“Yes,” she whispered, “yes . . . just a little something . . .”
It was a long time before she straightened and put the spoons away.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It wasn’t like when we were here before, clear as clear. It was more like it used to be in the Valley, little bits of stuff you’ve got to decide what they mean. Anyway, far as I can make out, somebody’s coming. Or something. And there’s people waiting for him. Or her, or it, but somehow I think it’s a him. Waiting in two places, it looks like, but . . .”
Her voice trailed off. Tilja bowed her head, trying to hide the shock of recognition. The three magicians at Ellion’s house, she thought. And me, here. And Meena and Alnor and Tahl. All waiting for the Ropemaker.
And then, with a great surge of relief, He’s coming. He’s alive. Moonfist hasn’t found him yet. And I won’t need to send for him.
She felt the silence and looked up. Everyone’s eyes were on her. Even the two dogs were staring. But there were differences. The bright look of interest in the dogs’ eyes was just that, interest because they were aware of Tilja’s being the center of attention. Salata and her daughters were simply puzzled by the reaction of their visitors to what Meena had said, or rather started to say and not finished. Tahl had his head bowed and was gazing steadfastly at his own clenched fists, but Alnor and Meena were staring directly at her, all with a look that said, Now, surely, at last, you’re going to tell us.
“I . . . I . . . ,” she began, and bit her lip and turned away. She didn’t dare. All three were already far too close to the deadly knowledge. Soon, soon, the Ropemaker would be coming, and then they’d understand.
If Axtrig was right.
It was not yet dawn when they rose next morning and said goodbye to Salata. They reached the old road a little before dark, and there they built a fire and camped, Gahan staying the night to see them safely on their way next day.
The road wound north through barren scrubby hills. Despite its age, it was almost as easy going as the one they had traveled from Talagh, because the Emperor’s engineers had put it in order less than three years earlier, when he had sent his army north to try to fulfill his vow to recapture the Valley. The bridges were sound and the wells and rain cisterns held water for an army on the march.
On the second afternoon they climbed a low pass and saw the dark mass of the forest stretching away east and west, in the full glow of its autumn color. Already there was a smell of winter in the wind. Beyond the treetops, a little above the horizon, or so it seemed, ran a wavering white line, and they knew that they were looking at the snowy peaks of the northern mountains. The sight made Woodbourne seem so near that Tilja felt that she could almost have reached out over the trees and stroked its roofs. The thought steadied her for what she had to do.
The wind, which for many days had blown dry and gentle from the east, had swung unnoticed to the north, and had a new feel to it, colder but softer. Above the snow peaks clouds were massing.
“Looks like we’re in for a wet night,” said Meena.
“We’ll find a place to camp,” said Alnor. “Then, if there’s time before dark, we’ll go a little way in among the trees and see whether Tahl and I feel the sickness.”
“Best let me go in on my own first,” said Meena. “See if I can find a cedar, tell me what’s up.”
“Take Tilja along,” said Tahl. “It’s just the sort of place bad stuff might be hiding. All right, Til?”
Tilja hesitated. Meena should be all right in the forest, surely. The trees were her friends. And she ought to stay with Tahl. He was their danger point. But once again she couldn’t explain. At least, she thought, with something like relief, this is the last time. Tomorrow I’ll be able to tell them everything. If we’re all four still alive.
But perhaps it would be easier for Tahl if she wasn’t anywhere near him, and he could think about something else.
“All right,” she said.
“We’ll build a shelter while we’re waiting for you,” said Alnor. This turned out to be unnecessary. Shortly before they reached the trees they found several tumbledown buildings beside the road, temporary storehouses, they guessed, for the army that had come. Most were already ruinous, while those whose roofs were still sound were dark and rank with the stench of lairing beasts. Small creatures scuttled into hiding as they stood in the doorways.
“I’d sooner get wet,” said Meena, turning away. “What’s that over there?”
The strange little circular hut stood all on its own, well away from the road. It was walled on three sides but open toward the forest. Birds had roosted in the rafters and the floor was spattered with their droppings, but the roof was sound. At the center of the hut was a flat stone on which someone must have lit a small but intense fire, hot enough to redden and crumble the surface, though no ashes remained. They eyed it suspiciously.
“Anyone feel anything?” said Alnor.
“Nothing special,” said Tahl.
“Looks like something’s been going on here, but not that recent, judging by the mess,” said Meena. “There was magicians came with the army, Lananeth told us. It’ll be something to do with one of them. Why don’t we just clean it out—we don’t want to be doing that in the dark—but not move in here unless it comes on to rain? Then Tilja and me can have a go at the forest while you do your kick-fighting. And you may as well get stuff for a fire together, too.”
There was, for once, a decent patch of grazing just below the hut, so Tilja hobbled Calico and left her with the boys while she and Meena returned to the old road and followed it to the edge of the forest, only to find that the place where it had entered the trees was an entrance no more. Three years ago the Emperor’s engineers had started to hack a broad gouge into the forest, and had thus let in the light. Dormant seeds had sprung into growth all across the opening, even between the cobbles of the road itself. A mass of brambles tangled through the dense array of saplings.
“We’ll not do any good here,” said Meena. “And besides, if they’ve gone and cut everything down, where’ll I find a cedar old enough to talk to me? They need to be a hundred years old and more before they start that, and a couple of hundred before they say anything worth hearing. There’s got to be a way in somewhere along here. . . . Now look at that! What’s been happening here? That’s never woodmen who did that!”
They were now a little beyond the road, staring at a tangled jumble of smashed timber. Many great trunks had been snapped like twigs twenty feet above the ground. Trees that still stood had lost half their branches. Then, as they walked on along the edge of the forest, the damage ended as suddenly as it had begun and they could pick their way through the fringe of undergrowth to ancient standing woodland, like that above Woodbourne, shadowed leaf litter between the soaring trunks, with only here and there a shrub or smaller tree that could thrive in such darkness.
“What do you make of that?” said Meena, gazing back to the ruin they had passed. “That’s never a storm did that, just all in one place. That’s got to be magic, like I was saying back at the hut. Now, just stand still a moment, will you . . . ? Don’t tell me there’s none over this side . . . not a whisper . . . you’d’ve thought . . .”
“Can you tell where the lake is?”
“Should do . . . let’s try a bit further on—maybe it’s something to do with you. You just stay here . . .”
She ran off between the trees, halted a moment and waved to Tilja to join her.
“Got it,” she said, pointing. “Still a long way off, though. I was right, too—I can’t feel it now with you being so close.”
“I didn’t seem to do that to you that time we went to fetch Ma out of the forest.”
Meena paused, frowning, while she went to fetch the memory from the other room.
“Wasn’t the same, then. You’ve changed. Found yourself, if you know what I mean. There’s a lot more to you now. And that’ll be why I couldn’t hear the cedars. So if you’ll just keep a bit be
hind me . . .”
Again she ran off, but this time didn’t stop until she turned aside and disappeared. Tilja found her standing at the foot of one of a group of enormous cedars, their boles as broad as haystacks, their spires way out of sight above the canopy. She watched while Meena laid her hands against the ridged red bark, bowed her head and stood motionless. After some while she straightened, turned and came slowly back. Tilja had never seen her, either young or old, look so stricken.
“Just mumbles and mutters,” she said sadly. “Like when you wake someone up only they don’t want to be woken. The magic’s dying, Til. It’s dying!”
“Perhaps they’ll wake up when . . . What about the unicorns? Are they still there?”
“If they are, they’re hiding. Ah, well, there’s one way to find out. Let’s go and fetch the boys in before it gets dark.”
The answer came clearly. Barely twenty paces in under the trees Alnor stumbled and would have fallen if Meena hadn’t caught him. Close behind them, Tahl halted, swaying, and closed his eyes, waiting for Tilja to turn him and lead him back into the open. Her touch seemed to have no effect on the sickness. Calico watched the proceedings with a bored sneer.
“That’s the unicorns being so scared, and they’ve good reason,” said Meena when they’d helped the boys out and settled them down to rest beside a small grove of sweet chestnuts that stood separate from the forest.
“You mean they were there? Somewhere close by?” said Tilja.
“Don’t have to be,” said Meena. “It fills the whole forest, what they’re feeling. Maybe it’s worse when something’s happened to scare them, but they’ve no need of that just now. Like I say, they’ve reason enough without it. The cedars aren’t talking, and what that means is the magic’s dying out of the forest. Not just the sickness—that’s worse than ever, like you’ve just seen, but it’s not going to stay like that. Once the magic is gone, the unicorns can’t live here anymore, and they know it. That’s why they’re so scared right now. And when they’ve gone the sickness will go too, and anyone will be able to come through the forest—soldiers, tax collectors, anyone. That’s why we’ve got to get back, see it doesn’t happen.”
“There’s got to be a way through,” mumbled Alnor, lying with his head in Meena’s lap. “We’ve both got to get back, he said, and he’d have known if I couldn’t.”
“Oh, there’ll be a way all right,” said Meena, running her fingertips along his bare forearm. “We just need to find someone who knows where it is.”
She paused, and glanced sideways at Tilja.
“And tell us what to do when we get home,” she added.
There was a silence. Tilja shrank into herself. Tahl was looking directly at her now, and didn’t glance away when she caught his eye. Now that the moment had come, he had allowed himself to think it all through. He knew. She swallowed.
“All right,” she said. “He told me not to tell you, in case . . .”
“Then don’t,” said Alnor.
“Only if there’s anything we can do,” said Tahl.
“You’ll have to stay right away,” said Tilja. “And . . . and if it goes wrong . . . he said it might . . . no, there won’t be anything.”
There was another silence.
“He told you to try this?” said Alnor.
“Yes . . . if . . . I can’t tell you that either.”
“Then it’ll be all right,” said Meena firmly. “If it’s something you’ve got to do, you’d better get it over. And just smell that wind—it’ll be raining in a couple of hours. You’d best take Calico. We’ll stay here and look for chestnuts. Don’t you worry about us. They’re good honest trees, these. They’ll look after us.”
Tilja settled herself by the strange burnt slab in the little circular hut. She wanted privacy, secrecy, for what she had to do. Everywhere else was too exposed.
Ten seconds, she told herself. That should be enough.
Her fingers were covered with sweat as she rolled up her sleeve, unwound first the lashings that held the roc feathers in place and then the Ropemaker’s hair from their quills. She slipped the feathers into the pocket of her blouse and laid the hair on the rock beside her. Then she hauled the box out, opened it, laid it down beside the hair and started to count to ten. At three the hair tie burst into flame. Instantly the flame was a raging blast of fire straining toward the forest. At the hut’s edge it became a roaring gale. She could see the bushes outside being lashed about, and hear the crash and creak of falling timber mixed with Calico’s squeals of panic. She smelled her own clothes and hair beginning to scorch in the heat, but felt nothing on her skin. The flame was a made magic and could not harm her. Grasping that knowledge, she forced her hand into the heart of the blast, found the box by touch and picked it up. The flame died instantly.
The Ropemaker’s hair tie had vanished. The ring floated in blackness, as she’d first seen it. The box seemed untouched. She closed it, ran the cord round her neck and slid it in under her blouse.
Calico in her panic had tripped on her hobble and fallen. She was still struggling to her feet when Tilja found her. Shakily Tilja helped her up and stood with her for a while, soothing and calming her, and at the same time soothing herself with the homely feel of horse. Then she left Calico to graze and went and sat, in front of the hut, waiting, in a tangle of hope and dread, for the Ropemaker. Or Moonfist.
A wall of cloud was looming to the north—the rain must already be sheeting down at Woodbourne—but overhead the sky was clear, and the setting sun, hardly lower than when she had gone into the hut, colored the cloud mass with heavy purples and fringes of gold. Time passed. Nothing happened until Meena, Alnor and Tahl came cautiously up the slope, just as the last fiery streaks were dulling in the west. Meena had her skirt held up in front of her, full of the chestnuts they’d been collecting.
“Is everything all right?” said Alnor.
Tilja could hear the anxiety in his voice.
“I . . . don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m hoping someone will come and help us, but there may be other things. . . .”
“D’you want us to keep away still?” said Meena. “I don’t fancy leaving you here alone in the dark.”
“Nor us being away from you, either,” said Alnor, “if that sort of stuff’s going to happen. Let’s get a fire going. We’ll need it anyway if we’re going to get the chestnuts roasted before it rains.”
Nobody wanted to talk about what had happened or might still happen. Alnor used his tinderbox to light the dry branches that he and Tahl had already laid in while Meena and Tilja were in the forest. By the time it was fully dark the embers were hot enough for the chestnuts. They were fat and full of flavor, but Tilja could barely eat for tension. In her mind the conviction grew and grew that Axtrig had been wrong and the Ropemaker wouldn’t come after all, would never come, because Moonfist had already found and destroyed him. And if Moonfist himself came . . . She felt utterly drained, certain that she would lack the strength to deal with him. When a chestnut popped or a burning branch collapsed, her heart leaped like a rabbit. And if anything beyond the circle of firelight stirred—a leaf, a settling bird—she froze with the hair on her nape erect while she waited for the intruder.
What came in the end was a little mouselike creature. She saw it first as a pair of glistening eyes at the edge of darkness. She froze. It crept forward, nose twitching. Now Meena saw it, and whispered to the others to sit still. Very slowly she leaned and crumbled part of a chestnut into the animal’s path. It hesitated, then came on in short, nervous darts. When it reached the crumbs it sniffed at the largest one, picked it up between its forepaws, sat back on its haunches and nibbled rapidly. The firelight sparkled off its fur. There was something odd about its movements, a kind of gawky deftness, as if it had not really been born as a whole mouse, but had been somehow assembled from several other mice. Like the unicorn, the dog, the lion . . .
You have eaten our food, Tilja thought. Now you must deal well by us.
She smiled and waited for what it would do next.
Without warning it turned and flipped away into the darkness.
Nobody said anything. For a moment she assumed they hadn’t recognized the mouse-thing, and were waiting for it to recover its nerve and return. Then she became aware of their stillness. She looked. All three were sitting rigid, gazing straight ahead of them, unblinking. At the edge of darkness she could see Calico, motionless.
Something moved on the far side of the fire. A man was standing there, behind Alnor, watching them. She knew at once he was Moonfist. He came round the fire and faced her, looking down. She scrambled to her feet. He was about Da’s age, but broader and shorter, and clean-shaven, not dressed in the fashion of the Empire, but wearing a soft cap, short cloak, jerkin and leggings, with a belt of large silver links at the waist. He carried a sturdy wooden staff with a leather bag tied to it at the top. There was nothing about him to tell her she should be afraid, but she was. Fear seemed to beam out of him. Fear held Meena and the others rigid in its nightmare. She was outside the nightmare. She could move and think. And be afraid.
He glanced at Alnor. Alnor jerked and strutted forward, stiff as a doll, and faced him. Moonfist studied him for a moment, then laid his hand on his shoulder. Instantly Alnor became a little mannikin, only a few inches high, dangling from Moonfist’s hand. Moonfist slipped him into the leather bag at the top of his purse. He did the same to Meena, but when Tahl stood in front of him he paused.
“Too clever,” he murmured. “Too clever for your own good.”
He tapped him on the shoulder, put him in the bag and turned to Tilja.
“You have my ring,” he said. “Give it to me.”
“It isn’t yours,” she whispered.
“It is mine,” he said calmly. “Faheel should never have had it. Give it to me.”
“No.”
“You destroyed Varti, who was last of the Watchers,” he said. “All powers are now mine. I could destroy you, but choose not to. You will be useful to me. Give me my ring, and I will give you back your companions unharmed.”
The Ropemaker Page 33