Peter Dickinson - Angel Isle

“Many people in the Empire feel the same,” said Fodaro. “There’ve been waves of lynchings of magicians over the years. Go on with the story. Your people went to this magician—I know her name, of course, but not much else. What did she do?”

“She didn’t. She’d finished her work and was just getting ready to leave, to ‘undo her days,’ according to the story, so she sent our people on to a magician called…Can I say his name?”

Fodaro shrugged.

“It will not have been his true name,” he said. “But it will still have resonance for Jex, as Asarta’s did. Try mouthing it only. You can tell us later.”

Maja watched the lizard as Saranja’s lips moved. It did not stir, but again she heard the whisper in her mind, no louder than before, but nearer, somehow, more resonant.

“Faheel.”

Then silence. Saranja hesitated a moment, sighed resignedly and went on.

“She gave them a ring to take to him, and in exchange he sealed the Valley off for another twenty generations. He summoned the Ice-dragon to block the northern passes with massive snowfalls, and—I’ve always thought this bit sounded particularly stupid—some unicorns into the southern forest who brought a kind of disease with them that made any men who tried to go in among the trees fall sick and die. Women were all right, though. See what I mean, stupid? There was always one woman in my family who could hear what the cedars were saying, and she had to go into the forest each year when the first snows fell and sing to the unicorns and then feed them through the winter. And there was always one man in Ribek’s family who could hear what the streams were saying, and each year he had to climb up to the snow line and sing to the snows to bring the Ice-dragon back for another winter.

“Well, that lasted another twenty generations, and then it broke down again, so four of us—Tilja and her gran from our family and a boy called Tahl and his grandpa from Ribek’s—went off to look for this Faheel person…Bother. No, it seems to be all right to call him that…Anyway, after a lot of tiresome magical adventures…I think I’m leaving out something important, Maja….”

“The Watchers?”

“Oh yes. Everything in the Empire was very tightly controlled. You couldn’t travel anywhere without having a way-leave. You couldn’t even die without a license from the Emperor. And magic—oh, gods! I suppose I’ve got to start believing in all this stuff—that was controlled by a bunch of super-magicians in Talak…am I saying that right?”

“The city is differently pronounced in different parts of the Empire,” said Fodaro. “Up here in the North we mostly call it Talagh. You were about to tell us what you know about the Watchers.”

“Oh yes. They were supposed to be controlling the magic in the Empire, only they were all at daggers drawn with each other but that didn’t stop them cracking down hard on anyone using magic without permission. Faheel had set the Watchers up to stop people doing that, but it went on in secret, and the system got out of hand, so everyone was scared stiff of the Watchers, who were meant to be there to look after them, and meanwhile Faheel had disappeared.

“But Tilja’s gran had—wait for it—a wooden spoon, of all things, carved from the wood of a peach tree that had grown from the stone of a peach out of Faheel’s garden, and the darned thing knew where he was and if you said his name over it would swivel round and point that way. The trouble was that sent out a magical signal which put the Watchers on to them whenever they tried. But they just managed to get away each time and in the end they found Faheel on an island out in the southern ocean, but of course he was incredibly old and tired and longing to give up, but he couldn’t until he’d found someone to pass the famous ring on to.”

“In what way famous?” said Fodaro.

“He could control time with it. I’ll come to that in a minute. Anyway, Tilja told him about a magician called the Ropemaker they’d met on their journey. Faheel decided he was the one he’d been waiting for, but they looked at a sort of magic table he’d got and saw that the Ropemaker was in the palace at Talak and just about to be made into a Watcher. So to stop that Faheel used the ring to hold time still for the whole Empire while he and Tilja were carried up to Talak by this roc and he destroyed the Watchers. But before—”

“One moment,” said Fodaro. “‘He destroyed the Watchers.’ Does your story say anything about how he did that?”

“Yes, but it makes even less sense than anything else. Everything got bent out of shape. There were a lot of towers. They were all straight if you looked at just one of them, but they weren’t straight with each other. Something far off looked bigger than something nearer. Shapes didn’t fit together with themselves. In the end the sky came forward until it was inside out and swallowed the Watchers up. And if you know what any of that means you’re welcome to it.”

Fodaro was staring at her, oblivious to her outrage. Benayu in turn was staring at him with his mouth half open in astonishment.

“As it happens, I do know what it means,” said Fodaro slowly. “It is unbelievable, though not in the way you think. Anything else you can tell me about it…?”

“I don’t think so. Maja? No, we both know the same version, but Ribek’s is a bit different in places. You’ll have to ask him when he wakes up. Shall I go on?”

“Please. So, having destroyed the Watchers Faheel gave the Ropemaker the ring?”

“No, because before he could do that another magician who wanted the ring—he was one of the secret ones—Tilja called him Moonfist—he took Faheel by surprise and nearly killed him, but Tilja managed to use the ring to stop time again and get him back to his island. Then before he died he gave Tilja the ring to take to the Ropemaker.

“They had a lot more stu—I’ve got to stop saying that—they had a lot more adventures before they found him, of course, and he gave them the power to seal the Valley off again and sent them home. Tahl and Alnor couldn’t go through the forest because they were men and the sickness was back, but they had a tiresome old mare with them called Calico, and the Ropemaker put a couple of roc feathers—the ones I just showed you—onto her shoulders and turned them into wings, so that she could fly them home. And I think he actually managed to hide the Valley completely this time. I spent six years out on the other side of the desert among the warlords, and nobody had any idea it was there….”

“One moment,” said Fodaro. “There were magicians there, among these warlords? And magical objects?”

“Yes. Why? Magic didn’t work so well out there, but—”

He interrupted her with a gesture and glanced at Benayu, who nodded.

“Only a minor puzzle,” he said. “Later, perhaps. Please go on. Nobody among these warlords knew of the existence of the Valley….”

“That’s right. I don’t think anyone in the Empire does, either. In the old days, before the Ropemaker, the Emperors kept trying to send armies through the forest to recapture what they called their Lost Province—that’s in the story—so they must have known about it then, but I’ve never heard they’ve tried anything like that since.

“But the magic must have stopped working now because it was only supposed to last for twenty generations and they’re up. My family kept count, and my mother always told me I might be the one who had to go and look for the Ropemaker and ask him to renew the magic. I couldn’t stand it. Why me, for pity’s sake? I never wanted anything to do with any of it in the first place. I thought it had ruined my life. So I ran away, and that turned out even worse, so as soon as I got the chance I ran back. So there I was, looking at the ruins of my old home, when I found the feathers among the ashes, and I realized that all this had been planned somehow, long ago. I’d even picked up an old horse to put the wings on, and there was Ribek limping up the road. And at that point Sheep-faces turned up in their airboat looking for us. Ribek says that no one had ever seen anything like that in the Valley before. Which shows that the Sheep-faces had only just found out the Valley was there, and—”