it could die outside the limits of the Empire. Beyond the end of the jetty Tilja could see a never-ending line of rafts dwindling away to the southern horizon.

No one paid any attention to her and Tahl. There were a couple of dozen other children watching from the spit, as if in the hope of one last glimpse of the old person they had brought so far. Indeed, it was such a natural thing to do that there was actually a small food stall on the spit, in case those who were waiting had a few spare drin to spend.

“Goloroth’s tiny,” said Tahl. “They can’t keep them here long, or it would be bursting.”

“A day and a night and then they’re off,” said the woman who ran the food stall. “When did yours go through the gate, then?”

“About an hour ago,” said Tahl.

“They’ll be going south about that time tomorrow, then,” said the woman. “Maybe a bit earlier. It’s not been that busy. You’ll need to sleep out, mind, if you’re staying to watch them go, and the bugs’ll eat you alive, so I’ll sell you a salve. Five drin.”

Tahl haggled and got the little phial for four.

“Where will our grandparents be sleeping?” he asked.

“In one of the sheds, great big barns, more like, couple of hundred places in each. They don’t treat ’em too bad, if you’re worrying. They get supper tonight, and breakfast tomorrow with a bit of poppy juice in the water, so by the time they’re floating away they’ve not got that much idea what’s happening to them.”

Tilja had been listening with growing anxiety. Now, for a moment, her heart seemed to stop. Meena and Alnor were in Goloroth to find Faheel, who would then, somehow, get them out again. They had no intention of going south on one of the rafts. But what if they were too woozy with poppy juice to realize what was happening to them? She caught Tahl’s eye. Blank faced, he gave her the slightest of nods. No need to talk about it. They had to get into Goloroth. Tonight.

But all he said was, “We’d better have some food too,” and with a lot of haggling he bought enough for several meals.

The night was heavy and sticky, and barely cooler than the day, but at least it was dark enough, though there would be a moon later. Tilja and Tahl, smeared with the sharp-smelling oil the woman had sold them, lay in shadows a little below the spit from which they had watched earlier. They were as near as they could safely come to the separate channel down which the rafts were floated.

At dusk there had been a lull, but in an hour or two rafts and barges started to arrive again from the north. The work went on by the light of smoky orange torches. As before, the main rafts were broken up into separate smaller ones, but now these were loaded with goods from the barges, sacks and bales and crates, or else the reeking coffins of those who had died on the journey. From the movement of torches along the jetty it seemed that these were sent out on the current by night, so that at least the still living didn’t have to make their last journey in such company.

Then, at last, a raft docked from which thirty or forty children were herded up onto the broad wall that ran between the main river and the channel into the city. They waited in silent apathy until a man holding one of the torches started numbering them off, six at a time, onto the line of smaller rafts in the channel. There wasn’t an exact number of children, so only three were sent to the final raft. The man on the wall called out, and another man emerged from the darkness at the head of the line, loosing the hawsers as he came. One by one the rafts floated away. The man on the wall didn’t stay to watch, but moved off, taking his torch with him.

“Now,” whispered Tahl, but Tilja was already moving. Together they scuttled across the narrow strip of shore and leaped for the last raft. It rocked violently as they landed but they hung on and then crawled forward and sat behind the other three. One of these had cried out at their impact, but now they just turned their heads for a moment and stared back through the darkness.

“It’s all right,” Tilja whispered. “We were just a bit late, that’s all.”

The three didn’t answer, but turned and sat, slumped and un-caring, as they had done before. Ahead, the lights of torches came nearer and nearer, reflected from the water under the archway that led into the City of Death.

There was no magic in Goloroth, none at all. Tahl had felt the change the moment the raft slid through the arch, he said later, but it took Tilja a while to notice, because it was a difference in something she didn’t feel with any of her bodily senses, nor in any way she could put words to. But all the time she had been in the Empire, since they had first come through the forest, whatever it was in her that so stubbornly resisted the pervading magic had been at work, and now it could relax.

By the time the revelation came to her, she and Tahl were last in the line of children who had arrived on the rafts, and were being led along a pitch-dark street between the blank walls of two long buildings. There was a man carrying a torch at the front to show them the way, and another bringing up the rear. She was so astonished by the revelation that she relaxed her guard and spoke aloud.

“You were right, Tahl! There isn’t any magic here!”

He glanced toward her with a sharp, warning frown, but the man immediately behind them had already heard.

“That’s right, lassie,” he said affably. “Second-best-warded place in the Empire, Goloroth.”

“And you don’t mind talking about it?” asked Tahl, instantly.

“What’s the harm? The bastards can’t get at us here. Death has its compensations, eh? No magic, no Watchers, none of that nonsense. Haven’t you got it? You’re outside the Empire now. You can die here, and no one has to pay a drin.”

“And it’s warded like that to keep it out of the Empire?” said Tahl. “I don’t see . . .”

“Why should you,” said the man, who clearly liked to talk, “seeing the trouble they’ve gone to keep everyone from getting the idea? You’re a thinking lad, by the sound of you. You must’ve wondered, coming south, about how much all this is costing, the guides, the free stops at the way stations, and now you’re here the rafts—couple of thousand a day and working all night when we’re busy—and the food and stores, and everything, and the Emperor not getting a drin back out of it by way of taxes. Doesn’t make sense once you’ve thought about it, eh?”

“No,” said Tahl. “It’s been bothering me pretty well since we started. People don’t spend money like that unless they’ve got to.”

“Said you were a thinking lad,” said the man. “Well, they’ve got to, and here’s for why. While you’ve been wondering about things, has it ever crossed your mind to wonder where all the magic is coming from? It comes out of us, that’s where. We’ve all got a bit of it, right? All our lives it kind of settles into us, like dust, and then it comes out again when we die. Some of us find how to take it and use it, and they’re the ones who become magicians, but most of us don’t even notice it’s there. Me, I’ve not got that much, because I’ve lived all my life since I was a kid here in Goloroth, where there isn’t any magic. But these old folk who come down here to die, they’ve been living years and years out in the Empire, and they’re full of the stuff. Notice how it was blowing around outside the walls?”

“We certainly did,” said Tahl. “It was knocking us all over the place.”

“That’s because the old folk are starting to lose it, soon as they get here. Mostly it blows out to sea—the Watchers back in Talagh look after that. But it’s nothing to what they let go of when they actually come to dying. You just think what it would be like if you had that happening all over the Empire all the time.

“And another thing. Suppose I was starting out to become a big magician—where’s the easiest place for me to pick up a bit more magic than I’ve got on my own? There’s some of it floating around loose in the air, but it’s too much like hard work gathering all that in and making something of it, and I want quick results, so I’ll do much better taking it away from somebody else, and the easiest time for that is just when that somebody else is dying and giving up his magic. Right?

“Now, suppose I’m not a magician, I’m the Emperor, and I want to stop this kind of thing happening and a lot of magicians getting more power than I’ve got myself, what do I do? I make laws against magic, of course, and I hire Watchers who’re magicians themselves to keep an eye on things, but most of all I try to see to it that people don’t go dying promiscuous all over my Empire, not unless they can prove to me they’ve got the money to have their deathbeds properly warded, and if they have, no harm in them paying a bit of tax on top of it for all the trouble I’m taking, right? But for everyone else I set up a place they can get to before they die, and then get taken away outside my Empire. That’s Goloroth here, and old Fugon the Fifth must’ve been more than pleased with himself when he thought of it. . . .”

Tilja had been doing her best to listen. What the man was telling them was useful and important, though at the same time almost too horrible to think about, but her mind kept straying. Where were Meena and Alnor? Where was Faheel? What would happen when, in the heart of this warded city, Meena tried to use Axtrig to find him?

“. . . only one snag,” the man was saying. “Get a lot of old people passing through a place like this all the time, and some of them are going to start dying before they’re on the water. And since there weren’t that many dying anywhere else, not unwarded at least, you got a lot of magicians hanging around down here hoping for pickings. Started happening pretty well the moment the place was built, which is why after a bit old Fugon decided to have the place warded like it is. And he built way stations everyone’s got to sleep at, warded too, in case they go dying on the way. Once you know that, everything else kind of falls into place, you’ll find. But the Emperors never wanted it to get about that’s how it is, because the only way they can run things is if everybody more or less believes the Emperor’s all-powerful, whereas fact is he’s only just about in control of it all.”

“I see,” said Tahl in a tone of delighted wonder. “And—”

“That’s enough, sonny,” said the man. “We’re where we’ve been going, so there’s not time. But just keep your ears open and you’ll learn a lot here. You’ve got the rest of your life for that.”

They had come out of the area of large blank sheds and reached a courtyard surrounded by low buildings. Here several women were waiting, and the man at the head of the column halted and called the children round him. Listlessly they gathered.

“Well, my young friends, you’ve arrived at last,” he said, sounding just as friendly as the one who’d been talking to Tahl. “You’ve had a rough time, but remember that everyone you meet here has been through all that themselves. We know what it’s like, and we’re out to make it as easy for you as we can. Now the women here are going to show you somewhere to sleep and see you’re comfortable, and in the morning they’ll—”

He stopped dead. His head began to turn. Every torch in the courtyard went out. Tilja was knocked sideways by Tahl being flung violently against her. She grabbed him and managed to prevent them both from falling. There were shouts and yells nearby, heavy crashes from further away, more cries and screams floating in from further yet, but only for three or four seconds, and then complete darkness and silence, until Tahl groaned and shuddered in her arms.

She reached for his hand and held it tight, and now she felt the same sense of something being sucked or pushed to and fro that she had felt when her fingers had locked into the fur of Silena’s beast, and knew that in spite of what they had been told only a few minutes before, the wards of Goloroth had been broken and magic was flooding into the city.

Tahl gave a final, gasping shudder and came to himself.

“What happened?” he muttered.

“I think Meena tried to use Axtrig,” she said.

“Yes . . . it was like that time in Lananeth’s room, only . . . where . . . ?”

“They’ll be in one of the big sheds we came through. That’s where the main noise came from. Over there. Don’t let go of my hand.”

Stumbling and groping, they found their way out of the courtyard. Tilja could see the outline of buildings against the starry sky, but almost nothing at ground level. They felt their way through an arched entrance and saw ahead of them the huge dark shapes of the sheds. There was no conceivable way of telling in which one Meena and Alnor had been housed.

“Try letting go of me for a moment,” suggested Tahl. “Then grab me again.”

Tilja gripped his collar with her free hand. Cautiously they disentwined their fingers.

Instantly his body went rigid. As she seized his hand he gasped, shuddered and relaxed.

“This way,” he said, and led her to the right, then left a block further on. Here they halted and tried again. The third try brought them to a shed, part of whose roof had fallen in. The air was thick with the reek of mortar dust, and the end wall had fallen clean away. Never letting go of each other’s hands, they crawled across the heap of rubble and in under the remains of the roof. Here they found themselves stumbling among sleepers who neither moved nor spoke when kicked or trodden on, but then came to a clear patch which turned out to be a path between two long rows of mattresses. By now, despite Tilja’s protecting touch, Tahl had begun to move as if he were struggling through a dense and swirling storm that buffeted him this way and that. She felt nothing of it at all, and knew it was there only by the grunting effort of his movements. Slowly he fought his way to its center and guided her hand toward the floor. Her fingers touched and closed upon the familiar rounded shaft of wood. As she picked up the spoon and slid it in under her blouse she felt all round her the shock of change, with herself the stillness at its center. Tahl sighed in the dark.

“That’s better,” he muttered. “Didn’t think we were going to make that. Don’t let go, though. There’s still a mass of loose magic around.”

Others were beginning to stir in the darkness. Tilja heard a familiar groan.

“Meena!”

“That you, girl?”

“Are you all right?”

“Just about . . . just about . . . told you it wasn’t the end. Why’s he not shown up, then? He must’ve felt that, if he’s anywhere around. Found that dratted spoon, have you? Which way was she pointing?”

Tilja pulled herself together, and managed to re-create in her mind the feel of the wooden shaft as she had grasped it.

“I don’t know, in here,” she said. “I think I’ve got the line, but we’ll have to get outside where I can see the stars.”

“Give us a hand then, getting up. Just let me find my cane and things. . . . Now, where are you . . . ? Got you. Ready? . . . Thanks. Now where’s Alnor?”

“I am here,” came the dazed mutter. “What has happened?”

“No time for that. I was trying to use old Axtrig, remember? Tilja and Tahl have shown up somehow. But I’ve gone and let all sorts of stuff in, and someone or something’s going to come looking for us. They won’t hang around, either. We’d best be getting out of here. Only it’s that dark I can’t see a dratted thing.”

The shed seemed still to be filled with ferocious eddies of loose magic. All round her Tilja could hear grunts and curses as the wakened sleepers struggled to rise. She shifted Tahl’s hand across to the one with which she was holding Meena and closed its fingers round her wrist, then groped forward into the darkness and found Alnor and helped him to his feet.

“Good,” he said, steadying at her touch. “I will lead. If it is dark, I have the advantage. The door is this way.”

Not letting go of Tilja’s left hand, and with Meena and Tahl trailing behind grasping her right, he led the way between two of the rows and then sideways toward the outer wall. It was slow going. By now most of the occupants were awake, and full of alarm and confusion, all sensing more or less strongly the storm of magic which engulfed them. Many of them seemed to have marked where the door lay and were staggering in that direction. Others were trying to shove their way toward the only light in the pitch-dark shed, where the roof and wall had fallen in at the further end, and all the time the storm of magic buffeted them to and fro. The throng around the door was apparently so dense that it was impossible to open it. People were falling underfoot, and screaming where they lay as others trampled on them, but Alnor kept his head and managed to force his way out to one side and reach the outer wall, not far from the door.

Here they stood panting, but before they had recovered their breath a light flared just outside, shining fiercely through the cracks of the door. The mass of people fell back, not of their own accord but as if they had been forced to do so. With a snarl of wrenched timber the door burst open and a man stalked into the shed, lit by the web of fire that blazed from the many-thonged whip he carried on his shoulder. He was just as Tilja had seen him that night on the walls of Talagh, the long, wild hair, the naked torso, the jeweled belt and bracelets. Dorn. At his presence the tumult instantly ceased. The throng at the door stood motionless before him, many with mouths wide open in the screams they had started and could not finish. In all the shed, only Tilja and the three whose hands gripped hers could move a muscle.

For a moment she too had frozen, but with shock, not the compulsion of magic. So soon! Far back in Talagh Dorn had sensed the explosion of magic and come, almost in an instant. Now, as he began to turn slowly, studying the crowd and lightly shaking his whip for guidance toward the source of power he was seeking, Tilja came to herself. He had his back to her for the moment, but soon he would be facing her, see her, and realize that she was different. What then?

The obvious thing was to pretend to freeze like everyone else, but she knew in her heart it wouldn’t work. It was his magic that bound everyone but her. Like Silena’s beast, he would be able to sense the difference. Perhaps, as Lord Kzuva’s magician had said, he couldn’t hurt her directly with his magic, but he didn’t have to use it to get what he wanted. He was far stronger than she was. . . . No, because to use his strength he would need to touch her, and then . . . if she dared . . . No, better, suppose she tried now, when his back was still turned, when he wasn’t ready . . .

She was still nerving herself to step forward when an enormous throaty roar shattered the stillness. Instantly the thongs of Dorn’s whip rose and streamed toward the further end of the shed. By their light Tilja saw a huge lion standing on the pile of rubble from the fallen roof and wall. Its mane stood stiffly out around its head as its mouth gaped for another roar. At the sound the thongs of Dorn’s whip seemed to hesitate, but he shook it fiercely and they surged on, writhing as if they were fighting their way against a gale.

Move now, while all the Watcher’s powers are concentrated on the lion! Tilja let go of the others, crouched down and managed to wriggle her way through the trance-held throng until Dorn was immediately in front of her. Still crouching, she reached up and laid both hands on his naked back.

Again, for the third time, but far more intensely than before, body and mind filled with the numbness. She felt that to-and-fro rush of powers being channeled through her. This time they almost overwhelmed her. For a moment she was blind. Her head was full of a strange, drumming darkness. She seemed to be in some other place entirely, or rather a sort of nonplace, an endless emptiness which was draining everything out of her. She willed herself to control it, to cling on to all that was Tilja, while the swirling energies sluiced past. Somewhere in that tumult she sensed Dorn himself being dissolved and carried away into nothingness. Then it was over, and she was back in the shed and scrambling to her feet, and though she still couldn’t see, this was because the light from Dorn’s whip had gone out and everything was in darkness again.

But the door was open, and the people in the shed were no longer gripped into stillness by Dorn’s magic. Like sheep bursting from a pen they surged out into the open and staggered away. Tilja was simply shoved out ahead of them, but managed to twist aside and wait for the others by the doorpost.

They came soon enough, Meena instantly recognizable among the stream of dark shapes by her grunts and mutters. Tilja grabbed her and pulled her aside and Tahl and Alnor followed.

“That’s better,” Meena gasped. “You do that, girl? I could see a bit of it, but I stuck where I was standing. Don’t let go of me again, or I shan’t know if I’m on my head or my heels.”

“We have to get away from here,” said Alnor. “There will be more of them coming, besides the man who came through the door.”

“That lion’s one of them,” said Tahl.

“Where can we go?” said Meena. “There isn’t anywhere else.”

“Wait,” said Tilja. “Over here, where we can see more stars.”

They moved down to a wider space between the sheds.

“There’s the Fisherman,” said Tahl. “I can’t see the Axle-pin, but it must be about there, behind that roof.”

Tilja looked back and checked the lie of the shattered shed.

“Then Axtrig was still pointing south when I found her,” she said.

Alnor grunted, as if this was something he had been half expecting. Tilja remembered him talking about it outside the gates of Goloroth. And she herself felt strangely unsurprised. She knew nothing about Faheel beyond what could be learned from the story of Asarta, but of one thing she was certain. Now that she had seen it, she knew that the City of Death was no place for him.

The others seemed to share her thoughts.

“That man told us they weren’t too busy just now,” said Tahl. “They should have finished with the coffins—there weren’t that many. There mightn’t be anyone there. We saw them pushing the rafts out this afternoon, Alnor. It’s this way.”

For a moment none of the others spoke.

“Well,” said Alnor. “It would be good to be on the water again.”

The spaces between the sheds were full of old and frightened people stumbling about in the darkness and the eddying magic. There seemed to be nobody trying to take control, or to shepherd them back inside, let alone stop and question anyone who seemed to know where they were going. So they made their way eastward, awkwardly, with Tahl and Alnor leading, each with an arm reaching back to grasp Tilja by hand and wrist, and then Tilja with the fingers of her other hand twined into Meena’s as she helped her hobble along. So protected, they could proceed erratically through the tumult, except when part of the panicking throng blundered against them and forced them apart, and whoever had been knocked loose had to stand and fight not to be swept into the same panic until Tilja could make contact again.

Twice from all around them, and from as far as they could hear across the stricken city, fresh wails of terror rose and died away.

“I suppose that means another Watcher’s showed up at the shed where we found you,” said Tahl.

“Doesn’t need to be a Watcher,” said Meena. “There’s others, remember, looking for Axtrig. Just have to hope they’ve no way of finding her, long as Tilja’s got her safe.”

“I think one of them may be following us,” said Alnor. “I am not certain, but last time I was separated from Tilja—”

“It’s getting lighter,” Tahl interrupted. “There’ll be a moon soon. And look, that’ll be the channel they send the rafts down.”

He was right. They had reached a strip of water, embanked with masonry. A paved walkway ran beside it. Beyond the channel, faintly visible, lay the dark expanse of the Great River. To her left Tilja could see the outline of the walls of Goloroth, and the archway through which they had entered the city. The workers who had been unloading the cargoes earlier in the night were gone. There were no lights moving on the jetty.

They turned south and hurried along the pathway as fast as Meena could manage. When Tilja glanced back she could see nothing following. Nobody else seemed to have thought of leaving the city by water. All the tumult lay behind them.

Now there were rafts in the channel, ready for use next day, a long line, jostling against each other, kept together by the current. At the head of the line the stone jetty reached out into the river. Seen close to, the system was very simple. The current in the channel ran out through sluices beneath the jetty, and thus kept the line of rafts in place, but the masonry was so shaped that the front raft was nudged round the corner to the foot of a shallow ramp and held there. The passengers boarded it down the ramp, the workers on the jetty poled it away and the next raft was automatically pushed into place.

Tahl picked up a coil of loose cord and tossed it aboard the first raft, then chose a pole from the dozen or so leaning against the jetty.

“We’ll manage from the raft,” he said. “If Tilja gets us all aboard Alnor and Meena can sit down and then she can just hang on to me while I shove us along. The river will do most of the work.”

He was right. Again, the jetty had been carefully shaped to turn some of the current outward, and all he needed to do was to use his pole to keep the raft from scraping against it. Soon they were sweeping along beside the dark stonework, and shore and city were sliding away behind them, sharply outlined now against the pallor of moonrise.

“Hold fast,” called Tahl. “We’re going to bucket about a bit round the end.”

But in fact the raft barely tilted as the side current they had been using met the force of the main stream. The jetty rushed away. Ahead lay the open sea.

“Look at that!” cried Meena.

She was staring back along the way they had come. Tilja turned. The first sliver of moon was showing above the horizon beyond the walls of Goloroth. Right at the end of the jetty, black against that brightness, stood an enormous lion. Its shaggy mane was rimmed with sparkles of moonlight. It did not move. Its head was turned toward them. It seemed to be watching them go.