The Ropemaker

16

Lord Kzuva’s Tower

From then on they traveled alone, making the best speed they could, but limited always by Calico’s needs and their own endurance. Nobody noticed them unless they chose to be noticed, though the further north they traveled the busier the great highway became. Every scrap of possible forage by the roadside was already grazed bare, but there were plenty of well-stocked forage stalls along the way, where they could buy enough for Calico to eat while they took their midday rest. Such was their apparent invisibility that they sometimes wondered whether they could simply have taken what they wanted, unobserved.

But they weren’t certain how far Faheel’s magic protected them from the other magical powers that were now loose in the Empire, especially at night, so for safety they continued to sleep at well-warded way stations, slipping wearily in in the dusk, and away again as the sun rose, unquestioned by anyone.

Opposite Talagh they left the river and turned northwest. Resting on the first foothills they looked back over the plain. There lay the great city, the wounded heart of the Empire. Even at such a distance they could see how it was changed, with the spindling towers from which the Watchers had controlled the great tide of magic now mere stubs, or fallen completely.

Tilja and the others had joined a group of travelers, resting under some shade trees. As they gazed out at this symbol of the enormous change, they were talking in hushed and apprehensive voices about what else might now happen, and swapping stories of the dangers and marvels they had seen.

As it turned out, little of that kind awaited the four on the road to the Pirrim Hills. Nor did the Ropemaker, though this was where Tilja had been expecting at last to meet him. He will choose a place you must pass, Faheel had said, and be waiting for you there. Not the Grand Trunk Road—that was far too thronged— but now that they had turned off toward home, and there were fewer people on the road . . . Indeed, the way stations became less and less busy as travelers reached the turnings to their own destinations. Still the Ropemaker was not among them.

The way station beside the last town before the hills was completely deserted, apart from one lame old man and the chickens he had started to rear in the empty booths.

“No point your going on,” he told Meena.

“You’re telling me there are robbers in the hills?” she asked.

“Nah. They’ll have gone south. Richer pickings for them there. But the Lord Kzuva—he’s Landholder up the other side of the hills—he’s shut off the whole of the North West Plain. He’s not letting anyone in, barring those as belong there or as got business with him. Doesn’t want a lot of strangers crowding in because they’ve heard things are quieter there.”

“We’re on our way back from Goloroth,” said Meena. “We live there.”

“You’ll be all right then,” said the old man. “With Lord Kzuva, anyway . . .”

He hesitated and went on in a lower voice.

“Better warn you. My wife’s sister—she’s got . . . gifts. She says there’s some weird stuff moved into Pirrim Forest these last few weeks.”

Tilja slept and woke, slept and woke, slept and woke. Each time she opened her eyes she expected to see the gangling figure with the enormous headdress looming above her, outlined against the stars. It didn’t happen. In the Pirrim Hills, where we first met, she told herself. There, at last, surely.

In view of the old man’s warning they did a short stage next day rather than face the pine forest in the dark, and camped at the deserted way station immediately below the hills, taking turns to keep watch while the other three slept close together, within easy reach of Tilja. Next morning they started at dawn, for three long hours toiled up the steeply winding road, and around midmorning reached the pass. As soon as they were in among the pines Calico shied and bolted.

Tilja wasn’t ready. For the last few days Calico had been unusually biddable. In her stupid horse mind she might even have realized that at last they were on their way home. Now, instantly, she was crazed, wrenching her lead rope from Tilja’s grasp, squealing and rearing like a stallion. She whirled round. Her hindquarters slammed into Tilja, stunning her briefly as she grabbed at Alnor for support.

Tilja came to with something pressing on her chest—Alnor’s arm clasping her tight against his body. Meena and Tahl were holding her hands. Calico, at full gallop, was disappearing round the corner ahead. She realized that the other three were standing very still and all breathing in slow, gulping lungfuls. She could feel the thud of Alnor’s heart against her shoulder blade.

“Wh-what happened?” she stammered.

“Don’t let go!” Meena gasped. “Can’t move unless you’re holding us! The forest’s come alive!”

Another terrified squeal rang out, and again, and again. Awkwardly, holding hands, the four of them stumbled forward and round the corner. Calico was lying on her side in the middle of the path, while a sort of gray net that seemed to be growing out of the ground was wrapping itself around her in billowing folds.

“I need that hand!” Tilja yelled. “Hold somewhere else, Tahl!”

With the other three trailing she flung herself forward and grabbed at the gray stuff. It stopped growing, but didn’t otherwise change or loose its hold on Calico. There was a slow, strange pulse in the numbness of her arm, a sense of some vague, large thing resisting her power. She concentrated, forced her willed attention onto it. Now, instead of rushing on through her and away, the thing withdrew. The net shriveled in her grasp, became powder and fell away. Calico started to kick herself to her feet, still squealing, but unbalanced as Tilja grabbed her by the bridle, forced her head down and sat on it, then laid her free hand against her neck and worked her fingers down against the skin. Shuddering, Calico quietened, and as soon as Tilja let her got shakily to her feet. A heavy, earthy reek filled the air.

“What was that?” said Tahl.

“Bull’s-ears, by the smell of it,” said Meena.

This was a poisonous toadstool that grew out of rotting stumps in the forest near Woodbourne. All summer these stumps would become covered in a fine gray mesh, dewy with little droplets that stank of moist mold. Then, later, as all the leaves changed color, brown and white fungi would emerge, looking exactly like the ears of cattle.

“It’s not just the bull’s-ears,” said Meena in a low voice. “It’s the whole dratted forest—it’s come alive. I can feel it. Watching us, somehow. It wasn’t like this when we were going the other way.”

“We must be through here by nightfall,” said Alnor. “Suppose Tilja rides, with Meena behind. Then Tahl and I can walk either side of her with our hands on her ankles. It’s either that or go back.”

“We’ve got to give it a go,” said Meena. “Should be all right if we all hang on to Til.”

At first this seemed to work well enough. Calico wanted nothing more than to be out of the forest, and seemed to have realized that she was safe nowhere except under Tilja’s protection, so she plodded steadily on.

But Tilja was deeply troubled. There had been something wrong about what had happened when she had shriveled the fungus in which Calico was trapped. She felt it shouldn’t have worked, because the magic of the forest was surely natural magic, against which she had no power. And at first the fungus indeed had seemed to resist her, in a way that not even Dorn had done. That was the forest magic, surely, holding her back. But then, when she had concentrated, the fungus had shriveled. So, somehow, the fungus must have been made magic. She didn’t understand it at all.

And now, after a while, she realized that something like that was happening again. The silence of the forest was more than an absence of sound. It was a thing in its own right, dense and oppressive. Tilja saw Tahl holding his hand to his mouth, rather than break it with a cough. A dense fog was closing down. Tilja could feel the thing that caused the silence all around them, filling the long valley up to the invisible tree lines on either side. It was far more than just a huge number of trees. It was the living forest, a great, strange power. A natural magic.

Still, somehow, and with increasing effort, she seemed to be holding it back. No. It wasn’t the forest itself that she was holding, but something else, some kind of made magic that was using the power of the forest to try to crush her. It was the same thing that had controlled the fungus that had almost trapped Calico. Again she concentrated, and again the thing seemed to yield.

But this time there had been nothing for her to lay her hand against and shrivel, and after a brief respite the pressure returned, closing in on her like a gradually tightening fist. The others were feeling it too. Alnor and Tahl, who had at first walked easily beside her, now had their shoulders pressed against Calico’s flanks, and the fingers that grasped Tilja’s ankles felt like iron shackles. Meena had her arms around her, hugging her so close that it was hard to breathe. Calico had shortened her stride and was moving as if she were leaning against a horse collar, with a full load behind her.

Faheel, Tilja thought dimly, had known powers like this. He had made them his friends. She remembered waiting below through a timeless afternoon while those powers had gathered to say farewell to him, calling to him as they had come. Perhaps this forest had been one of them.

With an effort she straightened her back and called aloud.

“Faheel sent us. He is our friend. We are doing his work.”

The dead silence absorbed her voice. Nothing happened. The pressure grew and grew.

“This won’t do,” Meena croaked in her ear. “I’ll try and tell ’em. Maybe they’ll listen to me. They’re trees, aren’t they?”

She drew a deep, gasping breath and, faintly, creakingly, started to sing.

The song was at first wordless, no more than a humming in the throat, slow and wavering, but after a little while Meena began to repeat the name of Faheel, drawing it out into a dozen floating notes.

Her voice grew stronger. Little by little the pressure began to ease. Steadily Tilja concentrated her will against the thing, whatever it was, that she had felt using the forest’s power. There was a sudden moment of change, of breakthrough, a rush of release. Tahl moved away from Calico’s side and looked around, interested. Alnor let go of Tilja’s hand and took Meena’s. The fog became palely golden and a little while later they were walking along a track with the sun already westering ahead of them so that it lit the tree trunks on their right almost as far as the ground. Meena stopped singing.

“Done it!” she said, triumphantly. “It wasn’t the forest’s fault, mind you—there’s no real malice in trees. Something was making it act that way, but it didn’t really like it. But that’s better, isn’t it?”

The silence was silence still, but they weren’t afraid any longer to speak. They knew that the forest had fully withdrawn its menace when Calico stopped in her tracks to sample a patch of grass growing beside the road.

The sun was full in their faces by the time they came to the end of the pass. Only on the long descent to Songisu did it cross Tilja’s mind that the Ropemaker, after all, hadn’t been waiting for them in the hills. She felt strangely unworried about this. Of course there was still time. Though she hadn’t known it, he had been with them on their way south, in the shape of one animal or another, all the way across these northern plains, ever since they had landed from their raft. He would be waiting for them here.

The stars were out before they reached the way station at Songisu. To their surprise this was manned, and running, much as it had been on the outward journey.

There was a guard dozing at the entrance, wearing what Tilja recognized as Lord Kzuva’s livery. They might have slipped in unnoticed, as usual, if Tahl hadn’t spoken to him.

The guard looked up, blinking.

“Where you from, then?” he asked, yawning.

“We are on our way back from Goloroth,” said Alnor.

The guard frowned and sat up.

“Try another one,” he said. “Forest’s not letting anyone through no longer. Lord Kzuva, he got his magicians to see to it.”

“We told the forest what we were doing and it let us through,” said Alnor.

“Did it, now?” said the guard, impressed. “All right, then, make yourselves at home. You’re the only ones here. You’re lucky to find us still going—we’ll be closing right down any day now. Stalls are closed already, but we’ll find you a bite.”

He and his wife joined them as they ate and questioned them eagerly about what was happening in the Empire, so Tahl and Meena joyfully fed them their fill of wonders and horrors.

“Well, you’ll be finding things easier, now on,” he told them when they’d finished. “The magicians have got things pretty well under control up here. It’s only a couple of women, mind you, but they’re making a real go of it, I give them that.”

It was strange to be back in something like the old Empire. Strange to find it a relief, order instead of chaos, the grip of strong rule instead of the whirling free-for-all of loose magic and lawlessness. Soon, perhaps, they would have found this as oppressive as they had on the journey south, but now it simply meant that they could relax their guard and hurry on.

The traffic increased, though the way stations were less busy than they’d been on the outward journey. The wardens asked no more than the fee and the official bribe. The talk in the evenings was cheerful and ordinary.

But every mile they walked Tilja became more and more oppressed and withdrawn. A new and terrible fear had begun to obsess her. What if Moonfist had already found and destroyed the Ropemaker? Then, when at last she took out the hair tie and laid the ring beside it, only Moonfist would come. No, she told herself, I won’t believe it. There’s still time. He’ll be here, somewhere, waiting for us.

Just after they had left the way station on the third morning after the Pirrim Hills she stopped to watch a golden cockerel scratching in the dust by the road. It was almost the right color, but not gawky enough, she decided, and was about to move on when a man came up and spoke to her. He was wearing the Lord Kzuva’s livery, and she had half noticed him studying the groups of travelers as they came through the gateway.

He looked at her for a moment and nodded.

“Yes,” he said pompously. “You were with them. Five months back you came with”—he studied a clay tablet—“Qualif and his wife to the Lord Kzuva’s house in Talagh.”

Tilja recognized him now.

“That’s right,” she said. “You let us in.”

“Where is your friend?”

“They’re just there.”

The other three had seen what was happening. Tahl came hurrying back.

“Three?” said the man. “Yes, this boy, and the horse, but . . . there was a blind man and a lame old woman. You were taking them to Goloroth, I was told. Who are these others?”

“They’re our cousins,” said Tahl. “They went south before we did.”

“I’ve no instructions about them,” said the messenger.

“What do you want?” asked Tahl. “We’re in a hurry. We’ve got an urgent message for the Lady Lananeth.”

“She’s the one sent for you. She’s at the Lord Kzuva’s house. Your cousins can carry on home.”

“She’ll want to see them too,” said Tahl calmly. “They’re the ones with the message.”

The messenger hemmed and hawed, for the sake of it, but then, to Tilja’s relief, nodded.

The side road along which the messenger eventually led them dipped into a wooded valley with a sluggish river winding through. They came round a bend and there was the Lord Kzuva’s house. They stopped in their tracks and stared.

“My, that’s something!” Meena gasped.

Tilja thought it was the most beautiful building she had ever seen, not a house but a small palace, intricately varied and ornate, built on a series of massive bridges across the river. Workmen were busy adding another story to a structure of bamboo scaffolding that already rose well above the tallest pinnacle. Others at the center of the network seemed to be building some kind of column.

“What’s that for?” said Tahl.

“It is His Lordship’s pleasure,” said the messenger. “That is reason enough.”

He led them down to the entrance, where a groom came and took Calico. Then he showed them into a pleasant room with cushions strewn around and fruit and drinks on small tables for those waiting to see the Lord Kzuva or his officials. They could hear the river whispering below them, and feel its coolness through the stone floor.

There were a dozen other people already there, but they had hardly settled before the messenger came back and beckoned them out. This time he led them through several grand apartments and up a noble flight of stairs to another, larger room. Here a whole crowd of people were waiting to do their business. The messenger whispered to the official sitting by the doorway, nodded a haughty good-bye, and left.

Tilja assumed that this time they’d have to take their turn, but the official glanced at them, checked a list, glanced up frowning, shrugged bafflement, rose and led them not to the handsome doorway opposite the entrance but to a little door in the side wall, where he showed them into a much smaller room and told them to wait. They stood around uneasily until the hangings on the far wall stirred and two women slipped quietly in.

For a moment Tilja didn’t recognize either of them. Then she saw that the shorter one was Lananeth, and from that made the leap to seeing that the other was Zara, the Lord Kzuva’s magician. But the change in them both was shocking. There was that unnatural stillness and smoothness about them which all powerful magicians seemed to have—that look of a statue brought to life. Zara had already had something of it when they had met her in her warded room in Talagh, but then there had still been something human about her. Now even their smiles of greeting were stone smiles. The change was far greater in Lananeth.

“Our Lord Kzuva bids you welcome,” said Zara.

“How did you know we were coming?” asked Tahl.

“The forest told us. It has no language, but we could sense it struggling to master someone who was draining its power away, and guessed that could only be Tilja. But we were not expecting . . . you two are Alnor and Meena?”

“That’s us,” said Meena. “Fa . . . I think it’s all right to say his name now—anyway Lananeth knows it—Faheel gave us a bunch of grapes to eat to make us like this, so we could travel home with the other two and nobody’d ask any questions. And very nice too, it’s been.”

Exactly together, as if moving in time to unheard music, Zara and Lananeth stepped forward and each raised a hand and held it close beside Meena’s cheek, then Alnor’s, and after a moment or two, still exactly together, lowered their hands and backed away.

“We do not know how this is done,” said Zara. “You are in our warded room, where we are at our strongest, and still we cannot feel that you are not just what you seem.”

“We are, too,” said Meena. “Tilja touching us doesn’t make any difference, either.”

“He has changed time, not you. Somehow he has brought you out of your past and put you into this time.”

“Like Asarta undoing her years in the story, you mean?” said Tahl. “After she’d given the ring to Reyel and Dirna to take to Faheel?”

The magicians lost their smiles. Tilja gulped with sudden tension. She’d never imagined that the existence of the ring might slip into a conversation like this, and anyway she couldn’t have warned the others about it without telling them more than she dared. Tahl was staring at her, frowning. She shook her head in warning. He nodded and looked away.

“Ring?” said Zara softly. “Indeed, there was once a ring, but Asarta took it . . . or so it is said. Perhaps you should tell us the story. And your own.”

The four from the Valley looked at each other. Tilja could sense that the other three were feeling her unease by now. Alnor took charge.

“I think you’d better tell us something first,” he said aggressively. “How do we know you’re the people we met before? You’ve changed. You’re doing everything exactly together. Lananeth has not said a word. And you keep talking about ‘we’ as if Lananeth had not got a mind of her own. Is she in your power? Or are you both in someone else’s?”

The two smiles returned, but now Tilja was certain she didn’t believe them.

“We are one, joined,” said Zara. “It became necessary when His Lordship asked us to wake the forest. This was a very big undertaking, far too great for either one of us alone. Joined, it was just within our powers, but the effort itself changed us, wove us into each other’s mind, so now, though our bodies have separate existences, our thoughts are one thought.”

“And what’s happened to your feelings, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Meena. “Or haven’t you got any, anymore? All the thoughts you’ll ever think, they aren’t any good without feelings.”

Still with the same stony smiles the two women gently shook their heads. Tilja had been unhappily watching Lananeth while the magician spoke, looking for some hint of the strong and friendly human who had welcomed them to Ellion’s house. For a moment that Lananeth seemed to be there, a sad and desperate glimmer in the depths of the calm brown eyes. Yes, she was sure. Quite deliberately Tilja took a pace forward, put an arm round Lananeth’s shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.

The numbness exploded through her. Lananeth juddered and went rigid. Zara too, standing beside her. Zara became a sort of thick mist, which became taller and thinner, then solidified, and now where Zara had been, a man was standing, tall and skinny, dressed all in black. His eyes had no pupils. They were the color of ice. They blazed fury, but he too, for the moment, was locked rigid. Before he could break the spell Tilja reached out and took him by the wrist.

He was strong, far stronger than Dorn. Though she had taken him by surprise, he fought her with his fury, gathering it together, building it into a focused power.

She took Lananeth’s wrist in her other hand and with a huge effort closed her mind, shutting out the man, the fury, and searching into her own depths to find her central, secret lake among the mountains. Now the three of them stood on its shore. But its surface was torn by a mountain storm. Unheard winds shrieked between the snow peaks. The whole slope opposite was covered by the menacing dark shadow of the man, with Lananeth’s and Tilja’s shadows small beside it. The shadows were not thrown by any sun. There was none. Never again. No sun.

Still grasping both wrists, Tilja stepped into the raging water. There was no bottom. She sank, dragging the other two with her. Down they went, and down. The man melted into the water, dwindling away. She looked up and in the dim, watery light saw it was Zara and Lananeth she was dragging behind her. She could live in this water as long as she chose, but they would drown. She let go of their wrists, put an arm round each of them, and simply by choosing to do so rose to the surface, pulled them out and laid them on the grass. The storm was gone. Sunlight glittered off the glaciers, reflected in the barely rippled surface of the lake. Reluctantly she turned away and came back into the outer world.

She was in the warded room in Lord Kzuva’s castle, holding Lananeth and Zara by the wrists. A black-clad body lay at their feet. Tilja could see the back of the head, an old, bald cranium, yellow and blotched and shiny. When she let go of the two magicians they both crumpled to the floor.

All this in an instant. Meena, Tahl and Alnor were still picking themselves up after being buffeted aside, as if by an explosion in the middle of the room, when, from somewhere outside, came a tremendous series of crashes, dwindling away amid the yells of human voices.

Tilja barely heard them. Shuddering with exhaustion and relief, she too collapsed and buried her face in her hands, gasping for air.

When she straightened and looked around, Meena was kneeling beside her, holding her close, Alnor was crouching and feeling for Lananeth’s pulse, and Tahl was staring at the body on the floor. Outside the room the tone of the voices had changed from alarmed shouts to bellows of command.

“She’s alive, at least,” Alnor whispered. “Wait. She’s coming round.”

“Grab hold of Til in case she tries something,” said Tahl.

Huddling together, the four of them watched the magician slowly straighten her body and lie still for a little. She groaned and pushed herself up onto her elbow, shook her head slowly from side to side and gazed round the room.

Seeing Zara’s body, she jerked herself to her knees, crawled across and laid her hand against the ashen cheek. With a gasp Zara sat up, and they helped each other to their feet. They stood for some while face to face, holding hands and studying each other in silence, like old friends who haven’t met for many years. They were both very pale, but most of the stony look was gone.

At last Zara breathed a quivering sigh and smiled weakly.

“Are you much hurt, my dear?” she whispered.

“The worst pain I have ever known,” said Lananeth. “But it’s gone now. And you?”

“The same.”

They fell silent, still looking at each other with the same amazed relief.

“But what happened?” asked Tahl. “Who is this, anyway? One moment he wasn’t there, then he was, and then . . . Did Tilja do all that?”

“I do not know,” said Lananeth. “I remember nothing since I came into this room.”

“Nor I,” said Zara. “Only the pain. Did you do this, child? Did you have any idea what you were doing?”

Tilja pulled herself together.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I ought to have asked. I—I just couldn’t stand it like it was. It was all wrong.”

“Yes, it was wrong,” said Lananeth. “I fought against it still, but Varti was far too strong for me.”

She gestured toward the body on the floor.

“This was Varti,” said Zara. “He was North, most powerful of all the Watchers. My Lord Kzuva asked Lananeth to try to close the hills against all comers, which was beyond her powers, so she came to me for help. It was still too much for us, far too much. Then Varti came. He told us that if we all three joined our powers then we could do as My Lord asked. He had good reason, he said. There was a powerful, unknown magician at work in the Empire. This man had first destroyed the towers of the Watchers, and half the Watchers with them, and was now hunting down the rest. Varti hoped to close the hills against this enemy. So we agreed and between us we closed the hills, but Varti then possessed us, as you saw, until Tilja set us free. . . .What is happening?”

Tilja realized that the sounds from the antechamber, and beyond, had quietened. Now they broke out again in a wailing cry that rose and fell in slow pulses. Somewhere a deep gong began to sound, keeping time with the wailing. Lananeth had her hand to her mouth and a look of horror on her face. Zara was standing rigid. Her eyes were dull as pebbles. Then the light came back into them and she bowed her head.

“My Lord was building a tower for Varti, thinking it was for us,” she said somberly. “It has fallen. My Lord was beneath it.”

They stared at each other in dismay.

“We shall be blamed,” whispered Lananeth. “Who else is there, if it was magic that destroyed the tower?”

Zara nodded somberly.

“We must go at once,” she said. “You four also. Come.”

She led the way out by a small door behind the hangings through which she and Lananeth had entered.

By the time they reached the bottom of the narrow stair that led down from the warded room, both magicians looked like menials of some sort, with different faces and wearing coarse clothing. Zara led them out through back passages. None of the frightened servants hurrying by questioned or even noticed them. They found the stables by the squeals of panicking horses. Some of them had broken loose from their stalls and were cantering wildly round the stable courtyard. Zara quietened them with a gesture, allowing Tilja to enter the stables, find Calico and lead her out. Tilja returned to the courtyard to find that the two magicians had each chosen one of the loose horses, which was now standing placidly beside her, unharnessed and unbridled. When Zara led the way on they followed as if on invisible halters.

As they crossed the bridge Tilja halted to fiddle with her shoe, sure that Tahl would stay with her.

“Whatever you’ve guessed, don’t tell the other two,” she whispered. “I think Lananeth and Zara have forgotten. Try not to think about it. It’s dangerous, anyone knowing, even you.”

He stared for a moment, then nodded. They hurried to catch up.

At the bend in the road from which they had first seen Lord Kzuva’s palace they turned and looked back. The gaping hole into which the unfinished tower had fallen was invisible from where they stood, so the wonderful building seemed almost unchanged, apart from some tangles of smashed scaffolding in among the turrets and spires. The slow throb of the gong reverberated along the valley.

“He will never now set foot upon the Opal Stair,” said Zara, as if speaking to herself.

“He wanted to do that too?” asked Tahl.

“Too? You have met with another?”

“There was a magician we hired for our convoy,” said Tahl. “I think she knew you. She said that’s what had happened to her Landholder.”

Zara nodded.

“Every Landholder in the Empire has the same dream,” she said. “Only some go about it with more patience than others. Yes, Aileth was my friend. Where did you meet her?”

“Our convoy captain hired her on the road five days south of Talagh,” said Alnor. “She was going on north with the others when we turned off to come here.”

“She has twice my powers, and she has come to that,” said Zara, and sighed and shook her head. “Well, my friends, now we must leave you. You already have a warding round you, so that you are not noticed unless you choose to be, and I do not think you will be closely sought. But it is otherwise with us. Lord Kzuva’s heirs will want vengeance for his death.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” said Meena. “It was Varti’s.”

“Yes,” said Lananeth, “but who will believe that? My life, and my husband’s, and all his household are forfeit, so we must go to him, and go quickly. There are no other magicians of any power this side of the Pirrim Hills, so between us Zara and I can perhaps defend us all. And I would like to defend our people still against what is loose in the Empire, just as we did with Varti, though he was doing it for his own purposes.”

“I doubt we will be strong enough for that on our own,” said Zara.

“What about the magician we met on the road?” said Tahl. “Aileth, didn’t you say her name was? She told Tilja that if there was work to be done, she would help.”

“I will send to her,” said Zara, “but now . . .”

“One moment,” said Alnor. “We’ve been hoping to meet a magician somewhere on the road who’d help us to close our Valley off again, as it used to be. We were told whoever it is would find us on the road, but they haven’t so far. Is it either of you?”

“It is neither of us,” said Zara. “We do not have that kind of power. I do not know about Aileth.”

Alnor turned to Tilja, an unspoken question in his eyes. And in Meena’s too, now. Tahl was deliberately not looking at her, but she knew the same thought was in his mind.

“No,” she said sadly. “It’s supposed to be a man. Faheel talked about ‘he.’ ”

“Well, good-bye, my dears,” said Lananeth. “What has happened is no more your fault than it is ours, and if ever you return you will be welcome under my roof, if it still stands. But you must not come there now. Go straight to Salata. Her husband, Gahan, has returned. He knows the hills to the north, and will guide you as far as the old road to the forest.”

They all said their farewells and then Zara and Lananeth moved a little way up the road, followed by the two horses. They turned and faced the animals head-on. The horses bowed their heads. The two magicians, Lananeth glancing from time to time at Zara, like an apprentice following a master through some unfamiliar task, placed their hands on either side of the long skulls and lowered their own heads until the brows, horse and human, touched. Tilja felt nothing, but Meena and the boys reeled with the rush of magic as the human shapes shimmered, faded and vanished. The horses swung round, switched their tails and raced away up the road while Calico whinnied with distress at their going.