“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.
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 under
stand 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 windin
g 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.
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