He’d continued to work throughout breakfast while Saranja fed him morsels which he chewed without noticing. When they were ready to leave he spread both hands over the pattern, which flowed upward from the center, maintaining its swirls and windings as it followed the movement of his hands while he twisted them, palms inward, until they were cupped around a shimmering egg about the size of a baby’s head. He moved them together until he could fold his fingers into each other and clasp them tight, absorbing the egg into himself.
The screen vanished.
“Done,” he muttered. “Help me up. We must go. Wake me when you see the garden.”
There was no particular moment at which the town of Barda began. Sheds and barns slightly more frequent, slightly less ramshackle; a patch where someone had been trying to grow vegetables; a row of sties with actual pigs in them; a shed, not apparently more habitable than any of the sheds they’d passed earlier, but with a line of laundry flapping in the breeze; and then, astonishingly, beside yet another slow-oozing mud-rimmed river (the tide apparently reached far enough inland here to expose a few feet of the bank) a seriously grand house with two pleasure yachts moored at a jetty and gardeners working its carefully symmetrical gardens.
Ribek booted Levanter forward until he was alongside Benayu on Pogo, leaned across and shook him by the elbow.
“Ready to wake up now?” he said. “This looks like your garden.”
Benayu snorted, sat up, squared his shoulders and looked around.
“That’s it. Thanks,” he said, speaking as cheerfully and confidently as he had done when they had first met him on that mountain pasture north of Mord. There was a blip of magic, and a screen enclosed a section of the garden. He raised his right hand toward it, palm forward, fingers spread, and closed it in a slow, grasping motion. The whole section—a small raised pond and the strip of lawn around it, with a few small trees and a curving bed of rosebushes with a close-clipped yew hedge behind it—shimmered for a moment, disappeared, and returned unchanged.
“All set now,” he said. “I think I’m ready as I’m going to be. Anything else I’ll have to improvise. Any suggestions about where to start looking? We really don’t want to use the hair again until we have to. Maja?”
“The oyster-beds? That’s what I smelled.”
“There’ll be a lot of them,” said Saranja. “I’ve lost count of the reeking wagonloads we’ve passed.”
“The first thing is to find out what Barda consisted of around when the Ropemaker disappeared,” said Ribek. “I thought we might take a leaf out of Striclan’s book. Suppose I’m doing the same sort of job he was, and I’ve come here to compile a report on the history of the oyster trade. If I find the right official and show him the scroll they gave me at Larg, there’s a good chance he’ll be helpful.”
A trivial, irrelevant thought came into Maja’s mind.
“I wonder what oysters taste like,” she said.
“Now’s your chance to find out,” said Ribek. “I’ll ask the fellow I see for a recommendation.”
The street where they waited for Ribek to reappear was utterly different from the tatterdemalion outskirts of Barda. Those had been like that because they had been long ago abandoned as the town had moved steadily eastward to stay near the sea that was its livelihood, keeping up with the unstoppable growth, inch by inch through the centuries, of the delta upon which it stood.
This was a broad, cobbled thoroughfare lined with stolid-looking brick buildings, mostly large and plain, with only here and there a flourish of ornamentation around the main doors. Ribek was inside one of these slightly fancier ones. Maja and the others waited in the shade opposite. The horses fidgeted and stamped. Saranja was almost as restless. But Benayu seemed to have retired into his trance and stood with his head bowed and his eyes half closed, swaying very slightly from side to side, as if he had fallen asleep on his feet. Only Maja could sense the steady, purposeful activity inside as he gathered and ordered the powers he was going to need.
Maja herself was almost sick with anxiety, so obviously that Saranja noticed and moved to her side and put a comforting arm round her, but even that didn’t stop the spasms of shivering and the endless, useless swallowing of saliva that wasn’t there. She wasn’t afraid of dying, or of what the Watchers might do to her if they caught her, but of the task ahead. No, she wasn’t going to bear the brunt of it, as Benayu would have to, but only she could find the Ropemaker. They’d talked about this on their way into the town. As Jex and Ribek had said, it would all have to happen in an instant, before the Watchers were on them. Ribek would be holding her. Saranja would unwind that single golden hair from the roc feathers. There would be the double blast of magic, leaving Maja blind and deaf but tracking that intense thread of golden fire through the darkness between the universes…
Would she survive even that far? Jex would do what he could, but…But if she did, then what? At the sheep-fold she’d had time to recover, to come back into the here and now, to point the way they must go. This time, somehow, in that instant before the Watchers came, she would have to act, to tell or show Ribek what to do, where to go. It could only be him—Benayu would be facing the Watchers and Saranja wrestling with the panicking horses—and still she would need to endure, endure…
She tried to distract herself by studying the scene before her. What were all the wagons doing, trundling thunderously to and fro over the cobbles? Not difficult. At the far end of the street she could see masts and cranes, and the now familiar odor of oysters told her what most of the ones going in that direction bore, and what many of those coming back, only a little less thunderously and reekingly, had unloaded at the harbor. But a far greater variety of cargoes returned from there, in different carts, because you wouldn’t want your corn or your carpets or expensive luxuries impregnated with the basic Bardan odor, would you?
That man there now, bustling out of a door, dodging between the wagons, pausing anxiously to check through the file of papers he was carrying, as if searching for a document that should have been there and wasn’t, sighing with relief and hurrying in through another door—not difficult either. Or that grander gentleman stalking up from the harbor, listening haughtily to the expostulations of the seaman-like figure beside him, and followed by a porter wheeling a trolley with a brass-bound sea-chest on it…All so everyday and impossibly different, almost in another universe from the one she knew, the one that had the Watchers in it, and winged horses, and Jex, and the unimaginable terrors of the next few hours…
“At last!” said Saranja. “Look at him! He’s been spinning it out, enjoying himself! He drives me mad, sometimes!”
Maja looked, saw Ribek, sane, beautiful, everyday Ribek, coming out of the door opposite, and instantly felt better. Jex wasn’t the only one who could live in two universes, she thought.
A large man with blubbery lips was talking volubly to him as he held the door, and talked on as they wound their way between the wagons, though most of what he was saying must have been drowned by the wheel thunder. He approached them reaching forward for a hand to shake and starting to introduce himself before he was fully in earshot.
“…Adorno Dorno, Oyster Magister of Barda, at your service. And you three are also Freepeople of Larg, my friend Ribek tells me. Honored, honored indeed…”
Ribek managed to get the introductions in while the Magister was vigorously shaking their hands. If Sponge had known to hold up a paw he would no doubt have shaken that.
“And none of you has ever tasted an oyster! You have waited until you can start at the pinnacle of excellence. Wonderful! Wonderful! Perhaps as a preliminary—ahem—taster to your inspection of our oyster-beds you ought to have your first experience of this wonderful delicacy. You have come to the right man. It is part of my official duties to inspect and license the commercial outlets of Barda, and there are two on our way to the oyster-beds that I would especially recommend….”
Maja quailed. How could she get anything down her throat wi
th the terror of the event so close upon them? And Ribek had said that oysters were slippery blobs that you ate not just raw, but alive!
“I…I’m not very hungry,” she blurted.
The Magister stared at her, pop-eyed with astonishment, as if he couldn’t imagine the circumstances in which somebody might not want to sample his oysters.
“I’m afraid we made the error of partaking of a substantial repast shortly before our arrival,” said Ribek in his Striclan voice. “We did not foresee our good fortune in encountering such a fountainhead of knowledge so immediately. Perhaps when we have had our fill of the oyster-beds we will be in a better frame to have our fill of the oysters.”
“Excellent! Excellent!” crowed the Magister, covering Ribek with saliva in his excitement. “I shall certainly enter that among the Remarks of Visitors that I publish in the Town Yearbook. Well then, shall we stable your horses and take my barge? Fortunately the tide is flowing toward the full. Or would you prefer to walk? In which case we could save time in stabling the horses and leave them at the gate. We have a strict rule against allowing animals in the oyster fields for fear of contaminating the purity of the waters. The same ruling also applies to those with magical powers, but for different reasons, of course.”
“Of course,” agreed Ribek. “What does everyone feel about that? Saranja?”
“Um…er…,” said Saranja. Maja sensed a brief pulse of magic from Benayu, and words seemed to come into Saranja’s mouth, unwilled. “Let’s walk,” she gabbled. “Benayu and I can stay with the horses.”
“It would perhaps be more stimulating to the appetite,” said Ribek, as if he’d noticed nothing remotely odd about the exchange.
“True, true,” said the Magister. “Well, if you’re ready to depart…”
He had a surprising turn of speed for so portly a figure. Even Ribek had to stride out to keep up with his vigorous waddle. Maja started to fall behind and broke into a trot to catch up, almost running headlong into one of the Magister’s sweeping gestures. Instantly she started to fall behind again, trotted, caught up…No, too tiring.
She halted and waited for the others and let Saranja lift her onto Levanter’s back. Benayu had had to come back into this world to greet the Magister and now took the chance to mount Pogo. Saranja seemed to be in a bad mood, probably cross about Benayu telling her in her head what to say just now. And perhaps it was also her way of dealing with the coming crisis. She was scared, and no wonder, and she was ashamed of being scared. It didn’t fit in with her idea of herself and that made her furious.
“Look at him!” she snarled suddenly. “Oozing charm at that appalling man as if he’s having a lovely time!”
“Ribek’s doing fine,” said Benayu absently. “He’s got him eating out of his hand.”
“Yes, of course he has. But he doesn’t need to enjoy it so much! And talking in that stupid voice! I think it’s grotesque!”
She strode on, seething. It was the Striclan voice, of course, that got her goat, Maja realized. She glanced at Benayu, hoping to share the joke, but he was deep in concentration again. Without warning a wave of apprehension washed over her. She felt utterly alone. Jex…
“I am here in the saddlebag, still in my living form. I will at least partially protect you until the last instant. There will not be three separate magical impulses for you to endure. They will be almost simultaneous, and then Benayu will convert you into your inert form. It would be as well to remind him.”
“All right…Benayu? Can I bother you? It isn’t important if you’re busy. Jex says I’ve got to remind you about changing me as soon as it’s over. He says he’ll look after me till the last minute. Something with eyes and ears, you said.”
“Not a problem. You won’t be able to move your eyes, so you’ll only see what’s straight in front of you.”
“That’ll be fine.”
He nudged Pogo closer, leaned over, plucked at her sleeve and effortlessly drew out a single dark green thread, which he coiled carelessly round his thumb.
“Listen,” he said. “I’d better tell you what’s going to happen. This business about the horses actually helps, because it’s the same as at the sheep-fold. You can’t do it if you’re screened, but if Saranja and I stay with the horses I can screen what I’m doing to them separately. I’ll get everything set, so I can do it in a flash, and I’ll keep in touch with you and Ribek in your heads. One of you just tell me when you’re ready. Count ten, and Saranja will take the hair off the feathers. That’ll activate it. We won’t be as close as we were last time, but you’ll still be able to feel the link between it and what we’re looking for, won’t you, Maja?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Right. Then while you’re busy your end Saranja and I will put the wings on the horses and Sponge—I’ll speed that up—and I’ll bring us. I’ve got everything ready to change you into your inert form the moment you’ve found what we’re looking for. I’ll do it whatever else is going on. All right? I’ve told Ribek in his head.”
“I’ve got to have Jex close. Do you think he counts as an animal?”
“I am stone again until you are through the gate. Take me out of the saddlebag and put me in your pouch. Put me on the ground when you tell Benayu that you are ready to proceed.”
Before Maja had finished doing that Benayu was back in the maze of his own mind.
She gazed around. They were traveling up a broad path beside a brick-banked canal, whose waters looked very different from the opaque and sluggish streams of the inner delta, clear and clean enough for her to be able to see a school of silvery minnows scuttling along beside the dark green weed that cloaked the further embankment, all the way from the canal bed to the high-tide mark a few inches above the surface.
The buildings either side were solid but elegant houses that somehow announced their owners’ richness without any parade of wealth. From snatches in the conversation ahead of her Maja could tell that the Magister was telling Ribek about those owners, and the trades that supplied their wealth, and Ribek was making Striclanishly knowledgeable remarks about those trades and at the same time trying tactfully to get the subject back to the history of the oyster-beds.
Yes, of course he was having a good time, and she was glad for him. But underneath, she guessed he was as scared as the rest of them, and this was his way of dealing with it, just as Saranja’s way was to be furious, and Benayu’s was to work on his magic, and hers—hers was to think about Ribek.
There was a bridge across the canal, at which the two rows of handsome houses stopped abruptly. A road crossed the bridge with a ten-foot brick wall on the far side. An iron gate barred the path they were on. There was an odd little Eye on the gate.
As Ribek and the Magister approached, a man appeared, uniformed like a soldier and armed with a pike. He opened the gate and saluted the Magister, but then moved as if to bar the horses.
“The animals are remaining outside, Gidder,” said the Magister. “Two of our honored visitors will remain with them. Supply them with anything they may need as befits Freepeople of our sister city of Larg.”
“There’s an Eye on the gate,” Maja whispered to Benayu.
He considered a moment.
“There to spot magicians,” he muttered. “Wouldn’t have let me through anyway. I wonder why. You’d better go. Don’t want to keep him waiting.”
She hurried to join Ribek, but she needn’t have worried, as the Magister was still impressing the guard with the importance of his visitors. Then all three walked on together through a landscape so different that Maja was tempted to look back and check that the roofs of Barda were still there beyond the wall. This was the same level, stream-threaded delta through which they had arrived, but here as kempt and tidy as that rich man’s garden with the pleasure yachts beside it had been. No tumbledown sheds and barns, no miserable horses in paddocks, only, a few hundred yards ahead of them now, an organized line of sturdy timber buildings along the banks of one of the larger
waterways. There seemed to be no one apart from themselves anywhere in all that flatness and emptiness.
“…established seven hundred and fifty-eight years ago,” the Magister was saying. “I am the sixty-third to hold the office of Magister. The oyster-beds themselves are owned by the individual members, but the Guild supervises the processing, checking and marketing. It was set up during the great oyster plague, when all the beds down the whole east coast of the Empire were ravaged by oyster worm. Only Barda escaped. Prices went sky high, our oyster-beds expanded out of all recognition and we have never looked back.”
“How exceedingly fortunate for you,” said Ribek. “Magical, almost.”
“Certainly not,” snapped the Magister. “Our competitors have many times accused us of employing rogue magicians to inflict the plague on them while sparing ourselves, but the authorities in Talagh—as you no doubt know, extremely strict in such matters—made a thorough investigation and cleared us completely. Exceedingly fortunate, yes. According to our records we have nineteen times over the centuries been spared such plagues, while others have suffered. It is thought to be something to do with the quality of the water, which is another reason for our security precautions. Lunatics believe that their ailments will be cured by immersion among the oysters. There is a flourishing illegal trade in bottled Barda water—much of it fake, of course. We attempt to discourage it. That is not the sort of publicity we want to encourage. The excellence of our oysters is advertisement enough.”
“And has that always been the case?”
“Indeed it has. Our earliest records include regular orders from the Emperor’s kitchens.”
“And those actual beds still exist, you tell me? I should very much like to see them with my own eyes.”
“So you shall, so you shall. We will do that first of all. You will want to talk to some of the old oystermen later, but it is high tide, and they are taking their rest. They won’t be returning till the tide is well into the ebb, when the work begins again. Now these beds here on your right…”
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