Peter Dickinson - Angel Isle

“Yes?” whispered the sweet lips.

“Will you let us through, please?” said Saranja.

“Who are you and what is your purpose?”

“We’re Saranja and Maja Urlasdaughter. The others are Ribek Ortahlson and Benayu. I don’t know his parents’ names, but his uncle was called Fodaro. We’re on our way to Tarshu.”

“Fodaro we know of. You say ‘was.’ He is dead?”

“The Watchers killed him. They’re looking for us. We don’t want them to find us. That’s why we came this way. Will you let us through?”

“Go back a little. Watch.”

They climbed to the rim of the basin and turned. Maja clung to Saranja’s hand to steady herself against the whirlwind of magic that formed as the rocks that lined it began to flow and change shape. They became mason-hewn stone that piled itself rapidly into a building. The basin widened and filled with water, and now she was looking at a squat gray tower rising from the middle of a circular lake. The keystone of its arch was the face that had spoken to them from the boulder, carved in stone.

The doors opened and a woman stood under the arch. She was dressed in a plain brown cloak, and apart from the blue jewel suspended from her neck she looked like some farmwife who has just brought a load of produce to a country market, middle-aged, short, plump, round-faced but small-featured, smiling. She would not, Maja thought, have looked out of place in the Valley, where no magic had ever been known.

A bridge appeared at her feet and she stretched out both arms in greeting but made no move to cross it.

“Welcome, cousins,” she said. “There was a woman once called Tilja Urlasdaughter. I am her remote descendant. My name is Chanad. I will call your friends.”

Her voice was soft and level, the words very precisely spoken, as if every syllable was precious. They turned and saw Ribek and Benayu look suddenly toward them, and then start to lead the horses confidently up the slope.

They ate in a comfortable room with a steady fire glowing in the grate. Chanad carried in plates, mugs and cutlery on a tray. Maja was puzzled. Even with Saranja holding her steady she had barely withstood the swirling blasts of magic that had accompanied the appearance of Chanad’s tower and continued with increasing force as they had crossed the bridge toward it. But once in under the arch all that was gone. All she could feel was the faint background buzz that told her that outside the tower it was still there. The answer, when it came to her, was so unexpected that she blurted it out.

“It’s got a ward on the inside too!”

Chanad looked at her, eyebrows raised.

“Indeed it has,” she said. “But I’m surprised you’re aware of it. A ward that betrays its existence is as useless as no ward at all.”

“I’m not,” said Maja. “I mean I can’t feel the ward itself. But I can just feel all that stuff going on outside it, so I guessed it was there. It was like that coming. Everything’s got a bit of magic in it, rocks, trees, animals, streams—it’s so gentle you don’t notice it, but I noticed when it wasn’t there, so I knew there had to be something.”

Chanad stared at her.

“I have heard of such people,” she said. “Magicians, of course, can sense the presence of magic, but they need to create the means by which they do it, and then to learn how to use it. A few people are born with your ability, as a natural gift, but they very seldom survive infancy. The magic around them—the magic in everyday things, and simple hedge magic—is too strong for them to endure at that age.”

“There wasn’t any magic where I was born,” said Maja. “I never felt it till just a few days ago, when I watched Saranja putting Rocky’s wings on. That really shook me. I’m getting used to it, I think, but just coming across your bridge—I couldn’t have done it without Saranja.”

“You will meet far stronger than that where you are going, if you are who I think you may be. If I am right, I will provide you with what help I can. I am the last of the group that called ourselves the Andarit, the Free Great Magicians. I knew Fodaro, and grieve for him. A good man to the last—a very good man. Too good to be a good magician. Benayu’s mother and father were my colleagues. When we made our move against the Watchers we knew that we might not succeed, and I was chosen to survive until another chance should come. Ancient tradition told us that if it came at all it would be from the north.

“So between us we devised this tower, where I am able to ward myself from the corroding power of my own magic, which, with nothing else to practice upon, would otherwise have eaten me away over the years. I have an unwarded workroom at the top of the tower, but I perform no magic anywhere else within these walls, and do not even step onto my bridge if I can help it. We made all the area around into a magical blank space, as seen from elsewhere in the Empire, large enough to absorb and dissipate any magic I might perform from this center. If the Watchers in Talak were to concentrate their attention on the area they would find me, but they rely on their Seeing Tower, which is not designed to respond to an absence of magic.

“From here I watch the roads leading east and south out of Mord, and bring toward my tower any travelers who interest me. Almost all I return to their road fairly soon, taking from them any memory of where they have been.

“You were unusual, in that one of you—Benayu, I now know—became a bird and began to explore in this direction, so I laid a path for him to find, and you followed it. Later, to my surprise, you seemed to become aware of what was happening. When Benayu tried to take bird form again I stopped him, but nevertheless you came on. Finally I put a barrier of terror in your path, to see how you would react before I let you through. You not only overcame the barrier but came directly to my place of hiding. Only when Saranja told me your names did I understand who you are and why you are here, and know that my time of waiting is at an end. So welcome again.

“First, you can tell me your story while we’re eating. Easiest, perhaps, if we all fetch our own food and carry it through. Since I knew you were coming I’ve had time to prepare something. I like to cook, and I seldom get the chance to do it for anyone more than myself.”

They helped themselves to a pungent-smelling stew, hunks of coarse fresh bread, and green beans. There was sharp pale cider or water to drink, and a creamy mix of honey and brandy and soured goat’s milk and spices for dessert.

“I think you take more pride in your cooking than you do in your magic,” said Ribek.

“I suppose I do,” she said. “It is one of my ways of staying human. Now, tell me what brought you here. Perhaps you’d better start with what you know about our ancestor Tilja Urlasdaughter. Everything begins with her.”

They took it in turn, first the story from the Valley, then what had happened since they had all met, and then their own plans. She stopped them only once, to ask them, just as Fodaro had done, about Faheel’s time-controlling ring, of which she too had never heard.

“Yes,” she said when they had finished. “All that fits in with what I already know. It is astonishing how remembered truth comes down through time. As I said, the only major exception is Faheel’s ring, on which your story hinges. You tell me it stopped the movement of the sun across the sky, the march of the waves across the sea, the breath in the mouths of all the living creatures in the world, for the length of time it took for the roc to fly Tilja and himself from his island in the southern ocean all the way to Talagh. And yet when Tilja, with her gift of annulling magic, closed her hand around it, in that instant the sun and the waves moved on and the creatures of the world went about their business, unaware that there had been any interval between one breath and the next.