Peter Dickinson - Angel Isle

Nor could she remember waking and eating, though she must have done, because now she was standing leaning on her cane, fully dressed, with the taste of food in her mouth, while Chanad, Ribek and Saranja talked urgently together, and Benayu and Striclan stood and listened. Striclan had his arm round Benayu, supporting him. Benayu was looking really ill.

In that moment Maja understood what was happening to her.

“Listen,” she said urgently. “Sometimes I don’t know what Lady Kzuva’s saying and doing. She’s not protecting me from magic, either. I think I’m coming apart.”

“Indeed you are,” said Chanad. “Benayu is exhausted. He cannot keep Lady Kzuva here much longer. I could do it, but it would take all my attention, and that is needed for the conference. If we don’t send her back where she belongs in the next two hours we shall lose you both. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Even when we’re together I—we—feel very odd. Dazed, dizzy. I don’t think she knows what I’m saying now.”

“But we need Lady K for the conference,” said Saranja. “She represents the Landholders, who’ve got a lot of say-so on the Empire, so she’s got to set her seal on the final document.”

“Couldn’t you send her home now, and just make me look like her? I think I could do that, now that I’ve been her for a bit. Act like her and talk like her, I mean, provided I don’t have to say too much. I could tell them I’m tired after all that magic yesterday. I’m out of practice.”

“That is what we were talking about,” said Chanad. “A mugal—a simulacrum controlled by a living spirit within it. Quiriul and her two colleagues could do it, I think. I’ve already arranged for them to transport themselves to us and tell us what has been happening aboard the All-Conqueror . I will ask them to come as soon as they can.”

“How long will the mugal thing take?” said Ribek. “Will they be able to do it before the delegation gets here? The airboat will be ready to leave as soon as they’ve cleared the snow off its gas bag, and they’re halfway through that already. It’d be nice to have Lady K in there to—”

Sudden and close, a jolt of magic. A glimpse of three figures just beyond Chanad’s shoulder. Maja was back in her daze.

A hand gripping her elbow, shaking her arm. Ribek’s urgent mutter in her ear.

“Wake up, Maja! Wake up if you can! We need you!”

With a willed effort she hauled her two halves into oneness and held them steady. She was standing beside him on the crown of the headland. All around them a gaudy encampment had arisen, pavilions, rest tents and awnings, flags and pennons, and side by side in pride of place the green banner of Larg and blue-and-white one of the Pirate fleet.

They were waiting on a level patch of turf that had been left clear beside the largest pavilion. The dignitaries of Larg were lined up to one side, with their President Proctor and the fake Imperial delegation in front of them. What seemed like half the citizens of Larg watched from the perimeter. In perfect silence the airboat descended into the center. The gondola touched soundlessly onto the turf. Pumps pulsed briefly, then silence again, with the gas bag swaying in the light breeze. A section of the hull hinged downward and became a ramp and General Pashgahr appeared in the opening with a pale-faced dumpy woman beside him. Maja recognized her as the Syndic she’d particularly noticed yesterday.

They paused while a dozen trumpets sounded an elaborate fanfare. The President Proctor, with Chanad at his side, moved forward to meet them as they came down the ramp. The pealing of the bells of Larg sounded musically in the distance. Speeches began, but she barely heard them as the daze returned.

Another jolt of magic, this time as deliberate as Ribek’s shaking her arm had been to force her to wakefulness. She was standing in one of the smaller tents, with both hands clutching the central pole. Just the other side of the pole stood a woman Maja had never seen before, with both arms outstretched, holding hands with two people out of sight behind Maja. She could sense that all three were magicians, and that she was standing near the apex of a triangle formed by their arms. Benayu was watching from behind the woman’s shoulder. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. He was nibbling at his thumb knuckle like a child, feverish with anxiety.

“I am Quiriul,” said the woman. “We prefer our former employers not to recognize us. Now, if I may, my lady…”

She placed her own hands over Maja’s.

“Brod is going to construct the simulacrum while Turbax prepares your shielding within it,” she said. “Meanwhile I will separate your consciousness from that of Lady Kzuva and control your transference to the simulacrum. I have to warn you that you won’t be shielded at all while that is happening, so you will have to prepare yourself for a brief period of considerable stress. And once the process has started it cannot be stopped without fatal results to at least one of you.”

Unwilled, a dreamy whisper issued from Maja’s lips.

“Let it be me who dies, should that happen,” said Lady Kzuva. “Maja has many more years to live.”

Quiriul hesitated, clearly taken aback. She sighed and shook her head.

“I can’t choose,” she said. “This is difficult enough as it is. We must simply not let it happen. When the transfer is complete Brod will see Lady Kzuva safely back to her own place while Turbax and I coordinate the speech and movement of the simulacrum with Maja’s intentions. Now, will you stand as still as you can and look into my eyes.”

Maja couldn’t see them clearly without her spectacles, but they seemed to be just a pair of normal green eyes. Little happened for what seemed a long while. She could sense both Turbax and Brod busy behind her, sense too, beside the magic they were preparing, something amiss between them, Turbax’s mild contempt for Brod, who was older but less accomplished, and Brod’s resentment of it. She must warn Chanad about that, she thought…

“Now,” whispered Quiriul. “Look, Lady Kzuva. Look, Maja.”

Maja concentrated. Quiriul’s eyes were now clear to her. Green, yes, but flecked with brown. They grew larger, like two pools welling up in their hollows, joining together, covering lashes and lids, brows, nose and cheeks, the whole face. And at the same time the sphere of Maja’s vision seemed to narrow until the pool was all that she could see, with the two black irises pulsing gently side by side while the brown flecks, glowing now with a smoky light, moved hypnotically around and between them. The pool floated toward her, filled her vision, absorbed her. She felt dizzy, drugged, only vaguely aware of her own body. Whose body? Hers? Lady Kzuva’s?—she didn’t know. Time passed, unmeasurable. All that changed was a faint, vague pressure against her shoulder blades, insubstantial as mist, but slowly becoming firmer.

Without warning the tent pole faded from her grasp. She heard Benayu’s urgent mutter close in her ear. The shreds of her shielding vanished and she was naked to the triple whirlpool of magic swirling though the little tent. There was someone there with her, being whirled in the same tempest, inert, helpless—Benayu. Desperately, twisting to and fro, she flung her arm round him, clutched him against her, and with her other arm clung to the rock of her own selfhood, Maja, Maja, Maja…and then she was left gasping in a different kind of shelter, improvised and patchy, like a drafty shed that is still better than nothing in the blast of winter.

Shuddering with relief she looked around her. She was still in the tent, but with the entrance now in front of her. Her back was against the tent pole with some kind of sash holding her firmly in place there. She seemed to have no sense of balance and would have fallen without it. That must be Turbax to her left, but Brod was gone from her other side. Where was Benayu? She tried to turn her head. Pain lanced up her spine.