The Ropemaker (2 page)

She did so now, and drew almost level. Tilja heard Meena hiss with pain. She reined Dusty back.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“I’ve been better. Left a bit now.”

“Couldn’t you just tell me the way? Then you could go back.”

“You can’t feel it then? Where the lake is?”

“No.”

Meena had been gazing up at her with her usual fierce stare, but now she grunted, looked away, paused for a moment and shook the reins.

“Let’s get along, then,” she snapped. “No point hanging around, chattering.”

They rode on, but there had been something in that pause that reminded Tilja of the time she had stood beneath the sweeping branches of an enormous cedar and gazed out over the glistening stillness of the lake.

“Can you hear anything, darling?” Ma had said, with an odd note in her voice, both eager and anxious.

So Tilja had stood and strained for some unexpected sound, but had heard only the whisper of a light breeze through the cedar branches and the steady calling of two doves.

“Nothing special,” she’d said. “What sort of anything?”

Ma had looked away. Then there had been just such a pause before she’d said “Never mind,” and smiled at Tilja with a sort of pity.

Time passed, both too slow and too fast. It seemed endless, but always Tilja was conscious of the precious minutes dribbling away and nothing else changing, always the same wood, the same wind slapping loose snow and dead leaves hither and thither between the gray tree trunks, and the same certainty in her mind that they were already too late. Then abruptly, the nature of the forest changed. The bare trees gave way to a belt of cedars, whose lower branches swept to the ground and interlaced with their neighbors’, leaving no clear way through into the blackness beneath.

“There’s a path,” said Meena. “A bit to the right, it’ll be.”

So they followed the line of cedars for a while, and came to a narrow, winding slot in the green thicket. Tilja headed Dusty into it. He didn’t care for the look of it and for the first time jibbed, but obediently plodded on as soon as she flicked the reins. Almost at once, though, as they rounded a bend, the traces of the sled tangled into a pine branch and she had to scramble down and clear them. The path was barely wide enough to let the sled through and it was bound to catch again, so she knelt at the front of it and clucked to Dusty to carry on, as Da did when plowing. He heaved forward, and she positioned herself ready to keep the traces clear at the next corner. Despite her efforts, they stuck several times more before she saw open sky ahead of them and caught a glimpse of steely gray water ahead.

Just before they were clear the sled jarred against a hidden stump and she had to back Dusty up to heave it free. She was standing, dizzy and gasping with the effort, when she heard Meena cry out behind her, “Look! Oh, look! There they go!”

Tilja moved to see beyond Dusty’s huge haunches but tripped over the runner of the sled and fell. By the time she picked herself up, whatever Meena had seen was gone. Meena herself was sitting bolt up in the saddle, gazing ahead, her lined old face shining with excitement.

“Who’d’ve thought it?” she said in a dazed voice. “Forty years I came to sing to the cedars, snowfall after snowfall, and never a glimpse, and now I’ve seen three of ’em. Little wretches.”

Astonished out of her worry and exhaustion, Tilja stood and stared at her until Meena shook herself.

“Well, don’t stand gawping there, girl,” she snapped. “Get that brute moving, and we’ll go and look for your mother.”

Tilja clicked, Dusty plodded ahead as unconcerned as if he were harrowing the bottom acres, and out they came into a wide space ringed with cedars and almost filled by a long, narrow lake. Most of the way round, the trees grew right down to the shoreline, with their branches reaching out over the water, but to the left of the path a strip of grass the width of a broad lane ran up between them and the lake to a small meadow at the top. Here enough snow had settled to cover the area. Lying in the middle of it was a darker shape.

Tilja dropped Dusty’s reins and ran.

The shape was Ma. Her heavy cloak covered most of her body.

Tilja knelt beside her, gasping for breath, and shook her by the shoulder.

“Ma! Ma! Wake up!” she croaked. “Oh, please wake up!”

Nothing.

Her eyes were closed, her face very pale, apart from a single dark mark like an angry bruise in the center of her forehead. Hands and cheek were cold, but not icy. Tilja bent to listen for her breath but the roar of the wind through the cedars drowned all fainter sounds. She couldn’t find her pulse.

Desperately she called again, “Ma! Ma!”

Did the pale lips move in answer? For a moment she thought so, then she wasn’t sure.

She looked round and saw that Meena had somehow caught hold of Dusty’s reins and ordered him forward, and that Calico had then decided to trail along beside them. Tilja rose and ran back.

“I think she’s alive,” she gasped. “I think I saw her lips move.”

“Miracle if she is, this weather,” said Meena, as though talking about a frost at apple-blossom time. “Give us a hand down, then, and let’s take a look.”

Once on the ground she stood with her eyes closed and her face as gray as porridge, then shook her head, let out a long breath, and with Tilja taking as much of her weight as she could, knelt beside her daughter’s body. She drew off her glove and with gnarled and twisted fingers felt at the limp wrist.

“Well, maybe there’s a bit of a pulse there and maybe there isn’t,” she said. “She’s warmer than she might be, though. Well, we’ll be taking her home, dead or alive, so you may as well get started on that. You’ll need to make room for the two of us, mind. There’s no way I’m getting back on that walking taterriddle, supposing I could.”

So Tilja led Dusty on and turned him to bring the sled close beside the body, but before she reached it Meena called out to her to stop.

“Come here, girl, and look at this a moment. We’ve messed it up this side, but there—what d’you make of that?”

She pointed. Tilja looked and saw that though there were patches and streaks of snow on the body itself, and a good covering caught in the grass around, all along Ma’s further side and the fold of cloak beyond there was only the finest dusting of snow, that might have fallen in the last few minutes. And now that she knew what to look for she could see that it had been the same where she and Meena had knelt.

“Something’s been lying here,” she said. “Covering her up.”

“Keeping her warm, too,” said Meena. “Little wretches. Who’d’ve thought they had that much sense . . . ? Well, don’t hang about, girl. We’ve no time for dreamings and wonderings.”

Too dazed and exhausted to think of anything beyond what had to be done next, Tilja fetched Dusty, got the sled into place and unloaded it. Ma made neither sound nor movement as Tilja half dragged, half rolled her onto the rough boards and lashed three lengths of cord round her to stop her tumbling about. Meena settled herself at the other end and Tilja packed the rest of the load round them, covered them with rugs, tied all fast and led Dusty back along the strip of grass by the water, with Calico following, loose, behind.

That was easy enough. The extra weight meant nothing to Dusty. But the track out through the cedars was hideous. There was no way now that Tilja could have heaved the sled clear if it stuck, so they had to take one stretch at a time, then halt, position Dusty for the next corner, and let him go forward one or two paces only while Tilja used the logging pole to lever the runners sideways as they moved.

“You’re not doing too bad, my girl,” said Meena, as Tilja heaved, gasping, at the logging pole and the sled eased forward another foot and a half.

“It’s Dusty doing most of it,” said Tilja.

“Aye, he’s not a bad horse, after all,” said Meena. “But don’t you go telling your father I said so, or he’ll be wanting another one.”

And then, at last, they were almost through. Tilja could see the change ahead, and hear the different whistle of the wind between bare branches. Looking up, she saw how the sky had darkened, and for a moment thought it meant that heavier snows were coming, then realized that the darkening was the onset of nightfall. The path widened, so now she could trot up beside the sled and take Dusty’s bridle and lead him on.

She was just a few paces out beyond the cedars when the sound hit her. Harsh, wild, terrible, a blast of pure anger. The next instant she was tossed aside as Dusty wheeled to meet the challenge, wrenching his bridle from her hand and barging her over with his shoulder. The noise was still echoing through the trees as he neighed his answer, with his neck arched back and a raised hoof pawing the air. Calico bolted and was gone. Twice the cry was repeated and twice Dusty answered, and then the echoes died away and there was only the shriek of the gale, shredding through the branches.

Tilja picked herself up. The sled had slewed sideways as Dusty had wheeled, but all were still aboard.

“What was that?” Tilja gasped.

“Nothing I’ve a fancy to meet just now,” muttered Meena. “Let’s get home, if it’ll let us.”

Dusty heaved his head away as Tilja reached for his bridle, still trying to face the unseen enemy. Angry with terror, she punched his shoulder and yelled at him not to be stupid, and he gave himself a shake and remembered his business. They trudged on until it grew too dark to see, and she had to stop and light one of the storm lamps so that she could lead the way forward. For herself she was utterly lost, but Meena seemed as sure of her bearings as she had been by daylight. And from time to time Dusty would hesitate in his stride and stare away to the right, so that Tilja, though not herself seeing or hearing anything unusual, began to feel that something large and menacing was moving there, shadowing them on their way.

By now she was deathly tired, too tired to be afraid. All she could do was force herself along, sick with worry that Calico had already come home alone, and Da would have once more ventured into the trees to look for them, and this time he would not come out. But he was waiting for them on the edge of the spare ground. He knelt by the sledge and took Ma’s hand, and under the shadowy lamplight Tilja was sure she saw Ma’s fingers tighten against his, and then he picked Tilja up and kissed her and lifted her onto Dusty’s back and led them all down to the farm.

She could remember no more of her homecoming than dunking bread into the broth that Anja had hot and waiting, and thinking as she did so,
This has got to have something to do
with Asarta.

2

The Story

There was time in the Valley, of course—how could there not be? But there was no history. In all the rich farmland between the northern mountains and the forest there were no wars, or reports of wars, only days, seasons, generations. No kings or other rulers, only parents, grandparents, ancestors. For eighteen generations nothing had happened in the Valley that anyone would have thought worth putting in a book, or setting up a memorial stone to record. So, no history. Only time.

And the story of Asarta.

The story was full of grand magical nonsense, and there was none of that kind of magic in the Valley, any more than there was history. Such magic as there was was petty and everyday, love posies and wart charms and such, which many people said were mere superstition and worked no better than random chance. So very few people believed that there was any truth in the story. Some of them might add that it had been invented long ago to explain why the snow lay year-round upon the mountains so thick that nobody could pass them, and why there was a sickness in the forest that closed off the Valley to the south. It was, admittedly, a strange sickness, affecting only men, first making them dazed and feverish almost as soon as they went in under the trees, and, if they stayed there any length of time, casting them into a stupor from which they did not recover. But that didn’t mean that there had to be anything magical about it.

This was the story.

Once there had been nothing but history, and far too much of it. To the south, beyond the forest, stretched a huge, rich Empire. To the north, beyond the mountains, lay endless upland plains, across which tribes of fierce horsemen marauded, fighting each other when they couldn’t find outsiders to fight and pillage. The best way between the two realms lay through the Valley, because there was one good pass across the mountains, open all summer. The Emperors, when they remembered, maintained a broad road through the forest so that they could control and tax the Valley and guard the pass beyond. The Valley was large, seven long days’ march from east to west and five from north to south. It had fertile soil, which the people farmed well, so the taxes they were able to pay made it worth the Emperor’s attention. But every now and then an Emperor would allow the garrisons to weaken, and then the tribes would come swarming through the pass and the Valley, burning and looting and murdering, and sweep on to raid the riches of the Empire.

Slowly the Empire would gather its armies and drive them back, across the Valley, up through the pass, and out into their native plains, where it would attempt to harry and punish them for their impertinence, to no good effect. The Valley made a natural base for these operations, so the armies would quarter there, perhaps for several years, burning and murdering less than the tribes had done, but raping and looting almost as effectively, while the Emperor’s tax collectors demanded all the normal taxes again, plus what had not been paid while the tribesmen had controlled the Valley, plus extra sums to pay for the increased level of protection that the Valley now enjoyed. The people of the Valley would have been hard put to it to tell you which state of affairs they liked less.

And then a civil war would break out somewhere else in the immensity of the Empire, or a new Emperor would forget to pay the garrisons, or some other matter of state would intervene, and the soldiers would march south, taking with them whatever and whomever they fancied, and the Valley people would try to piece their lives together again, knowing even as they reaped their scant harvest and stored it in their patched barns that soon the tribes would learn that the pass was once more unguarded.

Nineteen generations before Tilja’s time such a period had just ended, with the barns empty, the cattle driven away, houses smashed by soldiers looking for hidden treasures to make up for their unpaid wages, children snatched into slavery. Some people chose to go south with the soldiers, to make new lives for themselves in the Empire, but most stayed where they were. However difficult and dangerous life might be in the Valley, this was where they belonged.

A year passed, and things were better. Another year, and they were better again, and still the tribes did not come. (There was a horse plague raging across the plains.) The barns had new roofs on them, doors were sound and tables laden, and markets began again, with stuff in the stalls worth bargaining for. After market people would sit around, drinking the harsh local cider, and wondering how long the good times would last. On one such evening somebody sighed and said, “If only there were a way of closing the pass.”

“Fugon the Magnificent tried that,” said someone else. “In our grandfathers’ grandfathers’ time, wasn’t it?”

“No, before that,” said someone else. “Fugon the Fourth, he was the Magnificent. It was Fugon the Second tried to close the pass.”

They argued about dates and Emperors until somebody said, “Anyway, whoever it was, he didn’t manage it. And if the Emperor couldn’t do it, who can? No one’s stronger than the Emperor.”

“Asarta is stronger than the Emperor,” said a man. “She could close the pass if she chose.”

This man’s name was Sonnam, which is not a Valley name, because he had not been born in the Valley, and spoke with a southern accent. He was in fact a deserter from the Emperor’s army who had fallen in love with a girl from one of the farms by the river. She and her mother had hidden him for three whole years, but now the garrisons were gone and he was married to her and lived openly.

Because he was not a Valley man they did not take him seriously, and laughed when he spoke. But his wife said, “You are fools. Sonnam has lived in the Empire, and you have not.”

“Very well,” they said. “Tell us about this Asarta. One story is as good as another at the end of a long day.”

“Only what Asarta chooses to be known is known about her,” said Sonnam. “But my family are mostly soldiers, and my father’s uncle was a corporal in the Emperor’s guard. In those days there were pirates raiding along the western coast, and when the Emperor built navies to punish them they banded together and sank his ships before his eyes. Twice they did this, but the third time the Emperor, on the advice of his courtiers, sent to Asarta for help. She agreed on a great price and came. So the navies met once more and the Emperor sat on the cliff to watch the encounter, with Asarta beside him, a small old woman in a gray gown. As the navies bore down against each other she called aloud, and serpents came out of the ocean, six of them, and smashed the pirate ships in their coils and tossed them about and snatched the pirates out of the air as they fell, and ate them.

“Then the Emperor clapped his hands and his servants brought three strong chests and laid them before Asarta, and she looked at them and pointed her finger and they fell apart, so that everyone could see that only the top layer in each was gold, and the rest was lead. The Emperor told her that it was his treasurer who had done this, hoping to keep the gold for himself, and again he clapped his hands and the treasurer was seized and strangled before he could speak. Then Asarta looked the Emperor in the eye and pointed her finger once more, and the Emperor shrank until he was no bigger than my thumb, and Asarta picked him up and put him in a gold cage which she brought out of the air, and hung it on a golden pole.

“At that the Emperor’s guard, my father’s uncle among them, rushed to the rescue of their lord, but they too dwindled as they came nearer to Asarta, to the size of mice and then of ants, so that they were afraid to come closer lest they should vanish altogether. Next Asarta spoke, a cry so loud that those around her fell to the ground, but the body of the treasurer rose to its feet and walked toward her with its head dangling aside, and she placed her hands round his neck and spoke quietly to him, so that his head straightened and the life came back into him. He gave orders, and more gold was brought, up to the price that had been agreed. Then Asarta vanished, taking the gold and the treasurer with her.

“The Emperor’s guards, my father’s uncle among them, grew slowly in size, until by evening they were the height that they had been that morning. But the Emperor himself never grew to more than half his proper stature, and spoke always in a thin, high voice, like that of a bird, so that he should not forget that Asarta was more powerful than he was.

“All this my father’s uncle saw with his own eyes, but being a prudent man he at once changed his name and his regiment, for few of those that were known to have seen the Emperor dangling in his cage lived many days after.”

“Not a bad story,” said someone.

“So Asarta is stronger than the Emperor,” said Sonnam’s wife.

“If she’s still alive,” said someone else.

“And if the story’s true,” said another.

“Can’t be,” said yet another. “All that magic and stuff.”

Most of the listeners grunted in agreement. That was how Valley people thought about magic, even then, though there was magic in the Valley in those days, just as there was magic everywhere else in the Empire. Only no powerful magician had bothered to come to so remote a province for many, many years.

More peaceful seasons came and went, as the horse plague continued to ravage the plains, and the problems of the Empire boiled up elsewhere. Indeed, there was such turmoil south of the forest that the Emperor’s clerks forgot that the Valley even existed, and for long years nobody came to collect the taxes. It was a full generation before shepherds came running into market one evening with the news. They had been with their flocks in the high pastures and had seen a party of wild-looking horsemen beneath them, at the lip of the pass, looking down at the Valley, and pointing and laughing. It had been clear from both stance and gesture what had been in their minds, before they had turned and trotted away north.

By now those sitting around over their cider were the children of those who had listened to Sonnam telling the story of Asarta. Indeed, there were two of his sons among them, in one of whom the old soldiering blood still ran strong. It was he who said, after they had listened with dismay to the shepherds, “There is nothing for it. We must arm ourselves and fight.”

This, with much misgiving, they did. They caught the raiders in an ambush beside the river, but they had no experience of battle, while the raiders were hardened to it, so it was a desperately close affair, but in the end the raiders broke and fled. When it was over they met in council. Some said, “We have beaten them once. We can do so again.” Others said, “Next time they will be more, and warier. We must send to the Emperor for help.” Yet others said, “The Emperor’s help will destroy us as surely as the horsemen.” At last somebody said, “We might as well send to Asarta.”

This was, or was meant to be, a joke. By now “sending to Asarta” had become a sort of proverb in the Valley, something one said when one was in a fix and couldn’t think which way to turn. Then someone said, still joking, “At least it would be better than sending to the Emperor.” And someone, joking rather less, said, “Indeed it would.” So, gradually, without their noticing how it happened, the joke became a proposal, and the proposal became a decision, and they were discussing how it should be done.

Sonnam was no help. He was an old man now, with his memory half gone, and all he could tell them was, “Asarta? Yes, yes. She demanded a great price.”

The thought was dismaying. The Valley was prosperous, but mainly in goods. People had full barns and byres, but little by way of money or jewels, or what counted as wealth in the Empire. But they gathered what they had and chose a delegation to go and see if Asarta would help them. Since half the farms in the Valley were inherited through the female line, they sent five men and five women.

From the first they met with misfortune. One was murdered, and three were seized on false claims of debt and sold into slavery. The rest were cheated and robbed. Moreover, they heard not one word of Asarta, for all their asking. There seemed to be neither tale nor memory of her.

When they had lost almost all that they had brought, four decided to give up and go home, but one man and one woman said that they would continue the search, penniless and hopeless though they were. Their names were Reyel Ortahlson and Dirna Urlasdaughter. These two journeyed on, choosing their roads at random, until they came to a city on the very edge of the immense desert that marked the eastern boundary of the Empire.

It was here one morning, sitting in the shadow of a gateway, they saw two women walking out of the desert. As they passed under the arch, one said to the other, “So that is the end of Asarta. I never thought I should live to see her go. It will be a strange world without her.”

The two from the Valley jumped up and caught the women by their cloaks and said, “Asarta? You have news of Asarta? We have journeyed from the furthest north to find her.”

The women shook their heads and said, kindly enough, “You come too late. She is gone into the desert to undo her days. An hour after moonrise she will be no more.”

“There is still time to find her,” said the two from the Valley. “Which way did she go?”

“She went east,” said the women. “But you will not find her, not unless she chooses to be found.”

Reyel and Dirna filled their flasks from a reeking tank by the gate and set out east across the burning sands. There was no path and no shade. The water was too foul to drink, so they wetted themselves with it and trudged on. A time came when they knew in their hearts that if they did not turn back they would die in the desert, but they plodded on east, and as the sun went down and their shadows stretched far in front of them they came to a rocky hollow with a carved stone slab at its center. Sitting by the slab with her head bowed was an old woman in a gray cloak.

The two went quietly down and stood a few paces to one side, afraid to speak, knowing the place was holy. But the woman looked up and said in a mild voice, “You come on an errand. You have something to ask. Tell me your trouble.”

They told her, and she nodded, and said, “You have brought me a fee?”

“We have nothing,” they said. “We started our journey with friends and money and jewels, but we were cheated and robbed all the way, and now we have only the clothes we wear.”