Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

“Off you go,” she whispered. “Shoo!”

The cat answered with another meow, but didn’t stir. There’d always been cats at Woodbourne, and Tilja felt comforted by its homely presence. She knelt and spread out the cloth Meena had given her, then laid Axtrig down with her shaft pointing east along the wall, so that she would need to make an obvious movement to point to anywhere in the city. Still keeping low, she stepped back, squatted down facing toward Meena and signaled that she was ready. Meena raised her hand in answer. Tilja stared at the spoon.

The world changed.

Light blazed all along the wall, glaring, shadowless. A whirl of movement—the cat streaking away along the wall, leaping past Meena’s body where it lay on the walkway . . .

Tilja jumped to her feet and ran, snatched Axtrig and the cloth as she passed, crammed them into her blouse and raced on. Meena was lying on her back, her head facing the way they had come, and her cane beside her. Tilja poked it into her waistband, knelt, worked her arms under Meena’s shoulders, heaved her up and started to drag her along the walkway. All this without thought. She only knew that they had to get clear of the place, now, at once. But Meena was far too heavy for her. She was gasping already, her heart pounding. She knew she couldn’t go much further. Where . . . ?

Something she’d seen. The fleeing cat vanishing into the darkness of the little tower. It was only a few paces away now. With a last, wrenching effort she dragged Meena in through the opening and collapsed on top of her.

As soon as she could, she mastered her gasping lungs and breathed more quietly, but the thud of her heart seemed still to fill the night. The glaring light was gone. She knelt up and looked toward the tower entrance. Through it she could see only the blank, moonlit wall of the building on the opposite side of the walkway, so bright that the reflected light shone straight into the center of the little tower, leaving a patch of deep shadow either side. Anyone standing there was sure to see her, and Meena too. Carefully she lifted Meena’s shoulders again and dragged her into the shadow, close to the curving wall, then rose and stood, knowing it was still useless, hopeless. The tower itself was a trap. Her breathing had eased but her heart wouldn’t stop thumping, as it did in nightmares until the terror itself woke her with every muscle locked rigid.

This was just such a nightmare, with the unknown enemy hunting outside, herself hiding, knowing it was going to find her. Except that she was already awake.

Forcing herself out of the paralysis of terror, she edged toward the door until she could see along the walkway almost as far as the next tower. She stared at it. There. It was there that the world had changed, and the nightmare had begun.

An image formed itself in her mind—the spoon, Axtrig, lying on her cloth under that astounding light, with her bowl toward the heart of the city and her shaft pointing the other way. There had been a world in which the spoon had been pointing east along the old city wall. Then there was one in which she was pointing . . . no, not in toward the heart of Talagh, but out, away from it, waking the wards that ringed it, south.

She had no time to think about this, to be amazed or puzzled, because now the nightmare became real. Two figures appeared, moving toward her. One was human, a woman she thought, but couldn’t be sure because it was wrapped in a wide cloak that reached to the ground. The other . . . she didn’t know what it was. It was the height of a large dog, and the human held it by a leash, but it was twice as broad as any dog Tilja had ever seen, with massive shoulders on long forelegs, and a body that then sloped away to squat hind legs. It moved with an awkward waddle and was jet black, blacker than jet. Its blackness drank the moonlight.

As she stared, rigid, holding her breath, trying to silence the betraying thud of her heart, the cat came out of the patch of shadow on the opposite side of the tower and walked to the entrance. It saw the approaching pair, stiffened and arched its back. All its fur stood on end, flecked by the moonlight with pale golden sparks that flickered and changed as it paced rapidly to and fro across the opening, weaving a figure-eight pattern. That done, it came back almost to where Tilja was standing and sat down to watch with her.

Its presence, its ordinariness, didn’t belong in the nightmare. For some kind of reassurance Tilja stooped to stroke its back, but again it moved out of reach and sat watching the pair on the walkway.

Halfway between the two towers they halted and the creature crouched and sniffed noisily at the paving. It licked the place vigorously, looked up and gave a purring snarl, its tongue lolling from an enormous, jagged-fanged mouth. It had one eye, in the middle of its forehead. The woman—she had turned her face into the moonlight, and Tilja could now be sure—scratched the back of its head and gazed along the wall, directly toward the tower where Tilja was hiding. She was almost as dark as the creature, a smooth, young, handsome face with no life in it at all. The face of a statue.

She stooped gracefully and held her hands over the place the creature had shown her. Ribbons of yellow light glowed between her fingers and the paving. Tilja’s chest started to tingle. Instinctively she put her hand to the place and found that the tingling came from Axtrig, lying between her shift and her blouse, but as soon as her fingers gripped the wood it stopped, and instead the same odd numbness as before flowed into her hand. This time it ran all the way up her arm to the elbow, strong enough for her to recognize it as the terrifying sensation that had almost overwhelmed her coming through the city gate. It came from Axtrig, but it was caused by whatever the woman was doing. Yes, she and her creature were looking for Axtrig—that was the tingling. And Tilja had stopped her when she had laid her hand on the wood— that was the numbness. The magic, instead of reaching out to answer the woman’s summons, had flowed into Tilja’s arm and away.

The woman stayed where she was. The glow of light beneath her hands increased to a glare, but Axtrig remained inert, while the numbness seeped away. The woman rose, frowning, and looked again along the walkway. Tilja was certain that now was the moment when they were going to come and find her, but then saw that the woman seemed to be looking beyond the tower. It was clear from the way she stood that she was now waiting for something, or somebody, coming toward her.

Soon Tilja heard the pad of shod feet and a man came into view, walking toward the woman. Tilja saw only his naked back, with a wild tangle of hair reaching almost to his waist, muscular arms with heavy bracelets above and below the elbows, a wide belt covered with jewels that glittered in the moonlight, baggy knee-length trousers, sandals jeweled like the belt. Over his shoulder he carried a sort of whip, a short handle with several knotted thongs.

The creature waddled forward and faced him, snarling. The man ignored it. It leaped at his throat. Something in the empty air seemed to cuff it aside. The man walked straight toward the woman as if he intended to do the same with her. Now his bulk hid her completely from where Tilja was standing, so she couldn’t see how the woman stopped him, but she must have, somehow.

They faced each other. Tilja could hear low voices, but not the words. It sounded like a language she didn’t know. They seemed to come to some kind of agreement. The man took his whip and held it aloft. The thongs fluttered, as if in a lightly gusting breeze, but there wasn’t one. The numbness came back into Tilja’s hand and arm, and flowed away as before. She could guess what was happening. The man was looking for Axtrig, just as the woman had with her magic ribbons. If Tilja hadn’t been clutching the spoon, the thongs would have been straining toward her. As it was, all they responded to was the little currents of ordinary magic wafting to and fro in the night.