The Ropemaker

14

A Bunch of Grapes

Faheel’s raft was a small dark shape dwindling toward the sunset. By the time the last sliver of the sun slid below the horizon it was no more than a dot, which disappeared in the brief dusk, and then there was night, with innumerable stars. None of them spoke for a long while as their seashell boat skimmed away north from the island, towed by the unseen team beneath the surface.

“Well, so we’re going home,” said Alnor at last.

“And somewhere along the way we’re going to find a magician who’ll tell us what to do about the Valley,” said Meena. “Fat lot of sense it makes to me, I must say.”

“Nothing’s going to make much sense unless Til tells us what’s been going on while we’ve been asleep,” said Tahl. “It’s bad enough missing it all, but not even knowing . . .”

“I’m starving,” said Meena. “May as well eat while she’s telling us.”

All Tilja wanted to think about was the beauty and sadness of Faheel’s going, so she started reluctantly, but then found it somehow comforting to relive the day and a night and less than a day more that she had spent in his company. By the time she had finished, the moon had moved halfway across the sky, and she lay down to sleep still full of the peacefulness of the island.

When they rose and looked around them in the morning the island was out of sight astern and the dark shore of the Empire lay ahead. Alnor woke in a bad mood and sat hunched and sullen, but gave no sign of what was troubling him. Tahl on the other hand was full of chat, still thrilled and fascinated by everything Tilja had told them the night before, especially what might happen to the machinery of the Empire with the Watchers gone from their towers and the Emperor himself dead.

“You may not even need way-leaves,” he said as they breakfasted. “Perhaps the whole system’s broken down. If it hasn’t, we’re in trouble. You two can’t go anywhere without them, except back to Goloroth.”

“How’m I going anywhere without a horse, if it comes to that?” said Meena. “All this sleeping on rafts and boats. My hip wasn’t that bad yesterday, but it is now.”

“We can buy a horse, can’t we?” said Tahl. “We’ve got Faheel’s purse. You can get a good enough horse and still have change from a gold coin. There’s horse merchants at Goloroth— we sold Calico to one of them—though perhaps that’s not happening anymore, either.”

“I’ll tell you one thing it’ll mean,” said Meena, with relish, “it’ll mean robbers on the roads, and the rascals in charge of way stations grabbing what they can squeeze out of us with nothing to stop them.”

They argued it to and fro. Tilja listened without much interest and said nothing. All her real attention was elsewhere, inward. When, last night, she had told the others about her adventures, she had described in detail their arrival at the island, her meeting with Faheel, the journey to Talagh and back, and everything she had seen and done there, but had said only that after they had come back Faheel had gone up to his attic and given up his magic while she waited with them in the room below. She had said nothing about what she had then seen and felt. One day, perhaps, she might tell Meena, but not yet. She wasn’t ready. She still needed to understand and come to terms with her own discovery —deliberately shown to her, she now felt, by the spirits that had come—that her lack of magic was not in fact a lack, not an emptiness, but a power, a gift—a gift which, if she nurtured it, practiced it, learned all she could about it, might one day be as powerful in its own way as the gifts of a great magician like Faheel. A gift which was a kind of magic in its own right, a flow of power, but in the reverse direction. A gift she must, one day, use. Faheel had said there were two kinds of magician, those who worked with made magic, and those like himself who had discovered natural magic. Perhaps there was also a third kind. Herself. Though who was to say if she was the only one?

Thinking about it as their seashell boat whispered across the empty ocean, thinking about how she did whatever it was she did, she discovered in herself a need to find a place where it belonged. Not Woodbourne, to whose remembered image she had clung as she had fought her way into Talagh, and again when she had faced Silena. She couldn’t cling to Woodbourne any longer. She had changed. Now she needed a new place, somewhere that would always be hers, which she could explore and learn to know, as she knew her way round Woodbourne, every cranny in the house and outbuildings, every yard of the fields and meadows.

She closed her eyes and an image filled her mind, so strongly seen that it was hard to believe that it hadn’t been there already, waiting for her to find it. A lake, calm and clear, and deep beyond sounding. Nothing like the cedar-ringed lake in the forest, but set high among mountains, whose white unreachable peaks were reflected from its still surface. Cataracts poured down their slopes in roaring foam and plunged into the lake and became part of its stillness. Perhaps the image meant that she was like that lake. Her gift was to take the raging, demonic forces of made magic and channel them down into a central calm where they would be unbound from their making and loosed into their simple elements, and then perhaps breathed back into the world, rather as the lake on warm days breathed its water back to join the clouds.

But the lake was more than that, more than a way of thinking about what she did. It was real, as much part of her as her heartbeat or her breathing. She would have it until she died. With closed eyes she gazed at it, seeing it in detail. It wasn’t like a dream image, shifting, unreliable. Shoreline and cataract and peak remained firm. Only the clouds and their reflections moved.

But everything else was changed, all Tilja’s hopes and fears and expectations, all her life to come. Yes, she was going home with the others, if she could. She was going back to Woodbourne. But she wasn’t staying there. There was no magic in the Valley. Her gift was no use there.

The shore of the Empire neared. From time to time now the sea-human controlling the unseen creatures that hauled the boat would rise from the surface as far as his waist and stare around and plunge below. When a cluster of fishing boats appeared almost directly ahead of them he changed course to avoid it. Now they could see fields and a small harbor as he skirted the shore, and then a range of barren-looking hills, and then a stretch of marshland. Where the hills met the marsh he turned shoreward, unharnessing his team before they reached the shallows and himself gripping the stern post and driving the boat up onto a muddy beach with powerful thrusts of his tail. Seeing him full length, Tilja discovered that he was at least as much fish as man, with dark green scales almost up to his shoulders and a ridged fin running the length of his spine. They rescued their packs, climbed ashore and turned and thanked him. He nodded briefly in acknowledgment, then scooped up a handful of mud from the seabed and tossed it into the boat. Instantly the hull split apart, shrinking as it did so. In the space of a couple of heartbeats all that was left of it was several fragments of gleaming seashell lying on the dark mud. He waved farewell, turned and slid out of sight.

They plodded up the beach with Tahl guiding Alnor, and Meena leaning heavily on Tilja’s shoulder and wincing at every step. As soon as they were beyond the tide line she halted.

“That’s enough for me,” she said. “I’m giving my leg a rest.”

“We cannot stay here,” said Alnor, without any scrap of sympathy for the pain in her voice.

“Then you’ll just have to leave me here,” she snapped.

Even Alnor had to see that this wasn’t possible.

“Well, we can rest while we eat the grapes, Meena and I,” he said.

“I don’t know I’m that hungry,” said Meena, arguing for arguing’s sake, because of her hip.

“We must do as he said, exactly,” snapped Alnor. Something in his tone gave Tilja a clue to the reason for his foul mood. He resented not being in control of things, in the way that he could control a raft on the river; he resented having set out on this difficult journey, by his own independent decision, despite everyone else’s advice, and then . . . Yes, against all the odds they had actually found Faheel, but once they had left Talagh hardly any of that had been Alnor’s doing. He had been swept along, helpless in the rush of the current, and finally lain asleep on Faheel’s island while far away in Talagh the whole Empire was shaken apart. Now he was determined to take control again.

So they found a clean patch of ground and settled down. Alnor and Meena passed the bunch of grapes to and fro between them, and Tahl and Tilja each ate a nectarine to keep them company.

“Now, that’s what I call a grape!” said Meena as she swallowed her first one.

“A grape is a grape,” said Alnor.

“That all you can say?” said Meena. “You tell me when you’ve eaten a better grape! Go on. Tell me.”

They continued to squabble about the grapes as they ate them. Tilja, still thinking about what had happened to her on the island, paid no attention; they were just two old people, tired and anxious and disgruntled, arguing like children in the way old people often do. The first thing she noticed was that Tahl had stopped eating. She glanced up and saw that he was sitting stock-still with his mouth open, ready to take another bite at his nectarine.

She looked to see what he was staring at, and stared too.

Alnor and Meena were still sitting side by side, engrossed in their squabble as they passed the half-eaten bunch back and forth. But they themselves had changed. Alnor’s snow-white hair was flecked with dark streaks. His lined old face had fleshed out, and his slight body seemed sturdier. While Meena . . . when they’d settled her down she’d made herself as comfortable as she could, half lying against a tussock of reedlike grasses, but now she’d straightened up and drawn her knees sideways under her. . . .

There was no way, even on one of her best days, that Meena could sit like that!

And lean and reach across to take the grapes!

And her face and hair!

She leaned further to snatch the grapes as Alnor withdrew them.

“Now, then, turn and turn . . . What’s up?”

“I can see,” said Alnor in a wholly different voice, soft and full of wonder. “Shapes in a mist, only, but . . . it was like this when my blindness began.”

“How’s your hip, Meena?” said Tahl.

“Not as bad as it might be. Matter of fact . . .”

She twisted herself up, stood and felt at the joint. Gingerly she lifted her foot clear of the ground, balanced and moved the leg around. She put it down and blew her breath out.

“Now, there’s something I never thought I’d do again,” she said. “What about it, you old fool? Now try and tell me these aren’t good grapes!”

Alnor actually smiled.

“I may be a fool,” he said, “but I think I am not as old as I was.”

“Nor me,” said Meena. “My, I’m sorry I didn’t get to know your Faheel a bit better. He’s a really thoughtful old gentleman— unlike some I could name. Now I’ll be walking back to the Valley, after all.”

“And I, perhaps, shall be seeing my way,” said Alnor.

“Hey! Me first,” said Meena, as he started to pull another grape from the bunch. “Turn and turn about, he told us.”

Even in the wonder of what was happening to their grandparents, Tahl couldn’t help thinking of the practical uses of it.

“It’s better than that,” he said, as Alnor grudgingly handed the grapes over. “You’ve got to eat the whole bunch, Faheel said. At the rate you’re going, you won’t be much older than us by the time you’ve finished. So you won’t need way-leaves going north.”

Meena had a grape halfway to her mouth. She paused and stared at it.

“Perhaps you’ll be younger,” said Tilja with relish. “Then I’ll be able to tell you what’s what, for a change.”

“May I live to see the day,” said Meena, and popped the grape into her mouth and gave the bunch back across to Alnor.

“They tell me you were a handsome young fellow once,” she said. “Let’s have a look at you then.”

For a while they almost gobbled in their excitement, while their grandchildren stood and watched them shed the corrupting years. The wrinkles vanished from their faces, apart from the laughter lines at the corners of Meena’s eyes. Her hair grew and thickened, losing all its gray until it was a soft, light chestnut, with a slight wave in it, reaching down to her shoulders. Her figure changed with almost ridiculous speed, swelling to serious stoutness and then shrinking again to comfortable plump curves. Alnor on the other hand stayed much the same, a slim, wiry, muscular man with almost jet black, short, curly hair and a look of fiery pride.

Meena glanced at him as she started to hand the grapes across, and jumped to her feet.

“Tell you what,” she said. “It’s frustrating watching you getting so likely looking. Let’s see if we can’t find a pool I can see myself in.”

They picked up their packs, but Alnor didn’t at once move off to explore along the edge of the marsh. Instead he closed his eyes and slowly turned his head, as if listening for a distant call. Tahl copied him. They opened their eyes at the same moment and side by side led the way slantwise up across the dry and dreary hillside, halting at last in a place as barren seeming as everywhere else. But when Meena and Tilja came up beside them they found at their feet a rocky ravine, which here widened into a steep-sided basin with a waterfall tumbling down at its upper end. Below the fall was a pool.

They scrambled down and settled on the rocks beside it for Meena and Alnor to finish the grapes. The water was creased with ripples below the fall, but smooth enough where they sat for Meena to make out her own wavering reflection as she shed the years. She finished as a plump-faced, smiling, lively girl, a year or two older than Tilja, with a mass of glossy chestnut hair that Tilja would have given her soul for. Alnor might have been a year or so older, unmistakably an Ortahlson, absurdly handsome, much more so than Tahl, though they could easily have been brothers. Unlike Meena, who had studied her reflection in the pool every time she ate another grape, he had refused even to glance at his, but from the way he stood and moved Tilja was quite sure that he knew how good he looked.

Meena ate her last grape kneeling by the water, watching her rippled image, then rose to her feet and took Tilja’s hands and drew her to her and hugged her, cheek to cheek, laughing with pleasure. It was such a natural gesture that Tilja hugged her back, laughing too. Then she stiffened and pushed away and stared at her.

“What’s up?” said Meena.

“You didn’t feel anything? No, nor did I, but I was afraid of undoing the magic, like I did with Silena’s dog. You can’t be that kind of magical.”

“I’m not magical at all, thank you very much. He may have used magic to get me here, but I’m me. Guess what day it is?”

“What day it is?”

“It’s my fourteenth birthday,” crowed Meena, laughing at Tilja’s bewilderment. “Look.”

She held out her left arm and showed Tilja an angry blistered patch on the inside of the wrist.

“I got that just yesterday,” she said. “Helping Ma with the baking for my birthday tea.”

They picked up their packs again and climbed the hill. The stream ran out of a boggy plateau that stretched away north. On its further side, two or three miles away, they could see a group of low buildings, and knew at once what they were, having seen so many on their way south.

“Where there’s a way station there’s got to be a road,” said Tahl. “This must be a side road, from another part of the Empire. Problem is, which way’s Goloroth? We’ve got to get there to reach the Grand Trunk Road.”

“The other problem is, all four of us are young now,” said Alnor. “We’re supposed to be coming away.”

“You and Meena could dress up old and hobble along,” suggested Tahl, teasing.

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Alnor. “We’ll travel at night. It can’t be that far.”

“Isn’t that a couple of kids?” said Meena. “Look. There. And they’re going that way. So the other way must be to Goloroth.”

There was a three-quarter moon, clear enough to show some distance along the empty road. Nobody in the Empire traveled by night, because who knew what other creatures might be about?

“I think we should be all right,” said Tilja. “If anything like that comes, you’ll just have to hold on to me, and then it can’t touch you.”

She felt completely confident about this. She had held Faheel’s ring in her hand and blanked out its magic. She didn’t believe that all the Watchers together could match that power. Along with that confidence came a feeling—more than a feeling, almost a certainty—that what she had seen and done in the last few days had given her strengths that she had not had on the journey south. As much as Meena and Alnor, though in very different ways, she had changed.

Despite that, none of them was quite ready for what happened almost as soon as they had set foot on the road. They were walking abreast through the silvery dark. Nothing stirred. There was barely a breath of wind, only a delicious waft of smells, dewy and earthy, drawn out by the night-cooled air. Tilja’s head was full of the knowledge that they were now going home, back to Woodbourne. She wanted to sing.

She felt nothing, but Tahl was flung against her as if he’d been buffeted from the other side. She staggered and almost fell, but caught herself and grabbed his wrist as he fought with something she couldn’t see. He steadied. On her other side Meena and Alnor were sprawled in the road. Meena had her arms braced in front of her chest as if she was trying to push something away from her neck. Alnor was on his face, bucking to rise, but pinned down.

Tilja bent and thrust her wrist into Meena’s grasp.

“Hold on to me,” she yelled, kneeling and reaching across to touch the back of Alnor’s hand where it scrabbled at the dust.

They rose gasping. The night was as peaceful and still as it had been only seconds before.

“Loose magic,” muttered Alnor.

“Bad as outside Goloroth,” said Meena.

“This had things in it,” said Tahl. “No wonder people don’t like moving around in the dark.”

“The power of the Watchers is broken,” said Alnor. “It will be worse now.”

“And you didn’t feel anything?” said Tahl.

“No,” said Tilja. “Not even that funny numb feeling I get. Wild magic must be different. It looks as if we’re going to have to hold hands all the way.”

They adjusted their positions and walked on, tensely at first, but then more easily when nothing frightening happened, though all except Tilja could feel gusts of loose magic swirling around them with, as Tahl had said, things in it. The road wound down the hill they had climbed and ran for a while almost directly beside the marsh. Along the way two more roads joined it from the north, and as dawn was breaking it crossed the Great River on a bridge and joined the Grand Trunk Road. With sighs of relief they turned north.

It was strange for Tilja, making friends with a girl her own age who was also her grandmother, an old woman with a bad hip and a dodgy temper. But Meena didn’t seem to find it anything like as strange when Tilja asked her about it.

“Mostly I don’t think about it,” she said. “I suppose it’s like remembering a dream, except it doesn’t go shifting around the way dreams do.”

She paused for a moment, thinking.

“There, now,” she went on. “I can remember what it’s like, my hip hurting, and I can remember what Faheel told us, and going back a bit I can remember things like speaking my mind to your da about buying that stupid great horse . . .”

Another pause.

“. . . but mostly, like I say, I shut it away. No. It shuts itself away, more like. It’s a different room from the one I’m in, and the door’s closed. I can get up and go through, but the door’s the sort that shuts itself soon as you let go. And, anyway, I like this room.”

She laughed. Her laugh hadn’t changed at all, but Tilja heard it a lot more often now. And she could be sharp as ever still, mostly just teasing, but also speaking her mind with vigor when anything annoyed her. It was all part of the sheer gusto with which she lived, so brimfull of the pleasure of the moment that the surplus spilled over. That made the change easy for Tilja. Anybody would have wanted to be Meena’s friend.

Tahl had a much harder time with Alnor. Though they looked so like, they were very different. Tahl was outgoing, interested in everything, always ready to talk to passersby. Alnor was withdrawn, touchy, stiff with strangers on first meeting, as if they were somehow a challenge to him. He spoke to them in much the same formal manner that he had used as an old man, but less naturally, as if this was a style he had not long ago chosen for himself and was still getting used to.

On their second morning they were walking in pairs, Meena and Alnor leading the way, and Tahl and Tilja not quite in earshot behind. Meena was chatting away, with Alnor laughing as he answered. Tahl, on the other hand, had been unusually silent so far. Now Tilja heard him sigh.

“What’s up?” she said.

He shook his head and sighed again.

“I want my grandfather back,” he muttered.

“Oh, no! This is wonderful! It’s thrilling!”

“For them. Have you heard him talking to me? As if I were some kind of henchman. I’m not anyone’s henchman.”

“Why can’t you just be friends? That’s how I feel about Meena—as if she were my elder sister. I’ve never had an elder sister before. I’ve always been eldest. I’m really enjoying it.”

“I’m not. And I wouldn’t if he were my elder brother. He’d be like this anyway. It’s all right in a grandfather—and anyway he needed me then. He doesn’t now. Besides, just look at the two of them! Next thing, they’ll be falling in love! They’ve started already!”

“That will be fun for them. Meena will really enjoy it.”

“They’re our grandparents, Til!”

Tilja laughed, but watching the pair ahead of them for a minute or two, she could tell he was right.

A day and a half north of Goloroth they came to Ramram, the small city lying along the other side of the river, with its immense fortress built long ago to defend the Empire against raiders from the south who had never come. The famous fair on the bridge was in full swing.

“Let’s just have a look,” said Meena.

“There’s nothing we need,” said Alnor.

“Who said anything about need?” said Meena. “When d’you think I’m going to get another chance to come to Ramram? With money to spend? Right, Tilja?”

(Alnor had put himself in charge of Faheel’s purse, and taken a gold coin out of it each day since they had landed. When Tilja touched one of these it remained a gold coin, so they knew that the magic was not in it, but in the purse.)

Ramram, thought Tilja. Calico . . .

“I’ll never hear the last of it if I don’t bring something home for Anja,” she said.

Meena frowned, puzzled for a moment, until she went into her other memory-room and found the name.

“Nor you won’t,” she said. “Come on, Alnor. I’ll buy you a belt buckle or something.”

“We’ll be quicker if we go two and two,” said Alnor when they stood at the entrance to the bridge. He squinted for a moment at the sun. “We’ll meet back here when the shadow of that column reaches the drinking trough. Don’t lose sight of each other.”

Tilja smelled the familiar reek of sun-dried dung before she saw the horse fair, lying along the near bank of the river, invisible from the road, but she didn’t drag Tahl off at once to the horse lines. What she’d said about Anja was true, and this was the best chance she’d get to find something for her. The bridge was as busy and crowded as the streets of Talagh, but felt very different. Though hugely larger and richer than the stalls at a Gathering in the Valley, it had the same kind of feel, friendly and businesslike. Tahl bought himself a hunting knife and Tilja found a mother-of-pearl hair comb for Anja and a plainer, tortoiseshell one for Ma. Satisfied, she started back.

“We don’t have to go yet,” said Tahl. “There’s lots more . . .”

“I want to go and look for Calico. The man said he was coming here.”

“Why on earth? You could get a much better—”

“Calico belongs at Woodbourne. Like your dog you told me about at Northbeck. She was useless, but you kept her there till she died.”

“Oh, all right.”

“Course I’ve still got her,” said the horse dealer. “I’m a man of my word, I am. Besides, d’you think anyone would have bought her off me? You sure it’s her you want? I’ve a sweet little pony, now, five years if he’s a day. Purebred Harst Mountain, and they’re tough as they come, but good tempered with it. Had a kick from one of the others a couple of days back, so he’s going a bit lame in his off fore—”

“Spavined, you mean,” said Tahl, unable to resist a haggle.

“Shut up,” said Tilja. “Look, I’m sure he’s lovely, but I just want Calico back. I’ll pay you the full seven days, if you like.”

“Well, if you’re sure, though I reckoned I’d be giving her away at the end. She’s along this way. . . . And while you’re here, young lady, there’s something I may as well ask you. You were trying to get into Goloroth that night, right? I’d’ve said you couldn’t’ve made it, but seeing you’re here . . . well, did you?”

Tilja nodded. The man lowered his voice.

“There was something happened inside the city that night, big enough to make ’em close the gates all next day. Some of the racket you could’ve heard back here in Ramram. And now there’s all this loose magic blowing around. Devil of a time I had of it, bringing my beasts up north, though every one of them’s got an amulet in its mane. And now you’ve got into the city and out again. . . . So what’s up, supposing you know?”

Tilja hesitated. To tell anyone anything about what they’d done might be dangerous. To refuse to tell might be just as bad. She glanced at Tahl.

“Yes,” he said easily. “We sneaked in with the slave children. We found our grandparents in one of the big barns. Somebody’d brought something magical in—”

“But it’s warded to hell, the city!”

“Yes, I know. But they managed it somehow. And a couple of magicians came to get it for themselves and fought over it and there was an explosion and lots of screaming and running about, so we managed to get out. That’s all I know. I’ve no idea what it was all about. You haven’t heard anything else, have you? Nothing from Talagh, for instance? I’d have thought they’d send somebody down to sort things out.”

“If they did, it’s not the sort of stuff folk like us get to hear about. Nor anything else. Better off that way, like as not.”

He shrugged and spread his hands, accepting the appalling whims of the Empire.

“What about Calico?” said Tilja.

“Well, young lady, seeing you’re set on it, we’ll call it six days and leave it at that. Here she is, then. Looks pleased to see you, too.”

“That’ll make a change,” said Tilja, but for a moment it seemed almost true. As the dealer led her out of the line Calico sidled up to Tilja like any normal horse greeting its owner, but as soon as Tilja reached to pat her she flattened her ears and turned away. Forgiveness was no part of her scheme of things.

Meena laughed when she saw Calico, but Alnor was furious. He couldn’t complain of the waste of money, when a single gold coin from Faheel’s purse would have bought them at least two decent horses. And Calico could carry their packs, and Tilja would deal with her moods. But in his own mind he was in command, and buying Calico back was something he hadn’t had a say in. So both he and Calico sulked all afternoon.

Next morning Tilja was walking with Tahl when he said, “This fellow who’s supposed to find us somewhere, and make it snow properly in the Valley again and so on—did Faheel say anything else to you about that?”

Tilja shook her head. She’d been expecting the question and had decided that was the best she could do—not quite lying because she might have meant only that she couldn’t answer, which was true.

Tahl looked at her with his bright-eyed stare, making her very uncomfortable. He started to say something, changed his mind and began again.

“It sounded as if he’d forgotten about it, but he’d thought of everything else. Tiny things. That purse . . . and he must have asked you why we’d all come to his island in the first place. Didn’t he?”

“Well, yes, but . . . I told him we’d come from the Valley, because he wanted to know about Axtrig, but then I said he’d better wait for Meena and Alnor to wake up, because they were the ones who wanted to talk to him.”

“You mean he knew what Meena wanted before she told him, but he’d just forgotten about it? He didn’t forget anything else, though. He remembered about the way-leaves, for instance.”

“He was very tired by the end.”

Again the look of doubt.

“I suppose so,” Tahl said discontentedly. Tilja walked on with shame in her heart and a chill in the pit of her stomach—shame for her half-truths told to someone who trusted her, and the chill of dread about what else Tahl’s bright and restless intelligence might tease out. Oh, she thought, let the Ropemaker come and claim the ring soon, soon, so that this can be over!