The Ropemaker

by Peter Dickinson

  Its presence, its ordinariness, didn’t belong in the nightmare. For some kind of reassurance Tilja stooped to stroke its back, but again it moved out of reach and sat watching the pair on the walkway.

  Halfway between the two towers they halted and the creature crouched and sniffed noisily at the paving. It licked the place vigorously, looked up and gave a purring snarl, its tongue lolling from an enormous, jagged-fanged mouth. It had one eye, in the middle of its forehead. The woman—she had turned her face into the moonlight, and Tilja could now be sure—scratched the back of its head and gazed along the wall, directly toward the tower where Tilja was hiding. She was almost as dark as the creature, a smooth, young, handsome face with no life in it at all. The face of a statue.

  She stooped gracefully and held her hands over the place the creature had shown her. Ribbons of yellow light glowed between her fingers and the paving. Tilja’s chest started to tingle. Instinctively she put her hand to the place and found that the tingling came from Axtrig, lying between her shift and her blouse, but as soon as her fingers gripped the wood it stopped, and instead the same odd numbness as before flowed into her hand. This time it ran all the way up her arm to the elbow, strong enough for her to recognize it as the terrifying sensation that had almost overwhelmed her coming through the city gate. It came from Axtrig, but it was caused by whatever the woman was doing. Yes, she and her creature were looking for Axtrig—that was the tingling. And Tilja had stopped her when she had laid her hand on the wood— that was the numbness. The magic, instead of reaching out to answer the woman’s summons, had flowed into Tilja’s arm and away.

  The woman stayed where she was. The glow of light beneath her hands increased to a glare, but Axtrig remained inert, while the numbness seeped away. The woman rose, frowning, and looked again along the walkway. Tilja was certain that now was the moment when they were going to come and find her, but then saw that the woman seemed to be looking beyond the tower. It was clear from the way she stood that she was now waiting for something, or somebody, coming toward her.

  Soon Tilja heard the pad of shod feet and a man came into view, walking toward the woman. Tilja saw only his naked back, with a wild tangle of hair reaching almost to his waist, muscular arms with heavy bracelets above and below the elbows, a wide belt covered with jewels that glittered in the moonlight, baggy knee-length trousers, sandals jeweled like the belt. Over his shoulder he carried a sort of whip, a short handle with several knotted thongs.

  The creature waddled forward and faced him, snarling. The man ignored it. It leaped at his throat. Something in the empty air seemed to cuff it aside. The man walked straight toward the woman as if he intended to do the same with her. Now his bulk hid her completely from where Tilja was standing, so she couldn’t see how the woman stopped him, but she must have, somehow.

  They faced each other. Tilja could hear low voices, but not the words. It sounded like a language she didn’t know. They seemed to come to some kind of agreement. The man took his whip and held it aloft. The thongs fluttered, as if in a lightly gusting breeze, but there wasn’t one. The numbness came back into Tilja’s hand and arm, and flowed away as before. She could guess what was happening. The man was looking for Axtrig, just as the woman had with her magic ribbons. If Tilja hadn’t been clutching the spoon, the thongs would have been straining toward her. As it was, all they responded to was the little currents of ordinary magic wafting to and fro in the night.

  The man turned slowly as he searched, until Tilja could see him from in front. The face didn’t belong to the healthy young body or the mass of wild hair. It was the face of a very old man, pale and wrinkled, with bloodshot rheumy eyes and cracked blue lips. Surely, with his powers, he could have chosen any face he wanted. Had he chosen to look like that? It was horrible.

  His gaze reached the tower and stopped. He shook his whip slightly, as if trying to stir it into action. The thongs rose, straining like weed in a rapid river. But not toward the tower. South, over the outer city. He turned abruptly to look that way. The woman did the same. They stiffened and moved apart. The woman made a sweeping gesture with her arms and her creature threw back its head and bayed. The man brandished his whip. The thongs writhed, grew, and turned to cords of fire streaming out over the wall. From somewhere close below came an enormous, hissing, whooping howl, the howl of a tempest bellowing through a single throat. The glare of light came back, blazing above the wall like a sheet of summer lightning frozen into stillness. The woman, now half again as tall as before, made a whirling gesture to it, and it gathered itself together, spiraling inward, too bright to look at, and then hurled itself down, a bolt of silent lightning, at the bellowing thing beyond the wall. And again. And again.

  A hand, massive as a tree trunk but the color of moonlight, reached up and grasped at the swirling curtain of magic, gathering it together. The glow blazed fiercer yet round that silvery fist, but the fist simply absorbed it. Tilja could see the incandescence pulsing away down the veins of the arm. The tower where Tilja was hiding shuddered as a whole section of parapet fell away.

  The cat was at the entrance now, its fur again as rigid as a hedgehog’s spines. In the lull after the crash of falling masonry Tilja heard a gasping croak from inside the tower.

  “You there, girl?”

  “Meena . . . !”

  “Got to get out of here . . . can’t stand much more . . .”

  The glare lit all the interior of the tower. Meena was struggling to her knees. Tilja helped her to her feet and gave her her cane.

  “I’ll just about do,” Meena muttered.

  The cat moved out of their way as she hobbled, wheezing, to the door. Tilja saw her stagger and almost fall, but she managed to clutch the parapet and worked her way along it, gripping it all the time as if something was trying to wrench her away. Tilja followed. The magical battle raged behind them. A whole section of wall fell thundering into the space below. Nobody seemed to notice their going.

  “You go ahead,” Meena croaked. “Get the door open.”

  Tilja ran on. One-handed—the other was still tight round Axtrig—she found the key behind the tree where she had hidden it, opened the storehouse door and looked back. Against the lightning glare she saw Meena forcing her way through the invisible tempest. Behind her came the cat, pacing steadily along, occasionally turning its head to glance back.

  At last Meena reached the door and hobbled through. As Tilja was about to follow, something brushed, purring, against her skirt. She looked down and saw the cat. She could guess now why it hadn’t let her stroke it.

  “Thanks, puss,” she whispered, “for whatever it was you were doing.”

  The cat purred again and stalked off along the walkway. Tilja closed and locked the door. Beside her Meena was gasping in the darkness.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Don’t talk. I’m just about holding on. I’d best go down on my arse. You first. Tell me what’s coming.”

  Slowly they worked their way down, Tilja going backward on her knees, placing Meena’s feet on each step and waiting for her to ease her body down, and then repeating the action, all one-handed because of her desperate fear of letting go of Axtrig. When they were halfway to the ground Meena spoke again, her voice less strained.

  “That’s a bit more like it. They’re giving up. My goodness, though . . . Remember that gale we had, two years back when the home byre blew down? It was like being out in something like that, all the magic blasting around. . . . What about you, girl? You don’t seem to have turned a hair.”

  “No, I didn’t feel any of that. Only when they were looking for Axtrig and she started to sort of tingle. . . . Do you think I can let go of her now? If I put her right in under my blouse so she’s against my skin?”

  “Maybe I can tell you . . . yes, that feels safe enough. Better get on now—the others’ll be wondering what’s up. They must’ve heard the racket going on. Stirred up a hornets’ nest, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Meena wa
s right. When at last they had reached the ground and made their way out of the storehouse they found the whole great household in an uproar, with shouts and cries, and the neighing of panicking horses and barking of dogs, and people hurrying about or standing in groups talking in low voices and glancing up now and again at the moonlit sky. No one paid any attention to Meena and Tilja as they made their way back to their room. Despite what he had said, Ellion was already there.

  It was well past midnight before they reached the little windowless chamber to which he now insisted on taking them. When he had locked the door the five of them settled onto coarse cushions round a single dim lamp in the middle of the floor. Meena gray with exhaustion and pain and snarling in her determination not to give in to them; Alnor very solemn and calm; Tahl fizzing with interest and excitement, wide awake despite the hour; Tilja almost too tired to make one word follow another, but still too shaken to think of sleep; and Ellion himself, keeping his voice steady and soft as always, but with his eyes twitching from one face to the next, and starting at every sound that reached them from the still disturbed household.

  “This room is warded,” he explained. “Every great lord maintains at least one personal magician. Ours is my wife’s cousin, Zara, and they have been good friends. This is her chamber, and no doubt she will have arranged to hear what we say, but it is the best I can do. It is not only for myself. It is for my own household, and my lord and all who depend on him. You have come among us, into the heart of Talagh, and worked your strong unwarded magic. . . .”

  “I’m very sorry, I’m sure,” snapped Meena. “You think I’d’ve risked it if I’d known?”

  “I accept that you acted in ignorance,” said Ellion. “That would not save you from the Questioners, nor would it save me and mine, even if I were to hand you over to them. But as it is . . . I have always tried to know as little as possible about these matters, but now . . . First, tell me what happened on the wall, so that I may try to judge where any safety may lie.”

  “Tilja’ll have to do that,” said Meena. “Soon as I’d said the name something hit me and I passed clean out.”

  Somehow Tilja forced herself to concentrate and explain what had happened on the wall. When she had finished Meena spoke first.

  “South? Axtrig was pointing south?”

  “Yes. I felt the world change. I’m quite sure.”

  “Then he is not in Talagh,” said Alnor.

  “He could be in the outer city,” said Tahl. “That thing Tilja says came—the one that pulled the wall down—he could have sent—”

  There was a soft scratching at the door. They all froze. Tilja saw Ellion’s face go white in the lamplight. The lock clicked as the key turned with no hand holding it. The door opened and a woman entered. She closed the door, turned the key in the normal way and came further into the room, then stood and looked at them one by one. Her smile meant nothing. It seemed to Tilja that she spent much longer on her than on the others. She was middle-aged, wearing a dark red robe that completely hid her figure. Despite her smile, her face had the same smooth stillness as that of the woman Tilja had seen on the wall. When she spoke her voice was slow and husky.

  “My friend Ellion has guessed correctly,” she said. “I had of course arranged to hear your talk. You are in need of my advice, and you can tell me things it would be useful for me to know. I am called Zara. I am the Lord Kzuva’s magician. Sit down, and I will explain to you what the girl has seen. . . . Good. From your talk I gather that you are looking for a particular man and that you have brought with you some object that you think will enable you to find him. You name this thing Axtrig. Where is it now?”

  They hesitated, waiting for each other. Though Tilja could see a family likeness to Lananeth, this woman seemed very different. Lananeth might have magical powers, but she was human. You could read her voice and feelings and make up your mind whether to trust her, even though Lananeth wasn’t her real name. With this woman—Zara, she said she was called, as if that wasn’t her real name either—with this woman there was no way of knowing.

  “No, you must tell her,” said Ellion. “We are in her hands.”

  “Axtrig is a carved wooden spoon,” said Alnor. “Tilja has her.”

  “Here? In this room? I feel nothing.”

  “No,” said Tilja. “I don’t understand, but she’s got to be touching my skin. I’ve had her strapped to my arm most of the journey. Even when I had her under my blouse, with just my shift in between, she started to tingle when that woman was looking for her. I think the woman could feel she was there until I grabbed her handle. Do you want me to show you?”

  Zara shook her head.

  “Give me your hand, child,” she said.

  Tilja reached out and let Zara take her hand. She felt the numbness starting. Zara stiffened for a moment and let go.

  “Remarkable,” she said. “Several others, each far more powerful than I, are searching for this thing. I dare not let you show it to me. The wards of this room are not strong enough to hold them off. And you do it, in pure ignorance. You have no need of wards. I think Silena’s beast, the creature you saw on the wall, could not have touched you. To hurt you she would have needed to cause the tower to fall on you, or some such thing.”

  She laughed, pleasantly human for a moment.

  “And this thing is a wooden spoon! I had imagined a sword, at least, or a jeweled rod. Well, then, I was asleep in my room, which is warded like this one, as it needs to be, or I would not dare sleep, ever. Through those wards came a burst, an explosion, of magical power, here in Talagh, in the warded heart of the Empire. The blast threw me from my bed, and I was stunned.”

  “Me too,” said Meena. “It wasn’t like fainting, when you can feel yourself going. It was that sudden . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “But you, child, standing close beside the center of it, you felt nothing at all?”

  “No,” said Tilja. “Well, there was a sort of blink, and the world had changed, so that Axtrig was lying differently. It was the same that time with Lananeth.”

  “The world had changed?” asked Zara, more softly than ever.

  Stumbling for words, Tilja tried to explain her feelings about what happened to Axtrig when Meena spoke the name of Faheel—how it seemed as if it wasn’t the old spoon that moved, but instead the whole world became slightly different. Or perhaps it was time itself that became different, so that Axtrig had always been lying the way she now was, though nothing else had changed.

  “That is power indeed,” said Zara, and for the first time Tilja could hear something like an emotion in the calm voice, a sense of awe. “Well, let me continue. When I recovered, that power was gone, but several other powers were active in the place. I counted, at first, four. Two I felt to be those of Watchers. Those were the two magicians the girl saw up on the wall. We know them as Silena and Dorn. There was another I did not know close by. Then a fourth, whom I also did not know, coming from the outer city below. But it would have been that one who sent the hand that broke the walls.”

  “The other one up on the wall must’ve been Meena,” said Tahl.

  “Me? I was passed out most of the time,” said Meena, “and besides, I’m not that sort.”

  “No, it was the cat,” said Tilja. “I don’t know what it was doing, but it was doing something. I think it stopped the woman realizing we were in the tower.”

  “If so, it was a creature with some power,” said Zara. “Each of the twenty Watchers oversees a section of the city, and all the Empire that lies beyond it. Dorn is South, the second most powerful of the Watchers, after Varti, who is North. The section Silena watches is next to his. The place at which you chose to do what you did was in Silena’s section, but close to Dorn’s, so she came first, and he soon after. None of the Watchers are friends to any of the others. They are all in fierce rivalry for power, but will combine to prevent one of themselves becoming more powerful than the rest. By this means the Emperor is able to see that none becom
es overwhelmingly powerful. But, sensing a source of power such as you unleashed on the wall, of course both Silena and Dorn wanted it for themselves. . . .”

  “And you do not want it also?” asked Alnor.

  She shook her head.

  “Not yet, and not for many years,” she said. “A more powerful magician would take it from me almost instantly, destroying such powers as I have to do so. My guess is that it would also have been more powerful than either Silena could handle, or even Dorn. The magician who came from the outer city is another matter. What you saw him doing was truly powerful, more than a match for Dorn and Silena together. Two more Watchers had joined them in the contest before they could drive him away. I have no idea who he can be, but he is still not the one you want. I think that one is far from here.”

  “And south, apparently,” said Alnor.

  “Yes. So it is in your interest to leave Talagh as soon as possible, and it is also in our interest, mine and Ellion’s, to have you gone. We have all been extremely fortunate in how this has worked out. The attention of the Watchers will now be concentrated on finding and if possible destroying the magician in the outer city, and it will be assumed that what brought Silena and Dorn to the place was the start of his attack on the walls, and not your doings with your spoon. So, for the moment we are safe. But your presence here with your unwarded magic is intensely dangerous to us, and to everyone under our Lord’s roof. Ellion is an honest man, but even so I think he would be tempted to hand you over to the Questioners, if he thought that would save us.”

  “Yes, I have thought of it,” said Ellion. “But I know it would not help, so we must do the best we can to get you away from here. You must remain Qualif and Qualifa until you have left the city, and are recorded as having done so. At first light tomorrow I will send a trusted man with you to obtain your death-leaves and he will bring them back to me while you at once start the journey home.”

  “But we can’t go home yet,” Meena burst in. “First we’ve got to—”