Angel Isle (23 page)

The night seemed endless, the desert all the same, the moon moving oh so slowly westward, the constellation of the Fisherman in the northern sky circling around the Axle-pin, invisible below the horizon, at the same slow pace as the earth turned over. She felt herself falling asleep again.

“Pinch me,” she said.

“No fun. Why don’t you sing to me? What about ‘Cherry Pits’?”

“‘Cherry Pits’?” she whispered.

“Cherry Pits” was an old, old song which mothers sang over cradles and children used for counting games. The words, when they meant anything at all, were about two lovers sharing a bowl of cherries and making some absurd promise and sealing it with a kiss for every one they ate.

“What’s so awful about ‘Cherry Pits’?” he asked.

“Nothing…Nothing…”

“Tell me.”

“I…I can’t.”

She knew perfectly well what was wrong with “Cherry Pits,” but it was a place in her mind she didn’t go. It had a door like the one in the corner of the Council Chamber at Larg, a door which she had magically caused to disappear. She had made a gap in time. On one side of the gap she had let the chickens out and scattered their grain for them and collected the eggs and brought them back into the kitchen, and on the other side of the gap, two evenings later, she had put the chickens away for the night and was coming back into the kitchen with the eggs they had laid in their secret nests during the day.

And in that gap Saranja had gone away.

Ribek was silent for a while, then said, “Well, if you can’t, you can’t. How about something else? ‘The Gooseboy’?”

“All right.”

She was astonished to find that Ribek, who could do everything so gracefully, couldn’t sing in tune. Never mind. It was still a lot more fun than being pinched. They sang on for the rest of the night, all the songs they could remember. Songs and stories were almost the only thing Maja’s mother had managed to give her. Dawn came much sooner than she’d expected, and then, almost at once, it was day.

The tribespeople halted and gathered around. Some of them threw back their hoods to reveal dark, beaky faces, their cheeks patterned with tattoos. By daylight she saw that several of them were carrying stout staffs, pointed at one end. Three of them were only shoulder high to the others—women, Maja knew through her extra sense, but without that it would have been hard to tell. The sack-like figure from Pogo’s back was also a woman, but very old. The men lifted her down, set her on her feet, handed her a staff and waited.

She stood for a while, muttering to herself, and then hobbled off using the staff, halted again and drew something from under her cloak. As far as Maja could see it was just three twigs lashed together to form a triangle with pebbles fastened to two corners and a length of cord to the third. She gripped the end of the cord between finger and thumb, swung the object back and forth a couple of times and with a twist of her wrist set it circling in a vertical plane at her side, raising a thin, throbbing whine as the air whistled through it. More of the same mysterious desert magic began to flow.

Maja heard Ribek gasp beside her.

“She’s calling to the water!” he muttered.

The woman turned slowly. The note changed, rose shriller and shriller, almost beyond hearing, began to fall again. She turned back a little, until the pitch was at its highest, and pointed.

Two of the men stood side by side with their arms round each other’s waists. A third man placed a leather pad on their shoulders, lifted the old woman, settled her onto the pad and took her staff from her. It was all quickly and easily managed, as if they’d done it many times before. They strode off, black against the glare of the risen sun. Everyone followed.

Twice they stopped to let the old woman, without dismounting, swing her water charm again and correct their course. The third time they let her down and she hobbled forward and swung her charm again. The whining note didn’t vary its pitch as she turned. She took her staff back and prodded it feebly into the ground.

Five of the guides gathered round, three using the pointed ends of their staffs to loosen the earth, and the other two scooping it away. The old woman took out her charm and swung it again. The rest stood by, humming in the backs of their throats, varying the sound in time with the pulsing throb of the charm, as the old woman spun it faster and faster.

“There’s some kind of water-spirit hiding here, I think,” said Ribek. “She used her charm to find it, and now they’re summoning it up. I can hear the charm talking to it, not in the water-language I know, but it’s words all right. It sounds as if they’re bargaining. Maybe the spirit doesn’t want to come, and the charm’s saying it’s got to unless it sends us some water…Ah, here it comes.”

Silently the hole that the guides had been digging filled from below with beautiful clear water. The tribesmen stood aside and gestured to their charges to drink.

When everyone had had all they wanted and filled their flasks and gourds the horses drank hugely, but the pool stayed full. The old woman swung her charm briefly while the tribespeople chanted.

“We from the north would also like to add our thanks, O spirit of the desert,” said Ribek formally.

As he spoke the water seeped away as quickly as it had come. The tribespeople filled in the hole they had dug and tamped the earth carefully down.

“Shade for the horses is the next thing,” said Saranja. “You can’t tell with Rocky, the ponies look pretty tough, and Pogo’s got desert blood in him. My warlord used to ride a beast like him, and it was astonishing what it could put up with. But Levanter’s really going to suffer. I’ll try and explain to them. I’m not sure how much they know about horses.”

Enough, it turned out. According to the functionary at Larg who’d made the arrangements, the tribespeople understood as much of the language of the Empire as they needed to know what was being said to them, but refused to speak it themselves. They nodded as soon as Saranja pointed at the horses and the sun and then the shadow of her hand held over Levanter’s flank. Everyone formed up as before and they headed off northwest. The only difference was that four of their guides now led the way. Every hundred paces or so, all at the same time, they broke into a little dancing shuffle, gesturing in front of them with a pushing-apart motion, and now and then Maja could sense some poisonous creature scuttling or slithering out of their path. But nonetheless the ones with the main party walked with bent heads, as if scanning every step of the way ahead, and from time to time would use their staffs to tip a rock over, in case anything might still be lurking beneath it.

The sun was already seriously hot before they reached the place they were apparently heading for, a low, rocky outcrop, promising little relief, but it turned out to have a narrow gully on its northern side. A few wizened bushes clung to the rock in what shade there was. The tribespeople broke off enough branches to light a small fire in the middle of the gully, and once it was going they twisted scraps of oily rags round the ends of short sticks, got them smoldering and worked down the gully, poking them into crevices in the rock. They used the butts of their staffs to squash whatever came scuttling out.

That done, they placed the rags carefully against the embers so that they would continue to smolder without actually burning, and then rigged up a remarkably effective awning over the gully, using their robes and the rugs from the travelers’ saddlebags laid across cords weighted with boulders at either end and propped here and there by a couple of staffs lashed together to form a pole. Stripped off, they seemed astonishingly skinny, with tough little nodules of muscle clinging to the narrow bones. Every inch of their skin was covered with patterns of tattoos. They obviously preferred to eat separately, so the travelers settled at the other end of the awning, with the horses in between, and picked and chose among the excellent fare provided by the citizens of Larg.

“I’ve been thinking about the covenant,” said Saranja in a low voice, though there was no one to overhear. “The one between Zara and the Watchers, I mean.”

“So have I,” said Ribek. “I don’t get it. All right, we can guess what’s on her side of the bargain. Larg is a sort of hostage. Her wards round the city are obviously pretty impressive, but the Watchers must be strong enough to deal with them if they want to….”

“And they must want to,” said Saranja. “They aren’t going to stop until they control everything in the universe.”

“So what’s Zara got by way of a hostage to stop them?” said Ribek.

“That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” said Saranja. “Do you remember Benayu telling us that serious magicians had to find somewhere safe to put their…what’s it called?…anima outside themselves so it didn’t get in the way of their magic?

“The Watchers do everything together, Chanad told us. Perhaps they did that together too—put all their animas into one safe place….”

“Larg?” said Ribek. “Larg isn’t exactly out of this universe. This curry comes from Larg. And…What’s up, Maja? Come on, tell us. Don’t leave it all to Saranja and me. Your guess is as good as ours. Better, probably.”

Maja couldn’t open her mouth. An odd little buzzy feeling had woken in the back of her mind while Ribek was talking, like the warning noise a stinging insect makes when you try to swat it away. She was thinking of what had happened when they’d just come back into the Council Chamber, in that instant before the door vanished—the appalling brief jolt of magic, the sense of something hidden beyond Zara’s cell, a secret inside a secret, in a place that wasn’t there, a place that was somewhere else. A way into another univ…The buzz was louder now…louder, closer…

“Stop!” she croaked. “Don’t talk about it! Don’t even think about it! The Watchers…!”

They stared at her. Saranja started to say something, and didn’t. The muttered talk of the tribespeople did not falter. The horses fidgeted. The strange, bitter smoke from the smoldering rags drifted slowly through the gully, in the oven-like heat. Ribek nodded, serious-faced for once.

“I want to tell you how my cousin Arissa was murdered,” he said. “We don’t usually talk about it. It’s a terrible story…”

It was—tragic, appalling, filling the mind, leaving no room for thoughts of the Watchers, or what might lie beyond Zara’s cell. The strange, menacing buzz lost its intensity and died away. When the story ended they sat in silence, letting it find its place in their minds, unforgettable.

“You can never tell what people will do,” said Saranja at last, “however well you think you know them. One of my warlord’s other women…”

The story wasn’t tragic, just extremely strange, with a sad ending. Maja found herself on the edge of tears for two people she would never know, but who were probably still alive, somewhere on the other side of the great desert.

“Better, Maja?” said Ribek when the story ended.

Maja probed cautiously southward, and withdrew the moment she felt the buzzy sensation starting to wake.

“I think so,” she said. “It’s like…my uncle’s old dog. She’d be lying in her kennel, fast asleep, not taking any notice of anything, but the moment she heard a stranger’s footstep she’d be up and barking.”

“Is it just what we were talking about?” said Saranja. “I mean can we talk about where we’re going, and what we’re hoping to find there?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yes, I suppose so, if we’re careful. But not now, not here.”

Ribek chuckled.

“So we continue to pass the time,” he said. “Lighter fare, do you think? This might be a good moment to tell you about the miller’s daughter,” he said. “There was a young mill hand whose wife bore him a son. Being an honest and thoughtful man, he determined to toil night and day at his craft until he had enough put aside to buy the mill he worked in, in order that he could leave it to his son. But a year had barely gone by before his wife bore him a second son.

“‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I must buy or build another mill.’

“But another year brought another son, a fourth year a fourth, until he had six sons…”

This wasn’t one of the stories her mother told, so Maja hadn’t heard it before and was already enthralled. Despite that her head began to droop. She was cross about it. She wanted to listen to the story. It struck her that she fell asleep far too easily these days, but it was hot, and the night had been endless and her stomach was full of good food. She half woke a couple of times and heard another snatch of the adventure, but by the next time it was over and Ribek and Saranja were sitting on the far side of the gully talking in low voices. It wasn’t about Larg, or anything magical. But it was something that mattered, something serious.

When she finally woke Ribek was gone. No, there he was, standing at the other end of the gully, silhouetted against the sunset glare beyond him. The tribespeople were laughing at him as he swung something vertically beside him. He turned, laughing too, and offered the object to them. Now Maja could see that it was a little triangular charm made of three sticks like the one the old woman had used to summon the water-spirit, but a bit smaller. Of course he’d wanted to try her water-magic, so he’d made himself a charm.

Someone took it and passed it to the old woman, who bent over it, then rose and hobbled forward. Her spidery arm reached up and plucked at his beard. He didn’t back away or resist. She bent over the charm, peering at it and fiddling with it, then took his hand and pushed it close to his mouth. She spat into her palm to show what she wanted. Obediently he spat, and waited while she smeared his spittle carefully into the corners of the triangle and then handed it back to him. He turned to the desert and tried again.

This time Maja sensed the flow of the magic and the snarl of the water-spirit’s response. Ribek let the swinging slow and cease, and the spirit subsided. The old woman clapped her hands together and hooted and the others responded with a rhythmic outburst of clapping and hooting. One by one they rose and touched Ribek on the cheek and returned to their places and fell silent. Ribek bowed to them, making a wide gesture with his arms to tell them how deeply he was honored. One of the men rose and made signs to him, pointing at the old woman and a boy who shyly held up his own water-charm, and then at Ribek, and finally made a sweeping, dismissive gesture at the rest of the group. They murmured quietly for a little while, then rose and began to gather up their things.