Angel Isle (24 page)

Maja was still sulky with sleep when Ribek lifted her onto Levanter’s rump.

“I want to know what happened in the story,” she said. “It wasn’t my fault I fell asleep.”

“You were tired, and no wonder, all you’ve been doing. My turn for a nap now. You’ll have to take the reins.”

He knotted the reins and laid them on Levanter’s neck, bowed his head and in a very few strides was asleep, swaying gently in the saddle to Levanter’s movement. He started to snore, rather more musically than he sang. Maja huddled against him, arms round his waist, enjoying the pleasant fantasy that she was protecting him, holding him steady, keeping him from falling, while he sat there helpless and vulnerable.

Sometimes she wondered what he thought about her. She was fairly sure he was fond of her, loved her, even, but it wasn’t the same kind of love that she felt for him. Not that she really understood her own feelings for him. They were love all right, but they weren’t the sort of consuming, world-altering passion you hear about in stories. Dimly she could feel stirrings of that kind of love, the love whose language was glance and caress and close embrace, but she pushed them away.
Not yet,
she told herself,
not yet. Not until he can feel the same about me.
Till then she wasn’t going to think about it. It would be a nuisance, coming between them, an embarrassment to them both. They were much more comfortable as they were. Why spoil it?

Ribek woke when they stopped at midnight to rest and eat and water the horses. The old woman summoned another underground stream to the surface, while Ribek watched and listened, fascinated.

“Are you still all right?” he said as he lifted her back into the saddle.

“I’m fine. I’ve been getting a story ready to tell you. It’s going to be better than yours.”

He didn’t answer until they were on their way, and he had, deliberately, she thought, dropped Levanter back behind Rocky.

“Can we leave the story for another time, Maja? I’d rather you told me about ‘Cherry Pits.’ It’s something that happened at Woodbourne, isn’t it? Saranja’s told me a bit about Woodbourne. You’ve never said a word. No, Maja, tell me. I’ve told you almost everything I know about Northbeck. It’s your turn now. Come on, Maja. You need to tell someone. Please.”

She shook her head. He waited. Levanter plodded on. As if from a long way off she saw a girl standing in an empty room. No, only one corner of a room and part of the two walls that made it. The scene was lit by moonlight and starlight, and the floor was desert. A door shaped itself in the corner, but the girl had lost the key. Now Ribek’s figure—Maja would know it anywhere—appeared beside her and put something into her hand. A key. The girl stepped forward.

He’s right,
she thought.
I can tell him because I love him.

“My uncle…,” she began. “My aunt…”

She stopped. It was too difficult. Even those five syllables.

“I know about them,” said Ribek quietly. “Saranja’s told me. She told me roughly what happened. Your uncle had had one of his rages and stormed out, and after a bit your aunt sent you out to fetch him in….”

“Yes. He was in the barn. I’d done it before. I never knew if he’d just snarl at me, or be nice to me. It was all right that morning. He told me to come and sit beside him and he’d teach me a song called ‘Cherry Pits.’ He put his arm round me and I put mine round him and we started. I was comfortable, happy…”

He waited in silence while she fought for control.

“And then my aunt came in. She didn’t say anything. She picked up an old halter and snatched me away from him and tied it round my wrists and then tied it to a ring in the wall so that my arms were high above my head with my face against the wall and she gave him a riding stock and said, ‘Whip her.’

“He whipped me once. ‘You are never to do that again,’ she told me. ‘Whip her again. Harder. And again.’ Each time he whipped me she said, ‘Never.’ He did it ten times. I was sobbing and screaming.

“Then she untied me and took me into the kitchen and told me to strip off my top and lie face down on the floor. She rubbed some salve into my back and told me to dress again and took me out to the old dog-kennel and put a collar round my neck and chained it to a ring in the floor so I couldn’t stand up. She brought me scraps of meat and bread in a dog bowl and gave me a bowl of water to lap. She didn’t say anything till she let me out next evening. ‘You are less than a dog in this house,’ she told me. ‘Remember that. Now go and get the hens in and look for the eggs.’

“That night Saranja came to my room and whispered to me that she was going away. She asked if I wanted to come too, but I was too afraid.

“That’s all.”

Ribek rode on in silence. Maja waited. She felt as she had back then, spoiled, loathsome…

“Thank you for telling me,” he said gently, at last. “It must have been hard for you. Did that sort of thing happen often?”

“That was the only time. She never hit me herself.”

“And your father? You haven’t said anything about him.”

“I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know who he was, or where he’s gone to, if he’s still alive. I think he must have done something too dreadful to talk about. I wasn’t allowed to ask. My mother only cried when I did, and my aunt found out and tied me to my bed for a day and a night.”

“Mm. You haven’t asked Saranja, she says. She thought you knew.”

“Oh! Does she…? Can she…?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

He pushed Levanter forward till they were alongside Rocky. Maja could tell Saranja had been waiting for them from the way she looked down at her and smiled.

“My…Ribek says you…my father…?”

Still smiling, Saranja reached out and touched her cheek.

“I’m your half-sister, Maja,” she said gently. “I thought you knew, but they’d made you too afraid to talk about it. I hope that’s good news.”

She didn’t understand for a moment. Then she did. Her body went stiff. She gripped Ribek as hard as she could and gulped for breath.

“My uncle…,” she croaked. “And my mother…That’s why it was all my fault!”

Ribek snorted. Saranja pulled Rocky to a halt, and Levanter automatically stopped too. She let go of the reins, leaned across and took Maja’s hand between both of hers.

“No, Maja,” she said. “You must stop thinking like that. You’re the only person whose fault it wasn’t. My parents never loved each other. She loved somebody else but he didn’t want to live at Woodbourne. She married my father because she wanted a daughter who could hear the cedars. He was a poor man and he married her for the farm, but it was never his. It was hers, and she didn’t let him forget it. She gave him two sons to go with it, but they weren’t what she wanted and he knew they could never inherit the farm. Then she had me. After that she wouldn’t let him touch her.

“Something like that has happened again and again in our family, a woman forsaking love and wasting life trapped at Woodbourne for the sake of the story, but it’s never turned out so bad. Ever since I was small I’ve known I wasn’t going to let it happen to me, though she was determined that it should. I think I knew in my heart that if it did I would end up like her. Anyway, I believe that by the time I was born she already hated my father. That’s why she gave her sister a home when their parents died, though she treated her more as a maidservant than a sister. She must have known what would happen, and known that your mother was too great a ninny to say no. You were born so that she could hate him properly, and punish him by punishing you. That’s their fault, all three of them. Not yours.

“And you still haven’t told me if you’re happy about being my sister. Because I am. Very.”

“Oh, yes! Yes! But everything else…”

She still couldn’t take it in. It couldn’t change anything. It had all happened. But it wasn’t her fault, and that changed everything. It even seemed to change how she thought about Ribek. If her father had never been allowed to love her, and she’d never been given a chance to love him…And what had her aunt done, to make her mother so hopeless…?

“Ribek?”

“Hm?”

“Can we sing ‘Cherry Pits’ now?”

He still couldn’t sing in tune. But they were lovers in the song, weren’t they? She loved him for that, and found herself singing the song as if it were true. He laughed and did the same, but it wasn’t Ribek singing, of course, it was the lover in the song. He couldn’t sing in tune either.

When they’d finished all the verses they knew they invented some new ones until Maja couldn’t think of any more. Then she told him “The Owl-Witch” and he told her “The Miller’s Daughter” all over again, which lasted until, just as the eastern stars grew faint with daybreak, something changed. She knew what it was at once.

“Benayu’s awake,” she said, whispering as if she’d been in a sickroom.

Ribek leaned over and murmured the news to Saranja.

“I’ll tell him what Zara said,” she answered, and reined Rocky back.

Behind them Maja sensed the contact of two hands and heard the mutter of Saranja’s voice. She could feel Benayu’s almost overwhelming listlessness.

“Good moment for him to wake,” said Ribek. “Looks as if we’re here.”

Concentrating on events behind her Maja hadn’t noticed what was happening ahead. The sudden change made it a bit like coming to Larg all over again. They must have been climbing for some while back, but on a slope too gentle for her to be aware of it. Now they had reached the summit and were looking down a rather steeper slope into a world where it was already day.

The sun was not yet risen. Below the pale dawn sky lay a level plain, blazing with color, sheets of scarlet, purple, yellow and clear bright blue, spreading between barren outcrops of rock. Through this glory ran the Imperial Highway, with a way station immediately below them. The amazing dazzle of colors was—she concentrated—flowers!

“What…what…why…?” she stammered. “It isn’t magic, or I’d feel it.”

“Rain,” said Ribek. “Fellow at Larg told me about it. It happens for about three weeks this time of year almost every year. Rainstorms sweep up the coastal plain and last year’s seeds germinate and grow, and the eggs of several sorts of moth which have been lying there all through the dry season hatch and pupate and turn into moths just in time to pollinate the flowers so that they can produce a fresh lot of seeds, and the moths mate and lay their eggs ready for next year, and die. It may not be magic, but it’s magical.”

This was as far as the tribespeople would go. Ribek doled out chunks of salt to each of them, which was all they wanted by way of payment. As he did so they touched his cheek and he raised his hand in blessing.

“We’d better do that to the old lady,” he muttered. “There’s not a lot of them can talk to the water-spirit, just her and that lad there in this group. The ones who can—me too now, I suppose—are kind of special.”

He led the way, and Saranja and Maja copied him. The tribespeople responded with a few pleased hoots. The old woman hobbled to the litter, raised Benayu’s limp arm and touched his hand against her cheek. He stirred and muttered as if he’d been still asleep. Then they went their separate ways, the tribespeople back to their desert home and the travelers down to the Highway.

CHAPTER
11

E
missaries from Larg had come up the North Highway and were waiting for them at the way station with more provisions. They’d also brought fresh ponies, but Saranja insisted that the horses needed a rest. This allowed Benayu to sleep most of the day, so that by nightfall he was sitting up and talking cheerfully, and helping himself generously to the good Larg food. To Ribek and Saranja he must have seemed almost himself again, but to Maja he was deeply changed.

Before Larg, even when he wasn’t using them, to Maja’s extra sense he had tingled all the time with his magical powers. Now she was barely aware of them. But if she concentrated she could feel them, still there, deep down inside himself.

And alongside them, something else, very old, very powerful, much more than a great tool, a marvelous machine, for him to use when he had learned how. Something that seemed almost alive in its own right. She remembered Benayu explaining that for a magician to make the change from the third to the fourth level was like learning to breathe water. It was as if this thing, this power had come the other way. It couldn’t breathe our air on its own. It could only exist inside a magician, breathing with human lungs, seeing with human eyes. It had lived inside Zara for most of her long life, but during that night when Benayu had lain on the hill above Larg it had left her and come to him. Zara must have known that this would happen, but for the sake of Larg she had let the power go. Now Benayu must learn to live with it, and it with him.

The Imperial Highway stretched before them. Even on the cooler coastal plain it was still roastingly hot at noon, but the mornings and evenings were bearable enough to let them travel by day. They would set out at sunrise with the astonishing fields of flowers around them, sparkling with the morning dew. Well before noon that freshness would be gone, sucked away by the overbearing sun, and by midafternoon the desert would be desert as far as the eye could see. But as the air began to cool another batch of flowers would be opening and by sunset competing with the golds and crimsons of the western sky. To Maja’s extra sense their magic was like a song of exultation in their short, glorious moment of existence, and at night as she lay in the way station under the amazing desert stars she could sense the soft moths gliding over the fields of flowers, and settling to suck their nectar and at the same time smear themselves with the pollen that would produce fresh seeds to lie another year in the parched earth until next year’s rains woke them for another burst of glory.

On such a night as this Maja woke, vaguely ill at ease. She had been hoping that Jex would at last speak to her in her dreams again, but he hadn’t come, though she could tell from the greater sureness of his protection that he was already stronger. Something was amiss in the magical world, surely…but no, it wasn’t anything to do with Jex. There was something sickening about it, a bit like the nausea she felt coming from the Watchers, but otherwise different from anything else she’d come across, as different as a plant is from a stone, or a fish from a hammer—a kind of dull, throbbing beat, not a noise, but a feeling, like a pulsing sick headache. It came from somewhere up north, a little east of the Highway, more than a day’s journey away still, she decided. She fell asleep, but it persisted through her dreams and was still there when she woke.

It was there all day. Usually, when she chose, she could now ignore whole swaths of the myriad magics that continually assailed her, in order to concentrate on particular ones, but with this she couldn’t. Unconsciously she had begun walking to the rhythm of its beat. By noon it was impossible to think about anything else. It seemed to be nothing that Jex could use or shield her from. She called to him in her mind but he did not answer. Not even thinking about it she groped for her amulet and shoved it right down to her wrist.

Astonishingly, something happened. The appalling thud dwindled to a dull throb in the background. She could look around. She could think. She stared at the amulet, and saw that the strange black bead had changed. There was depth in its blackness, like that in the pupil of an eye. It was active. Doing something. Shielding her enough from the drumbeat for her to be able to think about something else. But not enough to let her break step unless she willed herself to do so.

She stared around. Saranja and Benayu were walking a few paces ahead. No, not walking, marching. Marching in step, like her. Why wasn’t Benayu riding Pogo? A few days ago they had sent the ponies back to Larg with a merchant from the city whom they’d met at a way station, as Benayu was now physically recovered enough to ride a horse, though not yet to dismount and walk when the other three did. But he was on foot now, marching in step with Saranja, in time to that dull, implacable beat. So, she realized, was Ribek. With an effort she lengthened and slowed her stride, but he kept on as before, and as soon as she stopped concentrating on it she fell back into the same rhythm.

But they couldn’t be hearing the beat. There wasn’t anything to hear. It came to Maja solely through her extra sense, the awful monotonous magical thump. The horses seemed a lot more restive than usual, but their twelve hooves clopped on the paving to no rhythm she could make out.

Why were they walking at all? It was far too hot. They should all be…

Hadn’t they passed a way station some while back? Why hadn’t they stopped to water the horses and rest out the heat of the day, as usual?

And there was nobody else to be seen from horizon to horizon. The Highway hadn’t been busy since they’d joined it, and as most of the people going north went at much the same walking pace they seldom overtook anyone, or were overtaken, but there’d always been dribs and drabs of travelers coming in the other direction. There were none now. Not one.

She couldn’t remember if they’d breakfasted at all.

She had to say something. Nobody had spoken a word since they’d left last night’s way station. Only now did this seem strange. It seemed a huge effort to break the long silence. Her voice was a croak.

“Why are you taking those silly little steps? Ribek! Listen to me! Why are you taking those silly little steps?”

He answered as if from a dream.

“Comfortable.”

The silence closed round them again.

“Jex! Jex! What’s happening?”

No answer.

At last, another way station. It was deserted. The food stalls were set up but unattended. The horses recognized it for what it was, or perhaps they could smell water, and tried to stop, but Saranja and Benayu strode on unnoticing.

“Ribek! The horses! They must be dying of thirst! Ribek! Saranja!”

“Let them go,” muttered Ribek. “Can’t stop.”

With an even greater effort Maja forced herself to a halt, but her feet continued to stamp up and down to the implacable drumbeat. It was a heavy, continuous effort to prevent them from moving forward, so she let them go, lengthened her stride as far as she could and caught up, first with Ribek and then with the horses. She slowed enough to take one of the big water flasks from Levanter’s saddlebag, and then caught up with Rocky. Still marching, though now with the shortest paces the drumbeat would allow, she snatched his bridle and tried to heave him round.

He halted and half turned. She slapped his rump as the rhythm swept her past. He hesitated. But Pogo had no doubts, and was already trotting back the way they’d come. She willed herself to stop, slapped him again and told him to go, and with a whicker of distress he gave in and led Levanter after Pogo. She let the rhythm sweep her away again and fell in beside Ribek and, still marching, managed to drink a few mouthfuls, slopping most of it down her front. The other three did the same, muttering their thanks. Nobody said anything else. The drumbeat was all there was.

The sun sidled west and down the shadows stretched across the desert. Dusk came quickly, and was quickly night. The Highway climbed to cross a low rise. From beyond it, a little to the right, came a steady orange glow. This was the place to which the drum was calling them. Under a brilliant moon they left the Highway and started toward it. For a while the rough ground drove them apart, but then it became a strange upward slope, unnatural in its perfect smoothness. The glow came from just beyond it. This, she knew, was the end. She would never walk side by side with Ribek again.

Her voice refused to work. She moved closer and put her hand into his. He twined his fingers into hers and with his free hand stroked her arm, downward from the elbow, in a gesture of pure, natural affection. His hand reached the amulet.

He staggered and almost broke step, then stared at the amulet. She looked too. The single bead was glimmering now, as if with reflected firelight. She wouldn’t have been able to see the faint glow in the full glare of day. And once before, on the hill above Larg—something almost lost to her memory in the immense wash of magic that had then been flowing around her—it too had glinted as if with reflected firelight. But the fire had been embers. And it had been in the wrong place.

Azarod. Only for a moment had she felt the full force of his demonic magic, forgotten till now amid the storm of other happenings that night. That too, she now remembered, had been utterly different from anything else that she had met. But not different from this. And it hadn’t been Jex shielding her from it as soon as she had picked him out of the cactus. It had been the ruined amulet, just as it was doing now.

Ribek had already let go of her wrist and was marching on as if nothing had happened. As they reached the ridge she grabbed his hand and forced it against the bead.

“Wake up!” she said. “It’s a demon doing this to us! Don’t let go of my wrist! We’ve got to get to Saranja! Zald!”

His stride faltered.

“Demon,” he muttered. “Zald. Saranja. Only hope.”

“Come on! No, keep hold of my wrist. Tight. That’s right.”

She lengthened her stride and dragged him forward. Now in front of them lay an immense conical pit, its lower half filled with a dense, murky, fiery cloud.

“You go other side,” she gasped. “Get Zald. I’ll get her hand.”

They reached Saranja and fell in step on either side of her, with their arms stretched behind her back so that Ribek could still grasp the amulet. Maja could feel her inner rage blazing helpless in the grip of her compulsion. When she grasped her finger the whole arm was as limp as soaked cloth. She lifted it up and waited for Ribek to ease Zald from under Saranja’s blouse and lay it against her chest.

“Other way up,” she said, desperately patient with his dazed clumsiness as they started up the slope. “Turn it over. That’s right.”

No need to be told which stone was the demon-binder. One was already bright with the same orange glow that half filled the pit. It pulsed to the steady drumbeats. Awkwardly, stumbling to keep pace with the others’ downward march, Maja gripped Saranja’s forefinger. Using her thumb to keep the finger stiff, she circled it against the glowing jewel.

Life flowed into the arm, into the whole body. Saranja halted in her tracks. The drumbeat faltered, failed and was replaced by an agonizing howl—real, ear-shattering sound in the ordinary world of the senses. Ribek had halted too, and Benayu, and they were staring dazedly around. The glow was fading, the mist thinning. There was something vaguely tree-shaped at the center of it.

Saranja drew herself up, squaring her shoulders. She was glowing all over, as if her clothes and skin had become translucent to the anger-fires within. She pinched the fingers of her right hand against the surface of the jewel and drew forth a line of fire, which she began to coil, loop after loop, round the palm of her left hand.

The thing at the center of the hollow screamed again. Something came hurtling out of the fading mist toward her. With a cat-like sideways leap Ribek caught it two-handed, and dropped it with a yell of disgust. It was a human arm, torn savagely from the body.

“Wait here,” commanded Saranja. “Maja can hold the end of the cord. You two look after her. I’ll be all right—it can’t touch me.”

Maja grasped the cord. It seemed to have neither weight nor heat, but the power of Zald throbbed through her, like a blaze that would have been glorious if she’d not been too close to it, until she felt Jex’s shield renew itself and close round her.

“Demon magic. Poison to me in this universe. This thing is one of my own kind, poisoned long ago.”

There was horror in the voice of stone.

Saranja was already marching away across the slope, paying out the cord as she went. It didn’t then fall to the ground, but floated waist high behind her in a fiery line.

The mist thinned further, and Maja could now see what the thing at its center was—a living creature, as tall as a fair-sized tree and standing on a single dark trunk. But it wasn’t a tree trunk. Its whole surface squirmed continually in response to the squirming, chewing motion of the screaming mouth, a kind of vertical gash near the top. Blood dribbled from its lower end. Above that, instead of branches, came dozens of writhing tentacles with crab-like claws at the end, and above them a crown of twenty or more shorter flexible stalks, each bearing a single huge red eye. Two of the tentacles ended not in claws but in hoof-like growths that flailed continually against the trunk, but now produced only the faintest magical pulse instead of the terrible drumbeat that had so mastered and overwhelmed them.