“Furthermore, they have set up checkpoints on this road at which all travelers are rigorously examined. You must leave it as soon as you can. Other roads south are less strictly watched, apart from random checks at way stations of licenses to practice magic. Tell the others.”
“Yes, of course. You sound stronger.”
“I am, a little. Fortunately I was prepared for the moment when the Watchers passed over us south of Mord, or it might have been a setback.”
“Benayu pulled us inside his screen, but I still felt it. And you changed for a moment, didn’t you?”
“It was useful to me. I will be able to protect you more effectively.”
“Can anyone—one of the Watchers, for instance—tell that you’re there, tell you’re doing that?”
“Not as far as I know. Over the generations we have learned to hide ourselves. It is essential for our survival.”
“And supposing I don’t want to be shielded for a bit…?”
“Tell me so in your head and I will withdraw for a while. Farewell, Maja.”
“Good-bye, Jex. Come again when you can.”
The others heard the bad news without surprise.
“They must have found the picture of the airboat Saranja drew,” said Benayu.
“Fodaro would have destroyed it, surely,” said Saranja.
“When I last saw him he was scratching magical signs round it—at least that’s what they looked like,” said Maja. “Trying to put them off the scent, I suppose.”
“Good idea,” said Ribek. “Just like him to think of it. Not his fault it didn’t work out. You know, Benayu, the more I learn about Fodaro, the better I like him.”
At a lonely place south of that camp Benayu dismounted and climbed a little distance from the road. Maja sensed a steady, prolonged tremor that seemed to move in a circle around him but then none of the expected shock of magic as he became a raven. He rose, circling, and flew south.
They had their midday rest on a grassy bank beside the road. A few travelers passed in either direction. Some of them were wearing the standard dress of the Empire, familiar from the story told in the Valley, the men in little conical caps with upturned brims and a tassel, loose brown jackets and baggy knee breeches; the women in long skirts and long colored scarves with tasseled ends wound twice round over their heads. The tassels on both caps and scarves were decorated with blue beads, by which one could tell the wearer’s grade in the elaborate social system of the Empire.
“I suppose we’re going to have to dress like that,” said Saranja.
“I don’t know,” said Ribek. “Nobody seemed to bother with it much up in the mountains. I expect Benayu can easily fix it if we have to.”
The horses grazed contentedly in the noon stillness. Saranja sat, chin in hand, brooding. Ribek slept, snoring lightly. Maja was happily exploring the new fantasy life that had been gradually growing in her mind over the last few days. It was very different from her usual fantasies, because this time it actually seemed possible. She wasn’t a dashing adventuress with her own wonderful charger and magic sword, nor the poor captive of some evil slave trader, who made a daring escape from his clutches and became a key witness to bring him to justice and free his other slaves. It was far simpler than that. She was only a few years older, and Ribek had asked her to marry him and come and live with him at Northbeck and share the place where he belonged. From time to time as they journeyed she’d been asking him an innocent-seeming question and he’d answered unsuspecting, giving her another detail to flesh the fantasy out.
Now she was busy forming a picture of his older niece, not the one who had lent her the warm coat but the one who looked after the ducks that lived on a platform in the stream to keep them safe from foxes, when she sensed a familiar blip of magic somewhere behind her and knew from the feel of it that Benayu had returned. A few moments later he walked out of the trees.
“I’ve found something,” he said. “I don’t know that it leads anywhere. It keeps seeming to peter out, but then it picks up again. We’d better take it anyway. There’s a checkpoint at the next village. This isn’t an Imperial Highway, so you don’t normally need a way-leave to use it, but that’s what they’re asking for here.”
The path certainly didn’t look very promising when they reached it—a rough logging track, with a stack of felled trunks beside it waiting to be picked up by the timberwain. Sure enough, it seemed to end at the place where the trees had been felled, but they pushed on between the tree stumps and came out onto an open hillside, trackless but easy going, climbed to a ridge and found what seemed to be a footpath winding southward into the hills, though there was not a building in sight or anything to show who might have made it.
The same for mile after mile, their path time and again seeming to stop in the middle of nowhere, only to renew itself. It was well into the afternoon and Maja was deep in her fantasy again when she realized that for some time now she’d been growing increasingly uneasy. The others seemed to feel it too, Benayu with surly silence, Ribek with pointless chat, answered by Saranja with an indifferent shrug or grunt. The horses and Sponge plodded listlessly on. Something was wrong—something missing, Maja eventually decided. It was like total silence. Even in ordinary silence, when there’s no particular noise reaching your ears, there are always very faint background sounds, nothing you’d normally notice, but there. Total silence is a blank, so empty that you can almost hear it by its very absence. So now. All natural objects have magic in them, too faint to notice but still giving out its own slight vibration. Not here. Nothing from the boulders, or the patches of scrawny shrubs and coarse grass.
Emptiness, barrenness, silence. It was like the landscape of some of her dreams. They were behind her, snuffling along her trail. She had to know.
“Can you stop shielding me, Jex?”
She felt the change in her head, but not in the unnatural stillness.
They passed a shallow stream, tumbling down over water-worn rocks.
“Can you hear what it’s saying, Ribek?” she asked.
He cocked his head to listen.
“Nothing,” he said. “That’s odd. I’ve never come across it before. Sometimes they don’t make much sense, but they’re babbling away all the same.”
“I think perhaps there’s some kind of screen—or do I mean ward?—over the whole area,” she said. “I can’t feel it at all, but it’s blanking everything out. I think someone’s watching us and doesn’t want us to know.”
Benayu roused himself, reined Pogo in, closed his eyes, bowed his head and concentrated.
“Not a screen,” he said at last. “I didn’t think it could be. And it isn’t like any kind of ward I’ve ever come across, but there wasn’t much serious magic in the mountains. Anyway, there’s something. I can feel it stopping me getting through, but that’s all. It’s just playing with me. It’s a lot stronger than I am.”
“I don’t think it’s anything to do with the Watchers,” said Maja. “It doesn’t feel…bad. Or good. It’s just there.”
“It doesn’t scare you?” said Ribek.
“No. It’s a bit like being back in the Valley, only more so.”
“I’d better scout ahead again,” said Benayu. “Ready, Maja?”
He bowed his head and she steeled herself for the shock of magic. Nothing happened. After a few moments he straightened and looked around as if half stunned.
“It won’t let me,” he whispered.
They looked at each other in silence.
“Nothing else for it,” said Saranja decisively. “We know we can’t go back to the road. Might as well carry on.”
They did so, Maja hunched in the saddle, eyes closed, shutting out everything except the magical silence, feeling for the slightest variation in it…a faint magical twitch from somewhere ahead…later another…
“It’s choosing where the path goes,” she said.
They halted and looked at each other. Ribek shrugged.
“If Maj
a’s right, it doesn’t make much difference what we do, does it?” he said. “Suppose we try to turn round, whoever’s doing this can still choose where the path goes, and we’ll finish up where we would have done anyway. So we might as well push on and get it over with. If it’s a trap, it’s a trap.”
“I don’t think it’s a trap, exactly,” said Maja. “It’s just…interested in us.”
“The horses don’t seem to be bothered by it,” said Saranja. “On we go, then.”
The sun was almost on the horizon when they came to a place like any other they’d seen all afternoon, a shallow fold in the ground, the near side scrub and boulders, a dismal little stream dribbling along the bottom, and scree-strewn slope beyond. Sponge trotted ahead, tail high, ears pricked, alert and interested. He splashed through the stream, started up the slope on the other side, halted, crouched a moment, turned and slunk whimpering back. Benayu dismounted and knelt to comfort him. Sponge huddled into his arms like a frightened puppy.
Again the others looked at Maja. She shook her head.
“I didn’t feel anything,” she said. “Only—I don’t know—perhaps the ward or whatever it is is hiding something stronger now.”
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” said Ribek, dismounting.
They watched him cross the stream and start confidently up the other slope, only to stagger suddenly, as if he’d been struck by an invisible fist, duck down, covering his head with his arms, turn and rush back toward the stream. Almost at once he caught his foot on a boulder and fell sprawling but crawled frantically on.
Saranja ran to help him to his feet and bring him shuddering and sweating back to the others. They waited while the shudders died away. At length he straightened and shook himself.
“Pure nightmare,” he said. “Nothing there, no monsters, nothing like that, just—just the thing itself. Anyway, I can’t face it again, and nor can you. Looks like we’re going to have to go back after all.”
“There’s a stone in Zald, isn’t there, Benayu?” said Saranja, starting to pull the jewel out from under her blouse. “Why don’t I give it a try?”
“It’s that one there,” said Benayu. “Ready? Now, touch it with the middle finger of your left hand—no, keep it there, and circle the fingertip over it, three times to the left and then three to the right. You won’t feel anything yourself—you’ll just have to hope. I don’t know if it’s strong enough, mind you. That’s really powerful stuff making this happen, and a really powerful ward stopping us feeling it.”
“No harm in trying,” said Saranja.
They watched her cross the stream and start up the slope. About where Ribek had crumpled she slowed—not, apparently, because there was anything slowing her but out of natural caution. Nothing visible happened, but Maja sensed a surge of complex energies moving with her on up the slope. After a little while she turned and came back.
“Didn’t feel a thing,” she said. “Perhaps it’s stopped, or perhaps it just doesn’t like men. It wouldn’t be the only one.”
“It was trying to get at you,” said Maja, and explained.
“Perhaps I’d better lend you Zald,” said Saranja. “Then you could go and see if you can tell where it’s coming from.”
Inwardly Maja cringed. Even protected by Zald-im-Zald, to face what Ribek had faced! And alone!
“Wouldn’t work,” said Benayu. “Zald is yours, Saranja. Apart from the woundsain, it imprinted on you, since you almost sacrificed your life to it. I’ll see if I can get it to release the stone, and then you can go together, holding it between you. Do you think you can cope with that, Maja?”
“I’ll be all right, with Saranja there,” she muttered.
But what about Jex? “Better not start shielding me again, Jex, or perhaps the stone won’t work. It may be too much for you anyway.”
Hand in hand, the two of them crossed the stream and started up the slope. The little stone lay comfortingly against Maja’s palm. She could sense the quiet flow of magic streaming up her arm, spreading through her body and radiating out a little way beyond. There was an almost musical chiming, a complex pattern of interwoven threads of power, as they passed through some kind of magical barrier, and then the wave of terror surged round them. Innumerable talons of power clawed at their protecting aura. Answering power flowed from the stone and stood firm. With an effort Maja ignored the storm around her and concentrated on the source of the attack. There seemed to be nothing hiding it from her now.
“There,” she said, and led Saranja up and to the left.
They reached a shallow basin a few paces across, lined with almost identical round smooth stones, each about the size of a man’s head. All but one of them, halfway up the further side of the basin, seemed inert, but the whole attack flowed from that one.
Amazed at its power, Maja led Saranja toward it and pointed. Saranja gazed at it, shrugged, stooped and touched it tentatively with the fingertips of her free hand. The surface of the stone trembled, seemed to melt and flow, and became a face, both childish and ageless, soft, smooth, the color halfway between flesh and stone. The full lips parted and a narrow, tubular, dark purple tongue slid out and extended until its tip could probe into nostrils and ears, and delicately pick the sleepy-dust out of the corners of the golden eyes, and then withdrew. Without the fear-defying stone against her palm, Maja would have found the whole process too horrifying to watch.
“Yes?” whispered the sweet lips.
“Will you let us through, please?” said Saranja.
“Who are you and what is your purpose?”
“We’re Saranja and Maja Urlasdaughter. The others are Ribek Ortahlson and Benayu. I don’t know his parents’ names, but his uncle was called Fodaro. We’re on our way to Tarshu.”
“Fodaro we know of. You say ‘was.’ He is dead?”
“The Watchers killed him. They’re looking for us. We don’t want them to find us. That’s why we came this way. Will you let us through?”
“Go back a little. Watch.”
They climbed to the rim of the basin and turned. Maja clung to Saranja’s hand to steady herself against the whirlwind of magic that formed as the rocks that lined it began to flow and change shape. They became mason-hewn stone that piled itself rapidly into a building. The basin widened and filled with water, and now she was looking at a squat gray tower rising from the middle of a circular lake. The keystone of its arch was the face that had spoken to them from the boulder, carved in stone.
The doors opened and a woman stood under the arch. She was dressed in a plain brown cloak, and apart from the blue jewel suspended from her neck she looked like some farmwife who has just brought a load of produce to a country market, middle-aged, short, plump, round-faced but small-featured, smiling. She would not, Maja thought, have looked out of place in the Valley, where no magic had ever been known.
A bridge appeared at her feet and she stretched out both arms in greeting but made no move to cross it.
“Welcome, cousins,” she said. “There was a woman once called Tilja Urlasdaughter. I am her remote descendant. My name is Chanad. I will call your friends.”
Her voice was soft and level, the words very precisely spoken, as if every syllable was precious. They turned and saw Ribek and Benayu look suddenly toward them, and then start to lead the horses confidently up the slope.
They ate in a comfortable room with a steady fire glowing in the grate. Chanad carried in plates, mugs and cutlery on a tray. Maja was puzzled. Even with Saranja holding her steady she had barely withstood the swirling blasts of magic that had accompanied the appearance of Chanad’s tower and continued with increasing force as they had crossed the bridge toward it. But once in under the arch all that was gone. All she could feel was the faint background buzz that told her that outside the tower it was still there. The answer, when it came to her, was so unexpected that she blurted it out.
“It’s got a ward on the inside too!”
Chanad looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“Indeed it has,” she said. “But I’m surprised you’re aware of it. A ward that betrays its existence is as useless as no ward at all.”
“I’m not,” said Maja. “I mean I can’t feel the ward itself. But I can just feel all that stuff going on outside it, so I guessed it was there. It was like that coming. Everything’s got a bit of magic in it, rocks, trees, animals, streams—it’s so gentle you don’t notice it, but I noticed when it wasn’t there, so I knew there had to be something.”
Chanad stared at her.
“I have heard of such people,” she said. “Magicians, of course, can sense the presence of magic, but they need to create the means by which they do it, and then to learn how to use it. A few people are born with your ability, as a natural gift, but they very seldom survive infancy. The magic around them—the magic in everyday things, and simple hedge magic—is too strong for them to endure at that age.”
“There wasn’t any magic where I was born,” said Maja. “I never felt it till just a few days ago, when I watched Saranja putting Rocky’s wings on. That really shook me. I’m getting used to it, I think, but just coming across your bridge—I couldn’t have done it without Saranja.”
“You will meet far stronger than that where you are going, if you are who I think you may be. If I am right, I will provide you with what help I can. I am the last of the group that called ourselves the Andarit, the Free Great Magicians. I knew Fodaro, and grieve for him. A good man to the last—a very good man. Too good to be a good magician. Benayu’s mother and father were my colleagues. When we made our move against the Watchers we knew that we might not succeed, and I was chosen to survive until another chance should come. Ancient tradition told us that if it came at all it would be from the north.
“So between us we devised this tower, where I am able to ward myself from the corroding power of my own magic, which, with nothing else to practice upon, would otherwise have eaten me away over the years. I have an unwarded workroom at the top of the tower, but I perform no magic anywhere else within these walls, and do not even step onto my bridge if I can help it. We made all the area around into a magical blank space, as seen from elsewhere in the Empire, large enough to absorb and dissipate any magic I might perform from this center. If the Watchers in Talak were to concentrate their attention on the area they would find me, but they rely on their Seeing Tower, which is not designed to respond to an absence of magic.
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