Angel Isle (12 page)

Saranja took the fear stone out of her pouch and laid it on the table.

“I’ve got a sort of all-purpose amulet,” she said. “It’s called Zald-im-Zald—”

“Zald-im-Zald!” whispered Chanad, shaken for the moment out of her composure. “How on earth…? That I
have
heard of. It is said that Asarta made it when she first came into her powers, but it has been lost for centuries. May I please see it?”

Saranja drew Zald out and laid it in front of her. Like Benayu, Chanad didn’t immediately pick it up, but sat in silence, simply studying it as if it had been a book, while Saranja told her how she had come by it.

“Benayu must put the fear stone back,” she said at last. “There is an intricate balance of the constituent parts, which it is dangerous to disturb. It is an extremely useful object, and you should know as much about it as possible. Benayu can tell me what he has found out and I will see if there’s anything I can add. While we are doing that perhaps you others will take the used dishes back into the kitchen.”

They did as she asked, and Maja was amused to see that Ribek was very pernickety about getting things clean, while Saranja was the slapdash one. They came back to find half a dozen books piled on the table. Chanad had two open before her and kept referring back and forth, reading from one and then leafing to and fro through the other. Benayu was looking listlessly at a third one, obviously passing the time while he waited for her. They settled down and waited too, until Chanad sighed and looked up.

“It must be over two hundred years since I last tried to read Solipsi,” she said. “And it was never an easy language at the best of times. But let’s start with the big piece of amber at the center, because it’s so different from the rest. At a guess it’s a summoning stone of some kind, but it would take more time and effort than I can spare to overcome the locks and find out what it summons. Something hugely powerful, but it would be extremely dangerous to try to use it without knowing its purposes.

“This one that puzzled Benayu is rather amusing. It’s an old demon-binder. You wake it in the ordinary way, and then it will tell the wearer how to use it.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” said Benayu. “It isn’t going to happen to us. There aren’t any demons to bind these days.”

Ribek laughed.

“In my recent experience
anything
can happen to us,” he said.

“There were demons in the story, weren’t there?” said Saranja. “When Tilja and the others were on their way home, all sorts of horrible monsters appeared, and even on the Imperial Highways people had to travel in convoys with a good magician to guard them.”

“Those were just petty demons,” said Chanad. “Mostly they were raised by inexpert magicians, ignorant of what they were dealing with, and their first act was to destroy those who had raised them. But there were worse than that. A few really powerful hidden magicians, like the one Tilja called Moonfist, refused to accept control and wanted all the power for themselves. But the Ropemaker and his helpers were too much for them, so as a last throw they deliberately summoned some of the great demons from deep under the earth and tried to use them against him. But demons are not like that. They cannot be used or controlled. They too destroyed their summoners and stalked the Empire, until the Ropemaker and his friends bound them one by one, and split the earth apart and cast them into its innermost fires and sealed them there.”

“That’s one of the reasons the Watchers gave for destroying my mother and father,” said Benayu. “They said they were planning to loose the demons again.”

“And if they catch me they will destroy me and say the same thing,” said Chanad calmly. “You too, Benayu. You are in revolt against their rule. They are clearly too powerful for you. When you see your cause is hopeless, why should you not attempt to loose the demons? That is their argument.

“But now I have work to do. I must make Maja’s amulet, and fetch your way-leaves and so on. It is better for me to do these things from the safety of my tower than for Benayu to continue to risk them on the open road. And you must rest, and in the morning I will set you on your way to Tarshu.”

CHAPTER
6

G
radually the nightmare of pursuit faded as the road flowed backward beneath the horses’ hooves, at first as a strange smooth path snaking through the wilderness that they had been crossing since they left the road, never visible for more than a few hundred paces ahead of them and behind them as the folds in the ground hid and revealed it. It was as if it existed only in the stretch they could see. Indeed, after a while, Maja began to realize that this was indeed the case.

Chanad had told her how to use the amulet she had given her as she left. She realized at once that it was going to be a wonderful help. She was growing erratically into the use of her extra sense as it increased. The amulet was a way of controlling that. It looked like a simple bracelet of colored glass beads and was mildly elastic, so that it would stay wherever she put it on her arm. The higher she wore it the less protection it gave, so that when she pushed it a little above her right wrist she became faintly aware of the presence of magic, while worn just above her elbow, which was as far as the thickness of her arm allowed it to go, the magical signal became almost as strong as it would have been if she had been wearing it on her left arm, where it had no effect at all.

Now as they traveled eastward through the deserted landscape she was able to adjust it until she could sense two steadily moving waves of magic laying and then removing the path before and behind them, leaving nothing to show that anyone might have passed that way. There was even a clean, dry cave with a stream beside it as the sun sank that first evening, which looked and felt as if it had been there for centuries, but for all they could tell hadn’t existed an hour ago and would vanish next day as soon as they had rolled up their bedding and gone. Inside, it felt disturbingly magical, but she moved the amulet down her arm and slept there untroubled.

Early the following afternoon they came out onto a public road and turned south. Then several days of farming country, increasingly rich and fertile, with quiet villages and busy little towns, and once the estate of some great lord. Here almost everyone wore the standard dress of the Empire that they had first seen on the road south of Mord and which Chanad had now supplied for her and the others. Soon she could tell from the various arrangements of patterns and beads where she stood in relation to the other travelers on the road.

It was as though nothing at all had changed in the twenty generations since Tilja’s time. Coming from the Valley, where nothing had changed either until the dreadful irruption of the wild horsemen from beyond the mountains, Maja didn’t find this strange.

They slept in farmers’ barns or inns. Night after night Maja waited for Jex to speak to her again in her dreams, though he had told her he was unlikely to. She woke each morning to find that her hand had crept under the pillow while she slept and was clasped around a little granite lizard, warm only with the warmth of her own bloodstream. And so it remained during each day, dangling from her neck beneath her blouse.

Everything seemed utterly peaceful and ordinary. Ribek relished every trivial happening or encounter along the way, and when nothing else took his attention was happy to talk about his mill, and didn’t think it at all strange that Maja should be so interested. Despite the urgency of their mission, it would have been easy to let their pace slacken, but for Saranja’s determination to drive them on. She seemed unafraid of what they were going to attempt at Tarshu. If anything, eager for it.

“You’ve been given a purpose, haven’t you?” Ribek told her one evening.

She shook her head.

“Not given,” she said. “It was there all along. I’ve found it.”

They heard no news from there, or any of the doings of the Watchers. Only twice, when they asked their way through the network of little roads that covered that whole tract, their informants hesitated and looked at them oddly before they answered.

“Is there a problem?” Ribek asked the second time.

The man shrugged and shook his head, as much in warning, Maja thought, as refusing to reply.

“It’s like that in the Empire,” said Benayu bitterly, as soon as they were out of earshot. “Fodaro had lived in it, remember. He used to say that however peaceful things seem, fear is never far below the surface. They’re content because they have to be, but that isn’t the same thing as being happy. These people have picked up somehow that the Watchers are active. They’ll whisper about it among themselves, but not to strangers.”

On the fifth day their road joined one of the great Imperial Highways that linked the major cities of the Empire together. It took them on in the same direction, a little east of south, but was very different from anything they’d used so far, two broad highways running in opposite directions, with way stations spaced along it where all travelers must stop for the night and pay the fees and bribes to have their way-leaves inspected and stamped.

Now, and more and more as they journeyed, they became aware of the immense and complex thing that surrounded them and called itself the Empire. To Maja it seemed half creature, half machine. Every one of the travelers Ribek talked to at the way stations—and he talked to scores of them because he was like that—was a separate cell in that creature, a tiny piece of that immense mechanism. Every one of them had the Emperor’s permission to be there, coming from one specified place, going to another, their passes stamped, their movements recorded, their regulated bribes taken by the way station clerks, who were themselves also just cells or cogs in the creature-machine’s labyrinthine intestines.

From their long acquaintance with the old story the three from the Valley were more familiar with all this than Benayu was, though he had lived all his life in the Empire. This was just as well, for now that he had no magic to perform or deal with he became an even more difficult companion, sitting listless and silent for hours on end, surly at any attempt to comfort or distract him, barely muttering his thanks when Saranja groomed Pogo for him, or Maja brought him the meal that Ribek had bought and prepared. His only relationship seemed to be with Sponge, who would lie with his head in his master’s lap when he brooded by the fire in the evenings, mourning with and for him.

Day followed day, and the journey became a routine. The clerks tried to cheat them in various ways, which Ribek dealt with wearily, as if he’d been traveling Imperial Highways for half his life. Levanter and Pogo seemed to be thriving on the journey, happy to canter mile after mile, and flagging no more than Rocky did in the heat of noon.

They regularly covered the distances between three and even four way stations in a single day. The air became warmer, the orchards grew peaches and pomegranates rather than apples and cherries. The individual farms gave way to vast estates, with gangs of serfs working fields that reached as far as the eye could see, where the sluggish rivers were lined with water hoists worked by patient oxen to feed the irrigation channels. The road doubled its width and still was busy, wagons or mule trains laden with merchandise, slave masters marching their men to some fresh task, a whole circus on the move, nobles and their trains cantering through along the special lanes kept clear for them, all the fizz and buzz of a contented and prosperous people. It was difficult to remember the bedrock of fear lurking below the surface.

Each evening, as they settled down in their plot at the way station, Maja would practice using her amulet to check around among their neighbors for any possible magical activity. There was almost always some minor hedge magic going on somewhere near by, causing one of the beads on her amulet to glow faintly, and then more strongly as she rotated it on her wrist, until the glowing bead was pointing toward the source of the signal. Different beads would glow according to the type of magic in use, and perhaps glimmer or pulse to some rhythm inherent in it. No doubt Benayu, if he had chosen, could have picked up the same signals, but with a conscious effort. He needed, so to speak, to open the door of his attention. For Maja, they were simply there, like birdsong.

Ten days or so into their journey they reached a small town where two Imperial Highways joined and continued south together, and here there was a larger than usual way station. All way stations had the same layout, a courtyard, roughly square, with a colonnaded arcade running round all four sides. Richer travelers could rent one of the spaces beneath the arches; the poorer or meaner ones slept in the open. A row of food stalls ran either side of the entrance. Unless it was raining, which it had done only once so far, Maja and the others slept in the open with the horses tethered beside them.

This evening they were close to the back wall of the way station, almost opposite the entrance. As the dusk thickened and Saranja nursed the fire she had just lit, Maja felt, like a sudden rap on the door of her mind, a quick pulse of magic from somewhere close to the entrance. A pause, and then another. And another. Each time a bead blinked brightly on her wrist, showing the source was moving steadily along parallel to the front wall. It reached the side wall and started back. She told Benayu and he roused himself from his torpor. Together they rose and looked.

Lamps were being lit under the arcade, and silhouetted against these she could see a single man working his way steadily across the courtyard, pausing before each group of travelers, emitting his pulse, and moving on. Halfway back he paused longer. One of the travelers rose and handed him what looked like a document. He glanced at it briefly, handed it back and moved on.

“Random check on magic-users at way stations,” said Benayu. “Jex told you they were doing it, remember?”

“Will you be all right?” said Saranja.

“Should be. If the Watchers didn’t spot me up at Mord…It doesn’t look the kind of job they’d waste anyone above second level on. There’ll be someone more powerful he can call on if he runs into trouble.”

Now he sounded completely confident, like Saranja, almost eager. This was his first real test against his enemy, and he was going to pass it. There was even a hint of the cocky young know-it-all he had seemed when they had first met him back at the sheep pasture.

It never came to the trial. Maja continued to watch, readying herself for the quick pulse of magic every time the man paused. He was only a couple of rows from them and was checking a license when there was a sudden, intense flare of power from immediately behind him. A bead on the amulet blazed bright enough to cast shadows. Ribek caught Maja as she fell sprawling. By the time she recovered the man had disappeared and there was a clamor of panic from where he had been, fading to a mutter of rumor that spread through the courtyard and died away. The silence was as dense as a marsh mist, dense with shock and fear.

“What on earth…?” whispered Saranja.

They looked at Benayu. He shook his head, perhaps in warning, perhaps in disbelief. He didn’t answer, but instead turned to Maja and muttered to her to protect herself. She slid her amulet down her arm. Even in those few words she had heard the strain in his voice. His lips began to move steadily, and his fingers danced through a pattern of small, precise gestures.

They waited, it seemed, for ever. On the other side of the courtyard somebody began to scream and couldn’t be stilled, but only one or two stars had pricked through the darkening sky when the Watcher came, and the nightmare was real.

Maja found herself locked into place. She couldn’t have moved a finger if she’d chosen. But she’d been looking directly toward where the magical explosion had occurred, so she saw him appear out of nowhere—a tall figure wearing a pale unornamented cloak and an ivory mask with only two round eyeholes and a dark slot for a mouth. Shuddering now with the nauseous impact of a Watcher, she slid the amulet up her arm as far as she could bear. It was important to know, to understand.

The space around him shimmered and became a sphere of light. He raised both hands head high with fingers spread and spoke five ringing syllables. The sphere rose and grew until it was large enough for everyone in the courtyard to see the scene it held, an upland pasture with a brown hare loping across it.

The viewpoint withdrew, enlarging the scene to show a stretch of sky from which a lion-headed thing, winged and taloned, came hurtling down. A bolt of lightning lanced up at it from where the hare had been. The winged creature absorbed it, plunged and struck, apparently at nothing, and then rose with the naked body of a man writhing in its clutch.

A voice spoke coldly in Maja’s head.

“This man chose to use unlicensed powers to take vengeance on a servant of the Emperor, and then to attempt to hide from the Emperor’s justice. He will now die slowly over very many days. Continue your journeys in peace, and let one of each party tell all you meet what you have seen. It will not go unnoticed if you fail to do so. Farewell.”

As he spoke the Watcher turned slowly on his heel. His empty eyes raked the courtyard. When he had completed the full circle he vanished.

There was a long, soft sigh as the air was released from several hundred lungs. Mutters and whispers followed. The screaming began again on the far side of the courtyard.