Angel Isle (15 page)

With her free hand Saranja raised the feathers high above her head.

“Ramdatta!” she cried above the clamor of the storm.

Before the world went black Maja felt the granite pendant she held stir and become live flesh.

A stone voice spoke in the darkness.

“We must go at once. The dragon guarding the valley is aware of us.”

Still she couldn’t stir, but someone else must have heard that voice, for now as she swam up into consciousness Maja felt herself to be lying face down and half bent over something that jolted unsteadily into her stomach, and with something that held her fast when she tried to stir…. Yes, lashed onto a saddle—they were already hurrying away….

“Awake?” said Ribek’s voice. “Hold it a moment—we’re in a hurry. Jex…”

“I heard him too.”

The lashings eased. Ribek steadied her as she sat up. They were already well into the sunk lane. The others were a little way ahead.

“Great you’ve come to,” said Ribek, panting as they hurried to catch up. “We’re going to need you to tell us where the brute’s got to. Something’s happened to Benayu. He’s pretty well passed out on his feet.”

Maja managed to pull herself together. The magic-storm over Tarshu seemed to have lessened with the destruction of the airboat. She felt for her amulet.

It had changed. The cord was there, but strung through only four or five beads, and those chipped and sharp-cornered. Dimly she remembered a series of snaps and crackles close above her wrist as the amulet had fought to withstand the immense impulse of Jex’s return. She pushed what was left up her arm. Nothing happened. It wasn’t working. But, but…

“I am shielding you. Is it enough?”

“Less! Less!…There!”

Laid open now to more and more of the tangled magical flow around, reaching out through it with all her soul-energy, she picked out the single strand that came from the guardian dragon.

It was still some distance to the south, but racing toward them. There was a change in it. When they’d watched it from the woods above the mill its power had seemed somehow diffuse, because its attention had been spread over the whole valley. Now it was concentrated, aimed at a single target…

“Hurry!” she yelled. “It’s coming! It knows where we are!”

They stumbled on down the track. It was dangerous going, trenched as it was by the axle-deep ruts. Saranja was dragging Benayu by the elbow. The only hope Maja could see was the shelter of the thick stone walls of the mill, but they weren’t going to make it, nothing like. Pogo had vanished. Rocky was on the verge of bolting, just as he’d been at Woodbourne when he’d seen the airboat. Maja slid herself down just in time, and he was away, with Levanter behind.

The dragon…

“Get against the wall!” she yelled. “It’s almost here!”

They huddled against the chalk wall and stared up. The pelting rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The fringes of the whirling storm that had destroyed the airboat were screaming overhead, shredding the cloud-layer into racing tatters, suddenly hidden behind a glare of blazing orange, lighting the whole lane. Desperately Maja flung herself down into the great rut at her feet and huddled there as the dragon’s blazing breath blasted against the far chalk wall. She felt her hair beginning to frizzle in the roasting air, and then it was over.

Shakily she climbed to her feet. Everything was pitch dark after the glare, but the others must have hidden in the rut, as she had, because now she heard Ribek’s voice asking if she was all right, and a moment later Saranja’s furious yell.

“Benayu! Benayu! Wake up! Pull yourself together! Do something! You’re our only hope!”

And then the double crack of flesh on flesh as she slapped him twice on the cheek, and Benayu’s dazed voice.

“What…? Where…?”

“The dragon! It’ll get us next time! Do something! You’re our only hope, you and your stupid magic!”

“Oh…Sorry…Right.”

“Where’s the dragon, Maja?”

That was Ribek. She tried to concentrate.

“It’s starting to turn…It’s not coming back! Yes, it is, only it’s circling so it can come
down
the lane next time.”

And it would be no use hiding in the rut again when it did. The flaming breath would scour the floor of the lane and they’d all four of them be ashes where they lay.

“Right,” said Benayu’s voice, firmer now. “I think…yes…Tell me what it’s up to, Maja.”

She felt his magic beginning to gather itself, and further off the dragon nearing and nearing, fighting all the while to hold its course through the screaming wind. Steady-voiced, she called out the news of its approach. It was at the top of the lane, plunging down the slope…any moment now…

She reeled as Benayu’s magic intensified, but Jex’s shield caught her, steadied her. The magic built to a single intense, directed pressure, not against the dragon, but…

The wind fell suddenly still, as if the whole world held its breath for the encounter…

And now they could all four see the monster against the glare from Tarshu, hear the booming bell-beat of its wing strokes, watch as it lowered its head for the blast that would roast them alive…

Benayu withdrew his powers and at once the tempest they had been holding back for those short moments screamed in again, its fury doubled, tripled in intensity by being so pent. It snatched the dragon from its course and whirled it away like a blown leaf. Maja felt its powers flare up and vanish as it was smashed into something unseen.

Jex’s shield enveloped her in a bubble of calm.

Dazed by the sudden come-and-go of those immense forces, she needed a moment to gather her wits. Benayu lay in a huddle on the floor of the lane, with Ribek stooping over him. Now he knelt, expertly hoisted Benayu across his shoulders as if his inert form had been one of the heavy grain sacks in his mill, and rose.

Shakily they hurried on down the lane while the tempest roared inland. When they reached the mill they found that half its roof had been ripped clean off, and beams had fallen across the walkway by which they had come. As they worked to clear them, the horses came nervously into the mill yard, their panic-flight halted by the river. Levanter must have stayed with Rocky, as usual, and Pogo then found and joined them. Now, stumbling upon their human friends, and being offered a feed of grain from the store bins, they seemed to decide that sanity had been restored to the world. While they ate, Ribek and Maja rifled the larder for still-edible food. Ribek heaved Benayu across Levanter’s back, and then, weary beyond belief, they crossed the river, worked their way back along beside the splintered woods until they came to a stretch which the tempest had left comparatively undamaged, and there slept dreamless under the trees.

PART TWO

BARDA

CHAPTER
7

“M
aja.”

The voice in Maja’s head seemed as level and toneless as ever, but somehow different, as though the rock from which it came was no longer granite, but something lighter and less enduring

“Oh, Jex, thank you! We’d all four be dead without you.”

“No thanks are due. I in my turn would be dead without you. In human terms I am now convalescent. Until I regain the true balance between my two modes of existence I will return to the form of a pendant that you can wear around your neck.”

“But it will be you now, not just an, um, extension of yourself?”

“Yes, I will be fully there, but protected from excessive magical input. Unfortunately that will also mean that I am unable to protect you from it. However, I will automatically be shielding you from everyday magic more effectively than I have recently been able to do.”

“I’m getting stronger, I think. I like being able to feel what’s going on, most of the time.”

“Wear me against your skin and I will give you all the protection I can. With clothing in between I will give you less. If you do not wish for my help at all, put me in your pouch. One more thing. I still cannot act with confidence in the material world of either of my existences, so except in an emergency I will continue to speak to you in dreams.”

“This isn’t a dream. You make dreams up, though you don’t realize that’s what you’re doing. This is happening while I’m asleep, but it’s real.”

“Yes it is real, just as the danger we are in is real. Two dangers. First, since I was unable to prevent it, the Watchers must surely have been aware of what Benayu did last night. They still have to recover from the major effort of summoning their storm, and then for a day or two they will be fully occupied in repairing their protective web over Tarshu. We must be far from here before they start to look for us, leaving no magical trail. Benayu would leave such a trail, faint but not too faint for a good magician to detect if one was to come looking, as one surely will. So would Zald-im-Zald and Rocky….”

“What about the other two? Chanad did things to Levanter and Pogo….”

“Chanad?”

“A magician we met on the way. She was all right. She said she was the last of the Andarit. She—”

“Tell me later. I cannot keep contact with you very long. The horses. Yes, probably they will now leave a faint trail. But if you and I follow last of all I will absorb all such traces. That is the best we can do.

“Secondly, I myself am a source of danger. Another creature of my kind may by an error of judgment have betrayed our presence in this universe to the Watchers, so…”

He paused for two or three seconds, and went on as if there’d been no interruption.

“…if that is the case, they would be hunting us by every means at their disposal, but for their preoccupation with repelling the Pirates. If they were to find me, they would find you. As it is, all of my kind are in hiding for the time being and dare not communicate with each other as we are used to doing, so I can no longer bring news of the Watchers’ activities. We will henceforth have to guess. Do you understand?”

“Yes. But I still want to say thank you. And I’m glad it’s me you can talk to.”

“I reciprocate your gladness.”

“Wait. Now we’ve got to look for the Ropemaker. How do we do it? Where do we start?”

“I had intended to ask among my friends. I cannot now do that. I will consider the matter.”

She slid back into dreamlessness until something began to snag at her sleeping mind. She woke, and knew it was something Jex had said. Just one word. She had a vague feeling it was something she wasn’t supposed to know. He’d made a mistake, hesitated, and then gone on. Perhaps she’d remember in the morning, when she was telling the others. She lay for a while looking up at a few stars shining through a gap in the branches overhead, and wasn’t aware of falling asleep again, but she must have done, because now the trees were gone and the sky was full of stars, far, far too many of them.

In her dream she pushed herself up and looked around. She’d been lying alone on an empty hillside. Close beside her in the turf glimmered a little circular pool. She put her hand on the rim and leaned over the pool, propping her weight on her arm. The reflected sky seemed to rush toward her. Pool and hillside were gone and she was falling into the reflected sky. Moons and stars streamed past. Great cloudy masses, dark or glowing, floated by. Now all were gone and she was falling toward the last star of all, the very end of everything.

And now she was standing on a hillside much like the one she had left. Directly in front of her rose the doorway to Chanad’s tower. There was no tower, though, no moat, only the wooden door itself, the arch that held it, and the carved face above.

She watched the door open of its own accord. Immediately beyond was another door, so close that they must have been almost touching. It was made of…she didn’t know what. A sort of solid mist, it looked like, twinkling all over its surface with innumerable flickers of light, no sooner glimpsed than gone. She became aware of the magic of all the worlds rushing past her and on through the closed door as if it weren’t there, like the tumbling flurry of a mill race through a sluice. That was what caused the door to flicker as it did.

But it wasn’t a door in any case, she realized. It was only as far as she could see. It wasn’t dark beyond that point. There was light there, but it wasn’t her kind of light. There was stuff beyond, and movement, and happenings, but…

“Your eyes were not made for such seeing,” said a sweetly soft voice overhead. “Nor your mind for such imagining.”

She looked up expecting to see that the stone face at the top of the arch was flesh now, but the arch was gone, and the door, and she was awake under the trees, looking up at some different stars shining through a gap in the branches.

The word that had snagged on her mind had been “this.”

“
Another creature of my kind may by an error of judgment have betrayed our presence in
this
universe to the Watchers.”

So there was another universe where Jex might have been present.

With that knowledge safe in her mind she fell asleep, dreamless once more, and when she next woke it was broad daylight.

She was still blinking in its brightness when she realized that something important had changed. Though she was being gently shielded from all the magic around her, that must be Jex, because her amulet wasn’t doing anything. She forced her eyes open and peered mistily at it. Last night she had felt its beads splintering under the magical stress they were trying to shield her from. Now they were all but one gone. That remaining one was a dull black sphere that had never shown any sign of life at all. She had sometimes wondered what it was for. Perhaps a different form of magic, one they hadn’t met yet, so she’d better go on wearing the amulet, just in case. Anyway, it would do as a sort of luck charm.

The others were talking in low voices. She groaned and sat creakily up. Saranja had a fire going and Ribek was gutting a fish to grill over it. Benayu was staring at the thin smoke, pale-faced and troubled-looking, but apparently fully aware and listening to what Ribek was saying.

“…but if they’ve got it right—rivers don’t always, this far from the source, and they’d only picked it up from some gulls who’d flown in to escape the fighting—three of the Watchers and several other magicians who were helping them died in the battle and the rest are too busy repairing the damage to do anything else, so with a bit of luck there won’t be any dragons for a while, or hawks or wild dogs, and we can take the easiest route out, though I’ve no idea where we are going now.

“Hello, Maja. Ready for breakfast? I hope you slept well. You needed it.”

“I still do—I could sleep for ever. But I’ve got something important to tell you. It’s from Jex.”

She explained, again somehow remembering every word.

“He’s right, of course,” said Benayu. “It’s not just the dragon. I messed around with their tempest. They’ll have felt that…. Oh, yes, they’ll have felt that.”

Something about him had changed in the night. Two things. He now looked openly scared and wasn’t trying to hide it, but under the creakiness of his voice there was a note of satisfaction. Last night, up on the naked hillside, he had fought the first skirmish in his war against the Watchers, and won. If he could do it once, he could do it again.

“You’re not going to be tackling the Watchers all by yourself,” said Saranja briskly. “We’re going to find the Ropemaker before that.”

“It’ll take more than him.”

“Then we’ll find more than him,” said Ribek.

“Perhaps the Sheep-faces have been sent to help too,” said Ribek.

“Look,” said Benayu impatiently. “The one thing we do know is what Jex said—we’ve got to get away from here before the Watchers pull themselves together enough to start looking for us. We can think about what happens next when we’ve done that. Till then it doesn’t matter which way we go, provided it’s as far from Tarshu as possible and as quickly as possible. And we’d better keep well clear of the way we came, because there’ll still be a bit of a trail there.”

“That’s a thought,” said Ribek. “Jex is going to wipe out our new trail, so suppose we follow the old one for a bit and then branch off, with luck they’ll think we’re still going back the way we came.”

“Right,” said Saranja, rising fluidly to her feet. “Come along, horses—finished your breakfast? Lazy times are over…. We’re going to have to let them take it a bit easy to start with—they’ll be stiff as timber after last night, and it looks like Levanter’s a bit lame in his off fore.”

Twenty minutes later they were on their way.

The horses were in better shape than Saranja had feared, apart from Levanter’s mild lameness, so to spare him and at the same time put as much ground as possible between themselves and Tarshu, Ribek and Maja rode Rocky while Saranja activated the jewel in Zald and loped unwearying beside them. Still half shattered by yesterday’s efforts Maja dozed most of the way, with shreds of her dream sifting again and again into her sleep and the same thoughts and questions recurring and recurring when she woke. She kept in particular remembering Benayu raising his two hands in front of him, palm to palm and almost touching, and then, when he noticed what he was doing, snatching them apart and laying them in his lap.

Two hands, two doors, two universes.

He’d been about to explain how Fodaro had caused the explosion, and then decided it was too dangerous for them to know. Something had to be got just right. Too little, and nothing would happen. Too much, and you got what Fodaro had got. The two things—not hands, not doors; they were just ways of picturing it—the two
universes
must barely touch for the briefest possible instant. But Fodaro had overdone it—overdone it on purpose, perhaps—just to make sure.

And the reason why it was impossible, even for Fodaro, to imagine the reality behind his equations was that what the equations described was the reality of an unimaginable universe. This was part of the hidden knowledge, the truth that was too dangerous for her to know. She was guessing, of course, but at the same time she was certain. And certain too that she needed to know it.

The storm must have traveled far inland. They slept that night in the still-standing half of an isolated barn. A falling beam had broken the back of one of the sheep that must have taken shelter there when the storm struck, so they ate fresh roast meat for the first time in many days, and Maja snuggled down into the straw dozily content despite her weariness and anxiety, and fell asleep to the sound of Sponge gnawing the chop bones.

“I’ve been trying to think about the old story,” said Saranja as they breakfasted off liver and kidneys. “I’ve never done that before—it was just a stupid story, as far as I was concerned, but until Jex tells us what to do, it’s pretty well the only clue we’ve got. What I was thinking was that Tilja and the others were in exactly the same fix as we were, looking for Faheel when he could have been anywhere in the Empire. I always thought that one of the stupidest bits was the way they did it—with a wooden spoon, for heaven’s sake! The point was it had been carved from a tree which had grown from the stone of a peach from Faheel’s garden. That was enough of a connection for the thing to know where he was and point that way. We can do better than that. We’ve got an actual hair from the Ropemaker’s head.”

“Of course!” said Ribek. “And right at the beginning he’d hidden it in the Valley, where there aren’t any other magicians. A clue we were the only ones could find. Just in case it was needed. What about it, Benayu?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “it would be worth a try…. Yes…If Maja…No, doing it isn’t a problem, apart from two things. Hiding what we’re doing from the Watchers is something else. For a start we wait till we’re a lot further away from Tarshu. Even then it’s going to be tricky. Saranja will have to take the hair off the feathers, and that will make both of them strongly magical, but I think I can screen that. Jex and Maja—it’s got to be her, and that’s one problem—will have to wait outside the screen and when everything’s ready Saranja will bring the hair to her and whisper the name. That’s going to send out another colossal signal, and Jex is going to have to try to stop it getting through to the Watchers while Maja follows what happens. But you can’t do that if you’re screened or shielded, that’s the other problem. It will probably lay you out for a bit, like it did at Tarshu, but maybe when you come to…I don’t know.”