Benayu started to shake his head and looked away.
“We’re talking about Larg,” said Saranja. “I know you’ve done what you came to do and destroyed the Watchers, and now you want to go back to shepherding. But we’ve got friends in Larg. You’re a Freeman of the city.”
“Someone else can do it. I’m tired.”
“There’s no time to find anyone else,” said Ribek. “It’s already started.”
“Chanad…,” said Benayu.
“Tired too,” said the Ropemaker. “Take the both of you, anyway.”
Benayu turned to Maja, biting his lip.
“And you’re going to tell me the same, I suppose,” he said.
“Zara gave you something at Larg. It’s inside you, part of you now.”
He stared at her, startled.
“Please,” she said aloud.
“You’ll enjoy it,” whispered Ribek. “Impress them, he said. You can do a lot of fancy conjuring tricks. Just your sort of thing.”
Benayu managed to laugh and sigh at the same time.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “But then we’re going home. I’ll help you seal your Valley off, if that’s what you want, but then that’s absolutely and definitely it.”
“Want to talk to you about that,” said the Ropemaker. “You’re right, lad. Too young to take it all on yet. You go back to shepherding and a bit of hedge magic. Let the Free Magicians have a go at it for a while. It’ll come for you one day, mind, like it did for me. Bound to. But…No, listen to me, lad. And you three too.
“Like it or not, things have changed. We’ve done that between us, you and me. Destroyed the ring, right. Suppose we’d not done that, whole thing would’ve started all over again, Valley sealed off, Watchers gone, demons all over the place, magic running loose, new lot of magicians getting together to sort it all out, getting more and more power, changing their nature…
“See where I’m going? Round and round, round and round, trapped in a time loop, same as I was in the other universe. Told you, didn’t I? Ring does that. Like a rock in a river. Makes a whirlpool. Show you.”
He stopped and sat nodding gently, a tired old man, lost in a dream. Then he pulled himself together and raised his forearm, let his wrist go limp and slowly rotated his hand around it several times, apparently hypnotized by the movement. Maja found herself standing on a bridge over a broad stream, immediately below a weir. Upstream the water flowed smoothly toward the drop. From twigs and leaves carried on its surface she could see where the main current ran between the slacker patches along the banks. Downstream all she could see was unreadable hummocked foam vanishing into a fog bank. She had no need to be told that she was seeing an image of the past changing into the future. The weir was the instant of change. Now.
Close above the weir a boulder jutted up out of the water. Immediately below it, almost on the edge of the drop, a large eddy had formed. On its wrinkled surface circled a feather. It might have been the selfsame feather she had seen on the pool in the oyster-beds at Barda. Round and round, round and round, round and round…
The scene vanished, and she was back on Angel Isle.
The Ropemaker shook his head, sighed, and went on slowly, effortfully, with long pauses every few words.
“Bit of a strain. Even showing you that…Well, rock’s gone now. New times coming. You’re in at the start of it. Not famous, not rich, nothing like that. But you’re here. Planting a seed. What you do, next few days. How you plant it. That’s going to shape the tree. These Pirates. They’re part of it too. Not going away. Right, mister?”
“Certainly their past history would suggest otherwise,” said Striclan. “Even if Benayu were to destroy their whole battle fleet at Larg, they would try again, and with greater forces, elsewhere.”
Another rock in the stream, thought Maja. Another eddy. Round and round, round and round.
“New times coming, I told you,” said the Ropemaker. “Now’s your chance. Change all that. Won’t come again. Good luck.”
In an abrupt gesture of closure he started to brush the crumbs off his robe. Maja stared at him, bewildered. He couldn’t leave them like this, right in the middle of what he was saying. And he hadn’t even…
He looked up, saw her expression and grinned.
“Trouble, Maja?”
“Er…Ribek,” she muttered. “He’s…Can you…?”
“Better repay him, eh? Don’t want you haunting me. Wherever I’m going. Me, I can spare a year or two now. Still got to catch up with Zara. Pay him a bit of interest, maybe.”
Maja heard the last six words inside her head. He laid a bony finger against his nose and winked at her. He had put his last burden aside, and now, as time raced by him, scouring wrinkles and blotches into his skin, rheuming and reddening his eyes, he seemed to be returning almost to his childhood, boyishly cheerful at the prospect of his own going. She smiled understanding and glanced at Ribek, but he didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Owe Ribek a year or two, right?” he said. “Better do that. While I’ve got any. After that, you five hang around. Get your friend better. Going to need him. Knows what’s what with the Pirates. Speaks their lingo. Make a bit of a plan. I’ll send Chanad over. President-elect of Council. I’ll give her my ring to prove it. Don’t go till we’re both gone. Zara and me. Dusk, that’ll be. Like to have you there. Ready, Ribek? Help me up, someone.”
Saranja steadied him as he creakily rose. Maja did the same for Ribek. They faced each other, stooped and weary, Ribek now looking only barely the older man. Saranja made as if to stand clear but the Ropemaker put his hand on her forearm and stopped her. He took Ribek by both hands, drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. Time spooled between them.
Maja could actually watch the process of change as the once tall figure opposite her bowed and shrank into itself, and the flesh wasted beneath the mottled and sagging skin. At the same time, with her arm still round Ribek’s shoulders, she felt him straighten, felt the wiry muscles reclothing the bones, and the slower, firmer breathing, as the whole joy of being active, healthy flesh returned to the shriveled carcass.
It seemed an astonishingly short time before the Ropemaker let go of Ribek’s hands.
“Back to where you were?” he mumbled.
“I feel fine,” said Ribek cheerfully. “Ten years younger than that, if you want to know.”
The thin, purple lips of the old man smiled. Maja grinned and winked at him, but she wasn’t sure the bleared eyes could any longer see that far.
“Say good-bye to you now,” he said. “Won’t be up to it when the time comes. Good thing someone came looking for me. Lucky for me it was you. Soft spot for Valley folk. Ever since Tilja’s time. Very fond of her. Helped me a lot.
“Benayu, lad. Twice the magician I was, your age. Five times wiser. Your friend Fodaro—did well by you. Zara can’t speak. Says to renew her blessings.”
Maja couldn’t speak either, for tears, but she ran and hugged the old man. Saranja, surprisingly, was also weeping-dumb, but when she had helped the Ropemaker back to where Zara lay and eased him down beside her, she knelt and kissed him, then rose and came blindly back. Nobody wanted to talk, so they sat for a long while in silence. Chanad came across without a word and joined them.
At length Ribek gave a deep sigh.
“Well, I suppose we’d better do as he said and start thinking about what happens next,” he said. “How are you feeling, Striclan? You’re going to have to do a lot of the talking, telling us how the Pirates operate, all that.”
“I am certainly well enough now for that.”
“All right,” said Ribek. “Let’s go back to what you were trying to tell the Ropemaker. Why Larg, when there isn’t any magic in Larg?”
“For that precise reason. I think I told you that the Southern Federation was originally an alliance of warring tribes. As time went by these developed into a number of competing interests. There is the Manufacturing Interest, and the Farming and Forestry Inte
rest, and the Military Interest, and so on. However, they have retained the original tribal method of settling disputes. This they call the Constitution.
“Once every six years all the members of each Interest elect a number of Syndics to represent them in the Syndicary, and make the laws and decide what taxes to raise and where the money is to be spent. It was they who decided on the invasion of the Empire, to force it to open its borders to world trade. The invasion was sponsored by the Marine Interest and the Military Interest, for obvious reasons, and the Manufacturing Interest, who foresaw vastly increased expenditure in weapons, which they would make, and so on.
“Other Interests were strongly against the war, but the idea was sold to the public at large with the promise of an easy victory against a backward and superstitious nation. But popular support is rapidly weakening in the light of the fatalities around Tarshu, the full extent of which has yet to be revealed. An influential committee of the Syndicary has been sent to investigate and report.
“The military have been aware for some time of the lack of magic in Larg, but have regarded a possible occupation of the city as an unnecessary diversion of resources. Now, though, they see it as a welcome opportunity to demonstrate to the Syndics that the resistance at Tarshu is the exception, and that large parts of the Empire will fall very much more easily into their hands. If all goes well Larg will offer no resistance at all, thus demonstrating to the tender consciences back home that heavy loss of life among civilians is not a necessary corollary of an invasion. Meanwhile the Syndics will have been able to witness a large operation carried out with military efficiency and complete success.”
“And they’ll go home no wiser than they came. Less, if anything,” said Ribek. “Presumably they’re the ones we need to talk to.”
“They will be a mixed bunch,” said Striclan. “Some will be vociferous supporters of the war, either on ideological grounds or because they are actually in the confidence of the military and have their own hands in the till. Others in the Marine and Business Interests will have lost their original enthusiasm, and are now more doubtful in view of the unexpected cost. Others, in particular the powerful Homemakers’ Interest, will have been against the invasion from the start.
“I gather that we are going to travel magically to the All-Conqueror and either persuade them to call off the assault or to prevent it by magical means. Our first problem will be to get any kind of a hearing. For a start, we will need both to claim and seem to be much more influential than we in fact are. I assume Benayu can alter our dress and appearance….”
“I’d better be a grown-up,” said Maja.
“Perhaps the first thing is for Benayu to go and take a look on this airboat,” said Ribek. “What did you say it was called?”
“The All-Conqueror. She is the sister ship of the one you saw destroyed at Tarshu.”
“That’s a bit of a risk, isn’t it?” said Saranja. “I mean, if it happened once it could happen again, and with these Syndic people aboard…”
“The official version is that that was a freak natural storm, a once-in-a-thousand-years catastrophe,” said Striclan. “There will be hired magicians aboard the All-Conqueror, Benayu, as well as elaborate defenses against magical intrusion.”
“I’ll be careful. Come along, Sponge,” said Benayu.
The two of them vanished.
“I suppose I shall become accustomed to this,” said Striclan.
“I haven’t,” said Saranja. “Even when I’m using Zald I keep thinking, This isn’t really me. You’d better have a rest, Strick. You’re still looking utterly washed out.”
“Striclan’s not the only one,” said Ribek. “Yesterday was hard as they come on all of us, specially Maja, and then how much sleep did we get? Three hours? Four, maybe. We’d all be dying on our feet if this weren’t Angel Isle.”
Sleep came early and deep. Maja dreamed of a ruined city. She thought it was Larg, but there wasn’t anything she recognized, and the river was much too small. Whatever had destroyed it (enemy attack? Earthquake? Or simply the unimaginable touch of time?) had happened years before. It was utterly deserted—nobody in the smashed streets, no birds nesting in crannies, no lizards scuttling among the fallen masonry. She wasn’t even there herself—she was just seeing it from some other place and time. Now something moved, a white horse, Pogo, disconsolately wandering around that emptiness, looking for his wings so that he could find fields and woods and streams, and horses to be friends with. He came to a tall, featureless wall, for some reason still standing. Once there had been a picture on it. A lot of it had flaked away but Maja could still make out some of what Pogo had been looking for, a green slope, two horses grazing beside a lake. Pogo stepped into the picture and joined them. He was a unicorn now, but Maja couldn’t see the top half of his horn, because the paint was missing from that bit of the tree.
She stirred in her sleep, distantly heard voices—Benayu’s was one of them, so he must be back—and went to sleep again. That dream meant something, she told herself as she slid back into oblivion, but she had no idea what.
A faint voice spoke in her head, familiar but changed.
“Maja.”
Jex, but not in his live form, nor that of the little granite pendant. Something softer. Lichen didn’t have ears. She answered in her head.
“Jex! What’s wrong? I thought you were better.”
“I am indeed better, but I am resting, as you are. In my live form I continue to experience bouts of nausea, which of its nature lichen does not experience. How are you, Maja?”
“All right, except terribly tired. What about your friends?”
“They vary. Three of us have, alas, perished, and eight more will take a long while to recover their full health, if they ever do.”
“I thought you didn’t die.”
“Not from natural causes, and very rarely from others. It is equally rare for one of us to come into existence, so this has been a great loss and a great grief. I do not know when there was last such mortality among us.”
“I’m very sorry. I suppose it was all our fault for wanting to find the Ropemaker.”
“If it was anybody’s fault it was mine, for revealing my existence to Fodaro. But I think that when we come to discuss the matter my friends will accept that the increasing power and knowledge of the Watchers was already a serious threat to our way of existence, and would eventually have had to be countered. We could not have done this on our own, so some kind of alliance with one or more human magicians was essential. My choice of Fodaro and Benayu was accidental, but despite these deaths it has turned out to be fortunate.
“Be that as it may, I think we will certainly decide that all future contact with humans, indeed anything that might make them aware of our existence, is to be avoided. I must ask you and your friends, including the magician Chanad, never to speak of our existence, even among yourselves, and as far as possible to forget about us altogether.”
“Oh, Jex, that’s impossible! I won’t talk about you to anyone or say anything about other universes and all that. I think Chanad will understand. But you saved my life several times over….”
“As you did mine, Maja.”
“I can’t forget you! I’ll remember you as long as I live.”
“And I you, Maja. Farewell.”
“Good-bye, Jex. Good-bye.”
She wept in her dream, but woke to find her cheeks dry. The shadows of the circling boulders were long across the grass. There was a patch of yellow and blue lichen on the boulder beside her. She stroked it gently but it didn’t respond.
The others were awake, still discussing how to deal with the Pirates once they were aboard the airboat. Benayu was back from wherever he’d been. They seemed to have pretty well worked out most of their plans. Maja sat up and nudged Ribek’s side.
“Is Benayu going to make me older?” she whispered. “I won’t have to say a lot, will I?”
“You’ll be a grown woman, representing agricultural
interests in the Empire. I don’t think the military will be very interested in that. The Syndics might be, as the Empire’s economy is mainly agricultural. Benayu says…it’s too complicated to explain, but you’ll be all right. He’s going to do a much trickier version of what we did with the jewel seller at Mord. They’ll have translators aboard, so Striclan’s not going to let on he speaks their language. If he wants you to say anything important, Benayu can tell you in your mind. He says the magicians they’ve hired are fairly good but nothing special. Normally one of them would spot what we’re up to, but he’ll put them out of action. What do you want to look like?”
“I don’t mind. Only not too young and pretty. And not like I’m going to look when I’m forty.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I just don’t want to know,” she said. (Him knowing was what mattered, of course. No. She’d got to stop thinking like that.) “But can I have white hair?” she added hurriedly.
“Tell Benayu.”
He turned back to the others. Striclan was explaining something about how two of the Syndics were enemies in public but were actually both in the pay of the same big mining company, which wanted to start mining in the Empire. Maja’s attention drifted. She was sitting companionably with Ribek, but being careful not to touch him. Perhaps too careful, she thought. She oughtn’t to need to be careful about it.
In that other existence she’d been planning to go back and live at the mill with him. Now she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t be better to go back to Woodbourne. It depended on what Saranja, and Striclan of course, decided to do, whether they simply rebuilt the farm and lived together there. They weren’t making much attempt to conceal their delight in being back in each other’s company, but it was difficult to imagine them both settling down to the steady, repetitive annual round of life on a farm in the Valley. They were born to be adventurers, both of them. There weren’t any adventures in the Valley.
That made her wonder about her dream again. It had been such a strong vision. Pogo without his wonderful wings, just an ordinary sad white horse. Not magical at all, never any more. And then stepping into the picture, and becoming a unicorn. Unicorns are as magical as they come, but this was only a unicorn in a crumbling picture. Half his horn was already gone. The rest of it, the rest of him, the rest of the whole magical world, would soon be a drift of colored flakes on the cobblestones, until a breeze blew up and wafted it away.
Angel Isle Page 39