Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

She stared at the spoons, frowning. It was a while before she became aware of another change. The others were no longer talking. Silence filled the room. She looked up and saw Tahl staring at something on the far wall—no, beyond it, through it. His mouth was open and his face gray in the lamplight. Meena had her eyes shut, but was pale too, and shuddering. Lananeth was no longer sitting stiffly erect, but had her head bowed, as if she’d fallen asleep, and her hands were clenched so tight that her knuckles showed white between the rings. And Alnor was still sitting upright but had his arms stretched out in front of him with his hands spread wide as if he were feeling for something that hung in the air before him.

“What’s up?” asked Tilja.

Her voice woke Tahl from his daze.

“Didn’t you feel it?” he whispered. “It was like a thunderclap.”

“I only saw Axtrig sort of twist round when you started talking about—”

“Do not say his name!” said Alnor, urgently.

Tilja bit the syllables back and waited, bewildered, through another tense silence.

“There, that’s over,” said Meena with a sigh. “I suppose we’d better talk about it. Carefully, mind you. What was that you were saying, girl? Something about old Axtrig?”

“She sort of moved. Only . . .”

She tried to explain, but it seemed to make even less sense when she said it aloud, though she could see Alnor nodding encouragingly as she groped for words.

“Knew the fellow’s name, Axtrig did,” said Meena when she finished. “Think of it! All that time! Nineteen generations, and the peach stone being put into the ground and sending up its shoot and growing into a tree and standing there, season after season, and blowing down at last and the wood being carved into a spoon, and that lying in cupboards and drawers and such a couple of hundred years and more, and her still knowing where she came from, to twitch like that at his name being mentioned.”

“No,” said Alnor. “It was more than a twitch. Even Tilja felt it to be so, and she heard something fall, so the house itself was shaken. I think perhaps Tahl is right. It was like a thunderclap— or rather it was like the bolt that causes the thunder. When Meena spoke the name something was drawn to this room, to the spoon itself, as the lightning is drawn from the clouds.”

“But she must have heard his name before, back in the Valley,” said Tilja. “I mean when people are telling the story, explaining about her, and where she came from.”

“She’s been asleep,” said Tahl. “There isn’t any magic in the Valley. There’s lots here. It’s really woken her up. Don’t you think . . .”

He broke off. Tilja followed his glance and saw that Lananeth didn’t seem to have been listening, didn’t seem to have moved when the others had come out of their daze. She was still sitting with her head bowed over her clenched hands, breathing in slow, heaving lungfuls, like someone deep asleep. Tahl leaned forward and shook her gently by the wrist, but she didn’t stir.

“Hit her worse than us three,” said Meena, “whatever it was.”

“But she is one of us,” said Tahl. “She must be. I mean she was born with the gift, too. Only she doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“No wonder, after what she’s been telling us,” said Meena. “Maybe if I put the spoons away . . .”

As she stretched to pick up the three spoons her hand hesitated for a moment; then she seemed to force it on, but fumbled strangely as she tidied the spoons together and rolled them into the cloth. Tilja saw Alnor relax from his stiff posture, and heard Tahl sigh.

“There now, that’s better,” said Meena. “Didn’t want to come, mind you, Axtrig didn’t. Felt like that was how she wanted to lie, and no way else. I wonder—”

She was interrupted by a violent snort from Lananeth, who shot erect, shook herself and stared round her with a wild look in her eyes, as if still in the grip of a nightmare that had held her, sleeping.

She gave a shuddering sigh and relaxed.

“I thought my walls would have fallen around us,” she gasped.

“Something fell down just outside the window,” said Tilja. “Something heavy.”

Lananeth frowned, concentrated, shook her head.

“There is nothing there to fall,” she said in something like her normal voice. “Only a small tree. But it was in any case nothing of that order. What brought such power here?”

“Meena spoke . . . a name. The name of the man we are looking for,” said Alnor.

“His true name!” Lananeth whispered.

“As far as we know,” said Alnor. “It is in the story we tell in the Valley.”

“I have heard that in the old days, before the Watchers, the names of magicians were openly spoken,” said Lananeth, shaking her head. “Now every little country magician, for safety, is forced to take a true name and tell it to no one. My own is not Lananeth. Still, I would not have thought that even such a name was enough. This room is well warded.”

“We think the power, whatever it was, came to the spoon Axtrig,” said Alnor. “That spoon was carved from the timber of a peach tree that in turn had grown from the stone of a peach given to an ancestress of Meena’s by the man she named.”

“And she moved,” said Meena. “And she didn’t want to shift from where she was when I went to pick her up. I’m thinking she knows where he is and is pointing that way—over toward that corner, about.”

“Southeast, roughly,” said Lananeth. “That way lies Talagh. You said you would look for him there. And you think he still lives—the same man that gave the peach nineteen generations back?”

“So the waters tell me,” said Alnor.

“Then he is powerful indeed,” said Lananeth. “He must hold Time itself in his hand.”

“What did you mean about the room being warded?” said Tahl.

Lananeth hesitated, then smiled her small, tight-lipped smile and shook her head.

“When I said that we must trust each other, I didn’t intend it to go this far,” she said. “I am one of those who can make use of the magic we have around us. Until I married I knew no one but myself that had the gift, and knowing what the penalties were I was greatly afraid of it and did my best to hide that I had it. But my mother-in-law recognized it in me. This was her room. As I told you, those who practice in this way must take measures to hide what they are doing, so she had contrived wards to seal these walls as best she could. She brought me in here and told and showed me what she could do, and encouraged me to try also, and later taught me as much as she knew. Since she died I’ve learned more and so built stronger wards, to make sure that what happens in here is hidden. The power that came smashed through those defenses as if there’d been nothing in them. I felt the very stonework was being torn apart.”

“That’s why it took you worse than it did us,” said Meena. “Breaking up all that stuff you’d done.”

“I expect so,” said Lananeth absently.

She sat in silence for a little while, still breathing deeply, then sighed and shook herself.

“Well, it seems to have left no permanent harm,” she said. “As far as I can tell my wardings are back in place, and at least you have been shown how very careful you’ll need to be. But you have woken the power in your spoons. They’re quieter now, but I can still feel their presence. I’ll do what I can to ward them round for you before you go, so that they don’t betray you on your journey. But unless you can somehow send them to sleep again you will need to leave them outside Talagh. The city is very powerfully warded, and what I can do will be nothing like enough to conceal them.”