The Ropemaker

15

The Road North

It was curious how slowly the news seeped through of what had happened at Talagh. The Emperor was dead and the power of the Watchers broken, but the body of that strange great beast, the Empire, still twitched with a kind of life, like a headless chicken running round the yard at Woodbourne. In the evenings at the way stations Tilja heard people talking in anxious voices about the amount of loose magic gusting around, and complaining in guarded tones about the Watchers falling down on their job. It was clear that something had gone wrong with the system that had always ruled their lives, but no one knew what. It was nine days before any other signs came through.

Then there was a flurry of grander travelers on the road, horsemen at a rapid canter carrying the message staff of their Landholder with a bell at its top clanging to clear a path; and once or twice the Landholder himself with only half a dozen outriders for retinue because he too was in a hurry. All this could only mean that something important was happening high in the upper reaches of the Empire.

The news, when it seeped down to the lowest levels, where those who made the journey to Goloroth and back had their existence, was still only rumors. Some said the Watchers had killed the Emperor and were fighting among themselves, others that he had dismissed them and they were revolting against him, others yet that one of his regiments had mutinied and killed him—a regiment of women, according to one version.

“Women soldiers!” Tilja heard a man saying. “It’ll be a long time before anyone tries that again!”

“Let’s hope he’s right,” said Tahl later. “There’s going to be a new Emperor one day. We don’t want him getting the same idea.”

Despite these upheavals, for a while nothing much seemed to change for the ordinary travelers. The same laws ruled their lives that had always ruled them. The same bribes had to be paid. And so far Tilja and the others had had no trouble. They had no fees to pay, they were just children going north from Goloroth, like tens of thousands of children before them. Meena was the first to notice the oddity.

The Grand Trunk Road was as busy as ever, with travelers of all kinds moving at different speeds. With their strong young legs and their longing to be home the four of them went faster than most, and kept going later, so they often passed others who had already settled down by the road to rest out the worst of the heat. Tahl, typically, insisted on greeting these as they went by, though the conversation seldom got further than an agreement that it was hot.

They were walking along, four abreast for once, when another such group came in sight, two women and a man. One of the women had peeled an orange and was passing the segments to the other two, who were gazing blankly at the road.

“Just keep an eye on their faces when Tahl says hello to them,” Meena whispered. “Don’t stare. You don’t want them to notice.”

“Hello,” said Tahl as they came up. “Hot, isn’t it?”

The man started slightly. The woman with the orange looked up. The other one’s eyes widened and her mouth half opened. The expressions lasted only a moment, then the women smiled emptily and the man said, “You can say that again,” and reached for another segment of orange.

“See,” said Meena, as soon as they were out of earshot. “It’s like they’d never seen us coming. There we were, out in the middle of the road, no one else in sight, and they hadn’t so much as noticed us till Tahl said something to them. You remember the story, how Dirna and Reyel never had any trouble after they’d talked to Asarta and she’d sent them off to look for Faheel, because she’d worked it so that people didn’t seem to notice they were there? Old Faheel’s done the same for us now.”

“He can’t have done it for Til,” said Tahl. “Magic just runs off her.”

“Her being with us does it, maybe,” said Meena. “It mightn’t work supposing you were alone, though, Til. . . . You may as well be a bit careful about that.”

She was right, as they found out a few days later. By now they had seen definite signs of the system’s breaking down. At one way station the women who were doling out the free meals for those going the Common Way insisted on being paid. They said they needed the money, because their official allowance hadn’t come through. At another somebody caught one of the guards stealing from his baggage, and when he complained to the warden he was laughed at. And next day, where the road crossed a tributary of the Great River, there had been armed men on the bridge demanding a toll from all travelers, but by the time Tilja and the others reached the place enough furious people had gathered to overpower them and throw them into the river.

It was almost dark by the time they reached their way station that evening. As usual Tilja went and bought fodder for Calico while the other three fetched supper from the food stalls. She was on her way back when she sensed that someone was following her and looked round.

“Hold it right there,” said a man’s voice.

She dropped the bag of fodder and started to run but he grabbed her by the shoulder. Her shout was stifled by a gritty hand.

“You got some money,” he growled. “Don’t try and pretend not. Just seen you buying stuff. Get it out and drop it on the ground and you’ll not get hurt.”

She tried to jerk herself free. His other hand grabbed her wrist and wrenched it up behind her back, twisting to cause more pain, and again as she bit at his palm.

“Let go,” said Alnor’s voice.

“You keep out of this, sonny.”

“Let go.”

“If that’s how you want it . . .”

She was flung violently aside, and fell. As she picked herself up she saw the man, with Alnor facing him and Tahl and Meena a little behind, all silhouetted against the line of lights on the far side of the courtyard. The man was squat, with a bulging belly. He didn’t look like a fighter, but he had a knife in his hand. Alnor walked toward him, slightly up on his toes, like a dancer.

The man gestured with the knife to stop him. Alnor moved as if meaning to dodge the thrust but instantly twisted the other way, swinging his body to the left while his right leg slashed up and caught the man cleanly on the wrist.

The man shouted with pain and let go of the knife. It looped upward and fell. Almost before it hit the ground Alnor had twisted again, on his right foot this time, with his left foot scything round to strike the man in the back of the knee, toppling him to the ground, where he lay groaning. Alnor turned away.

“Are you all right?” he asked Tilja. “Did he hurt you?”

“My shoulder’s sore,” she said shakily. “I . . . I think I’m all right. Thank you. . . . I had some fodder.”

“I’ve got it,” said Tahl. He sounded much more excited than Alnor, who had now turned back to the man.

“Keep away,” he said, prodding him in the neck with his toe. “That’s what I’ll break next time.”

“Meena noticed him following you,” explained Tahl as they went back together.

“Can you do that?”

“Kick-fight? My da died before he could teach me. And by then Alnor . . .”

“Oh yes. You told me at the Gathering.”

“Well, now’s your chance,” said Meena. “Alnor, why don’t you teach him kick-fighting? He ought to know how. And seeing how things are going, it might come in handy if he could do it too.”

Alnor frowned. His face went blank for a moment, just as Meena’s did whenever she went into her other memory-room, something he did very seldom, as if hating to be reminded of the helplessness his blindness had cursed him with. He nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll do that from now on. And from now on, Tilja, you’d better keep close to us all the time.”

Soon they were moving through an Empire in turmoil. Half the way stations were deserted, and those that functioned demanded triple or quadruple fees. Robbers and looters were everywhere.

Nor were those the only dangers. Now that the Watchers were gone, magicians who had been practicing in secret began to do so openly, and not all of these were benign. At one way station the story came of a well-armed convoy that had been traveling without a hired magician to protect it. Two great scaly creatures had attacked it and had wantonly slaughtered, but not eaten, man, woman and child, gurgling with pleasure as they did so.

For a while the four from the Valley joined one of the armed convoys that were now operating on the Grand Trunk Road. It moved more slowly than they had been doing on their own, but the road had become a dangerous place, despite Tilja’s powers and the near invisibility that Faheel had given them. They saw one or two weird beasts in the distance; and at two rest camps they found, hanging from improvised gallows near the entrance, the bodies of thieves who had been caught sneaking around in the dark; and the hired magician traveling with the convoy claimed to have earned his wage twice over, warding off unseen enemies.

The convoy tended to stop for the night at least one way station sooner than the four might have done on their own, giving the boys a chance to get on with the kick-fighting lessons before they were tired with travel. It was typical of Tahl that he didn’t mind being watched making a fool of himself, as a beginner; but, surprisingly, Alnor didn’t try to make him look one. Perhaps, Tilja thought, kick-fighting was too serious for that. Anyway, the lessons went far more easily than she’d hoped.

“Notice how much better they’re getting on together now?” said Meena one evening while she and Tilja were sitting watching a practice bout. “Funny how they weren’t making out as just friends, the way you and I are. And it wasn’t all Alnor’s fault, either. But teacher and pupil, that’s something they’re comfortable with.

“And pretty to look at, isn’t it, now Tahl’s getting the hang of it? Alnor, specially, of course. I daresay that’s what won him his championships, it wasn’t just winning the fights, it was how he did it. Look at him now, just standing ready for Tahl to have a go at him, graceful as a cat.”

“No wonder you’re keen on him,” said Tilja.

It was the first time she’d brought the subject up, but Meena laughed, without even a trace of a blush. Then she sighed.

“It’s not going to last, you know, Til,” she said. “D’you blame us for making the most of it while we’ve got it?”

“Of course not. I think it’s lovely for you.”

“We’ve got to get home, mind. In time for the winter, latest. But I shan’t say no to taking a few days longer over it than we’d’ve done traveling on our own.”

Meena’s wish was not to be granted. Only a few nights later the convoy was given horrible reason to doubt the boasted powers of its hired magician. They had halted at a way station where the warden was a jolly little man who, most unusually, came fussing around in the dusk chatting to his customers and asking whether they had all they wanted. Like everyone else he might have passed the four from the Valley unnoticed, if Tahl hadn’t spoken to him. Then he picked up that Meena and Alnor had something going on between them, and teased them about it. Meena gave as good as she got, but Alnor was still simmering with rage when they lay down to sleep.

Tilja woke in the middle of the night, already knowing what had woken her, the same quiet tension that she had felt when Silena had brought her beast to that other way station on the journey south, looking for Axtrig. Again she didn’t at once sit up, but lay where she was, listening to the unnatural silence, not a snore, not a stir, not even a breath from any of the hundred or so sleepers. She knew that something powerful had come into the courtyard, since neither the wards around the way station nor the convoy’s magician had been effective against it.

Carefully she raised her head. There was no moon, but the stars were bright overhead, and a few dim lamps ringed the courtyard. At first she could see and hear nothing, but then, a little way off, a dark hummock rose, straightened and became the shape of a man. He, or it, moved closer. Tilja eased her arm free of her rug, ready to stretch out and touch the thing as it passed— better, she guessed, to take it by surprise than rise and confront it—but it stopped just before it reached her, and turned away. It moved its arms and a pale glow came out of its spread hands, showing Meena asleep, with her rug pulled half over her face. With the extra light Tilja could see that the thing was a man. Though his back was toward her she recognized him from his shape. It was the warden of the way station. He knelt, twitched the rug aside and bent over Meena.

Tilja jerked up, flung herself forward and grabbed at his ankle. But he had heard her coming. Quick as a cur in a dogfight he twisted round, hissing. His face was black, a beast face, blunt snouted and scaly, with rubbery lips and needle-like fangs. His mouth dripped blood. The light went out. His hand grasped her by the hair and dragged her toward him. She reached up and caught him by the wrist.

She was ready for the sudden numbness, and the rush of energy, into her and away. It was different from the time when she had laid her hands on Dorn’s bare back in the dormitory at Goloroth. That had been a whole complex tangle of powers surging through her. This was a single blast, strong but simple, there for an instant, and gone.

The hissing stopped and the beast-man stood rigid, but only for a moment or two before he snarled in purely human fury and started to shake her to and fro by her hair. She screamed with the pain of it, and then the other three woke and together they grappled him to the ground.

The rest of the courtyard was awake by the time she had staggered to her feet. The guards lit torches at their brazier. By their light the travelers caught five more of the creatures, a woman and four children. The warden had changed back into his human shape at Tilja’s touch, but these others had beast faces. They wailed like pigs as they were hunted and caught, and wept black tears. When the guards led them away and ran them through with their swords they died, or seemed to.

The so-called magician was dead, his throat slit. Four girls and a boy, all about Meena’s age or younger, were dead too. All their flesh was gone from their bodies. Folds of wrinkled skin wrapped their bare bones.

So the convoy was forced to travel on unprotected as far as the next roadside fair, where the captain hired a plump, homely little woman and explained to the travelers that she was the only magician to be had, and was demanding twice the fee he had paid to the man they had lost. If they wanted her protection, there would therefore be a surcharge.

A man stood up and asked for proof of her powers. She stared at him for a moment and a violent gust of wind came out of nowhere, twisted round him and dragged him into the air, high as a tall tree, and there dropped him, leaving the air still. The man fell headlong, yelling. Just before he reached the ground invisible hands seemed to catch him and set him on his feet. He came tottering back to the gathering and agreed to pay the extra fee.

That evening at the way station Tilja and Tahl went to buy roasted honey sticks and were strolling back to their booth— slowly, to allow the other two a little more time alone together— when the magician appeared in front of them. She gazed silently at Tilja and then laid her hand briefly on Tilja’s bare arm. For that moment, as Tilja felt the numbness flicker and fade, the woman changed, became taller, slimmer, white-skinned, ageless, with the stone look so strong that she might have been born with it. Then she was the unimpressive little housewife again.

“Yes,” she said, “my friend Zara, Lord Kzuva’s magician, spoke of you. So you have done what you set out to do, it seems.”

“How did you know?”

“I will trade information.”

“All right.”

“I did not know, but guessed. Before you came, there was nothing in the Empire that could have destroyed the Watchers. But the power you loosed on the walls of Talagh was of a different order. I was in the city that night. All my wards were shattered by the strength of it, though I could tell that it was operating far from its source. That source, I think, could have done it. Yes?”

Tilja hesitated. What if this woman asked about the ring?

“Yes . . . I suppose so,” she said.

“And the source was a man? A woman? Something else?”

“A man,” said Tilja firmly, but very aware of the something else hidden beneath her blouse.

“And where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He was dying. He told us to put him on a raft so that he could go the common way. He’d been waiting to destroy the Watchers before he went. It was up to him, he said, because he’d set them up in the first place.”

“That man,” said the magician meditatively, and fell silent.

“Is that why there’s so much crazy magic loose?” asked Tahl. “Like the warden’s family at the way station last night?”

She nodded.

“Things were not always as you have seen them,” she said. “We are taught that long ago, before there were Emperors, there was a balance. Magic came into the world, and those who knew how could use it, and the rest flowed away south. But as the Emperors established their power they hired magicians to take control of the magic. No one foresaw that one result of their work would be that they gathered all the magic they could into themselves, so that now less of it flowed out than came in. The difference was only slight, but the balance was lost. Gradually, over the generations the pressure has increased.

“And, of course, the magicians became ever more powerful, but there was always some man or woman with powers different from and greater than those of any of theirs, who could keep them in check. When each of these grew old they passed the task on to a successor, whom they had themselves chosen. Last but one of these was a woman called Asarta, who in her turn chose a man called Faheel—the selfsame man, I imagine, whom you helped onto a raft and launched upon the common way to die.”

She spoke the name calmly, without any hesitation, and looked enquiringly at Tilja. Tilja nodded. The magician stood, pondering.

“So, as you say, he finished what he had begun,” she said at last. “He destroyed the Watchers he himself had set up.”

“I thought you said it was the Emperors who did that,” said Tahl, who of course by now had taken over the questioning.

“They had hired the magicians in the first place, but it was Faheel who set them up as Watchers, as much to control and counter each other as to control the magic. Naturally he saw to it that the Emperors should think it was their own doing. But in the end the cure proved worse than the disease.”

“So what happens now?” said Tahl.

“Now things are very dangerous. The Emperor left no heir, and the Landholders are struggling for the Opal Throne. My own was fool enough to think he could make a move. His house is destroyed, his servants scattered. The Lord Kzuva was wiser. He retired to his own estates, and my friend Zara went with him, while I am forced to hire my talents along the road. Worse yet, there is an unknown force in the land, something that one by one is seeking out and destroying those Watchers who escaped from Talagh. Five times I have sensed the dissolution of a Watcher’s powers. I do not know how many are left. I had imagined this must be the work of whoever had broken the towers at Talagh, completing his task, but you say he is gone.”

“Yes, I’m sure it wasn’t him,” said Tilja, barely managing to keep her voice steady, knowing what that force must be. She was remembering things that Faheel had said. He came for the ring. . . . He will try to come again. . . . You yourself might withstand him— I do not know. . . . The whole of the next age is in the balance. She was remembering a fist the color of moonlight rising above a parapet and grasping great eddies of raw force as if they had been cobwebs dangling from a beam in a barn. She needed a name for the enemy, a way of thinking about him. Moonfist. Yes, that would do.

The magician was staring at her. She was saying something.

“. . . why Faheel never chose his successor . . . Do not tell me, child, that you are his chosen successor.”

“Oh, no! Of course not . . . but . . . I think it may be all right.” Again, for an even longer while, the magician stood deep in thought.

“You do well to be careful,” she said. “Well, I have a message for you to pass on, perhaps. If there is work to be done, I am willing to help. So, now, I wish you well.”

She smiled an unmeaning, purse-lipped housewife’s smile, nodded and turned away. She’s frightened too, Tilja thought. She isn’t just hiring her magic along the road to earn a living. She’s hiding from Moonfist.

“Chosen successor?” murmured Tahl, as soon as the magician was out of earshot.

Tilja shook her head unhappily. She could almost hear the fizz of Tahl’s brain as he tried to piece what the magician had told them into what they already knew.

“I want to get home,” she said, desperate to distract him. “If things are as dangerous as she says . . . we aren’t going fast enough.”

The next day was miserable for Tilja. In the middle of the night a hideous thought had come to her. She had woken with her own words buzzing in her mind, like a bee she had once seen buzzing against one of Aunt Grayne’s glass windows, trying to find its way through. We aren’t going fast enough. She had spoken the words almost at random, but knew in her heart they were true. And now, waking, she knew why.

Somewhere along the road, Faheel had said, the Ropemaker would be waiting for them. But now Tilja had learned that Moonfist was systematically seeking out and destroying other magicians. He already knew of the Ropemaker’s existence—he had seen him change himself into a giant lion in the palace courtyard. He would be looking for him, surely. So every day she and the others spent on the journey put the Ropemaker in greater danger. The sooner they reached the place where he was waiting for them, the sooner she gave him the ring, the better.

She spent the rest of the night wondering how she could persuade the others of the need to hurry. All she could think of to tell them was that she’d had bad dreams about what was happening in the Valley.

They didn’t agree.

That wasn’t enough. Alnor in particular was adamant.

“Not worth the risk,” he said. “The road gets more dangerous every day. We’ve had the luck to pick up a good convoy. The guards are honest, and this new magician knows her business. We’ll be home before winter with time to spare, and that’s all that matters. There’s nothing I can do before the first snow falls, and Meena won’t be sowing her barley until next spring. I’m sorry, Til. You’ll need to produce a stronger reason than just a vague feeling.”

“He’s right, Til,” said Meena. “So let’s enjoy the journey while we can, eh?”

She didn’t glance at Alnor as she spoke, but there were layers of meaning in her smile. She was quite open about her love for him, and her determination to make the most of it for the few weeks she had left to her in this young body. Even Alnor had mostly given up trying to pretend he didn’t feel the same.

And Tahl was relishing the journey for different reasons. He liked traveling in company, making friends, giving a helping hand here and there, asking questions all the time, so easily and unashamedly that people told him the answers, laughing as they did so. If a newcomer joined the convoy one morning, by nightfall he’d know all about them. At one point he even persuaded a glassblower to set up his kiln and show him how it was done, and thus became the proud owner of a small misshapen flask that he had blown himself.

And against these powerful arguments all Tilja had to offer was some dreams she hadn’t really dreamed, and a real, strong reason that she wasn’t allowed to tell them. She tried several times during the day’s march. Soon Alnor refused to listen, and in the end Meena lost her temper, and in a brief flare of the old anger that reduced Tilja to tears told her she was as tiresome as Calico and it was time to stop being a stupid baby wanting its own way and blubbering because she couldn’t have it.

From then on Tilja walked in silent unhappiness, vainly trying to think of some new reason the others might listen to. Tahl walked beside her, for once not chatting but keeping her company, seeming to understand that it was no use trying to cheer her up. In the end he broke the silence.

“You know something you can’t tell us, don’t you, Til?”

She shook her head, not looking at him, but knowing the intelligent, questioning glance that would have gone with the words.

“And there’s a good reason, of course,” he said, just as though she’d told him he was right. “Difficult for you.”

She couldn’t pretend any longer.

“Try not to think about it,” she muttered.

He laughed, and she knew why, and managed to laugh with him. Tahl, of all people, not thinking about something that was puzzling him.

“All right,” he said. “I’ve thought of something else just worth trying.”

The convoy halted well before nightfall and settled into a busy way station. It was still too soon for supper when the boys had finished their kick-fighting.

“Why don’t we go and see if the river’s got anything to tell us?” said Tahl. “There’s just a chance we might pick something up from the Valley, and set Til’s mind at rest.”

“With a hundred other rivers talking away?” said Alnor.

“Oh, go on,” said Meena. “You’re dying to, really. It’s ages since you had a good chat with one of your wet friends.”

Alnor grunted agreement and rose to his feet. They walked down to the river, a good half mile wide at this point, a great smooth expanse of water moving southward under the darkening sky. The first stars were out. One or two lights glimmered along the further shore. A little below the way station a sandspit ran out from the bank.

“That’ll do,” said Alnor. “You two wait here.”

So the two girls settled down at the edge of the water and watched the boys moving out along the sandspit and wading into the shallows where it ended until they were almost waist deep and needing to steady themselves against the press of the current. It was dusk, with the Herald rising bright in the east, and a few other stars faintly showing. The boys stood awhile with bowed heads, motionless dark shapes against the moving flood, then turned and came slowly back along the sandspit and up the bank, deep in serious talk.

“Well,” said Meena. “How are things back home, then?”

“The voice of our river was there indeed,” said Alnor, speaking as he’d used to when he’d been an old man. “It was loud, because the glacier is melting fast, and our river is in spate. There has been fighting beside it. It has carried the bodies of slain men.”

“That means the pass is open,” said Tahl.

The four of them stood in silence. The boys’ drenched clothes dripped steadily onto the ground.