Peter Dickinson - Angel Isle

Now he sounded completely confident, like Saranja, almost eager. This was his first real test against his enemy, and he was going to pass it. There was even a hint of the cocky young know-it-all he had seemed when they had first met him back at the sheep pasture.

It never came to the trial. Maja continued to watch, readying herself for the quick pulse of magic every time the man paused. He was only a couple of rows from them and was checking a license when there was a sudden, intense flare of power from immediately behind him. A bead on the amulet blazed bright enough to cast shadows. Ribek caught Maja as she fell sprawling. By the time she recovered the man had disappeared and there was a clamor of panic from where he had been, fading to a mutter of rumor that spread through the courtyard and died away. The silence was as dense as a marsh mist, dense with shock and fear.

“What on earth…?” whispered Saranja.

They looked at Benayu. He shook his head, perhaps in warning, perhaps in disbelief. He didn’t answer, but instead turned to Maja and muttered to her to protect herself. She slid her amulet down her arm. Even in those few words she had heard the strain in his voice. His lips began to move steadily, and his fingers danced through a pattern of small, precise gestures.

They waited, it seemed, for ever. On the other side of the courtyard somebody began to scream and couldn’t be stilled, but only one or two stars had pricked through the darkening sky when the Watcher came, and the nightmare was real.

Maja found herself locked into place. She couldn’t have moved a finger if she’d chosen. But she’d been looking directly toward where the magical explosion had occurred, so she saw him appear out of nowhere—a tall figure wearing a pale unornamented cloak and an ivory mask with only two round eyeholes and a dark slot for a mouth. Shuddering now with the nauseous impact of a Watcher, she slid the amulet up her arm as far as she could bear. It was important to know, to understand.

The space around him shimmered and became a sphere of light. He raised both hands head high with fingers spread and spoke five ringing syllables. The sphere rose and grew until it was large enough for everyone in the courtyard to see the scene it held, an upland pasture with a brown hare loping across it.

The viewpoint withdrew, enlarging the scene to show a stretch of sky from which a lion-headed thing, winged and taloned, came hurtling down. A bolt of lightning lanced up at it from where the hare had been. The winged creature absorbed it, plunged and struck, apparently at nothing, and then rose with the naked body of a man writhing in its clutch.

A voice spoke coldly in Maja’s head.

“This man chose to use unlicensed powers to take vengeance on a servant of the Emperor, and then to attempt to hide from the Emperor’s justice. He will now die slowly over very many days. Continue your journeys in peace, and let one of each party tell all you meet what you have seen. It will not go unnoticed if you fail to do so. Farewell.”

As he spoke the Watcher turned slowly on his heel. His empty eyes raked the courtyard. When he had completed the full circle he vanished.

There was a long, soft sigh as the air was released from several hundred lungs. Mutters and whispers followed. The screaming began again on the far side of the courtyard.

“Never thought I’d be seeing one of them, ” said a voice nearby.

“Don’t mind if I never do again,” said another.

“You all right, young Ben?” said Ribek.

Benayu gave a shuddering sigh.

“They’re looking for me too, remember,” he muttered. “I never imagined power like that…and the horror…I never imagined it.”

Maja dragged herself out of her own nightmare, instinctively trying to join him in his, to tell him he was not alone. She reached to grasp his hand, clay-cold and clammy with sweat. He didn’t respond to her touch, nor come with her when she slowly surfaced into the here and now. He ate not a mouthful of his supper and seemed not to hear their voices, but sat all evening shivering and staring into the fire. In the end Ribek went to one of the food stalls and bought a phial of sleeping draft and forced it between his lips. Then he took off Benayu’s boots and with Saranja’s help straightened his body out—he seemed powerless to do even that for himself—and slid him into his bedroll. Sponge settled beside him and quietly licked his hand.

He was little better next morning. Ribek needed to support him to the latrines, and as soon as he returned he curled up again in his bedding and lay motionless until it was time to move. Pogo, aware through some weird horse sense that something was amiss with his usual rider, was in a skittish mood, so they heaved Benayu into Levanter’s saddle, where he sat hunched and listless all morning. Saranja led him, with Maja on the pillion, while Pogo took it out on Ribek by shying at trifles by the wayside.

Benayu sat with them silent at their midday rest, ate a few mouthfuls and slept in the shade, but when they moved on began to show signs of life, mutters and sighs and shakings of the head. But he ate steadily that evening, emptied his plate and set it aside, then spoke in a quiet, deliberate voice.

“It’s got to be done. It’s got to be done.”

He couldn’t hide the fear underlying the words.

It remained with them as the days went by, an unseen companion on their journey, as if the ghost of the Watcher walked beside them, invisible to all of them but Benayu. Mysteriously this made Maja’s own private nightmare easier for her to deal with. Compared to the almost solid reality of Benayu’s fear, hers seemed little more than a childish terror of the dark. He was the Watcher’s enemy, the one they were pursuing. Their prey. They probably didn’t even know of her existence. Without noticing, she found that she had started being afraid for him, not herself.

“Can’t we do anything to help?” she said one morning while Benayu was at the latrines.

“It’s hard on you,” said Ribek.

“It’s hard on all of us. It’s like being back at Woodbourne.”

Saranja glanced at her and nodded. She knew what Woodbourne had been like.

“We’ve got to bear with it, I’m afraid,” she said. “For one thing, we gave him our word, and for another we aren’t going to get anywhere without him. But we don’t all have to put up with it. Pogo will behave himself best alongside Rocky, so I’ll go ahead with Benayu and we’ll fix a seat for Maja behind Ribek.”

“We could take turns,” said Ribek.

“Let’s see how I get on,” said Saranja.

She got on very well, it turned out, simply by being herself. She didn’t try to cheer Benayu up, as Ribek might have done, or sympathize with him, as Maja would, but snapped at him if she felt like it, made his decisions for him, ordered him about. This seemed to suit him. Not that he became any less withdrawn, but less morose, more settled.

“Just what he needed,” Ribek told Maja. “He was pretty well on the edge of madness, I was beginning to think. His world had fallen to bits, and she’s put a little bit of it together again for him, a hut in a storm.

“Her too, I suppose,” he added after a pause. “She needs somebody outside herself. Not just a purpose, a person.”

Maja knew what he was talking about. It was one of the reasons the change suited her too. Maja wasn’t exactly afraid of her cousin, but she always felt on her best behavior with her. Saranja was so strong and direct and unafraid. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to be timid and unsure, as Maja felt herself to be. Or perhaps that was just a mask. No, more than a mask, armor. An armored knight with a fiery sword, the sword of her anger. How could you know what she was like inside?