Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

The mood lasted all day. But that night at the way station, at the exact hour that Silena had come (she could tell by the stars), she woke with her heart slamming, her body locked rigid with dread and her palms chill with sweat. And the same next night, and the next, and the next. Usually at least one of the others would be awake at the same time, and they would whisper to each other for a little, and Tilja could hear quiet mutters of reassurance from elsewhere in the enclosure, which told her that they were not the only ones to have woken at that particular time. It was as though Silena had somehow set a clock in all their minds that triggered a danger signal at the hour of her coming. The effect didn’t start to fade until the moon had waned completely and waxed again almost to its full, and midnight was no longer dark. But no more Watchers came stealing into the enclosure, with whatever beast or demon they had chosen as their companion, to search for Axtrig.

Those night wakings were the only alarms in all their seemingly endless journey. Steadily the days became warmer, both with the coming summer and the more southern climate. Soon mornings and evenings seemed as hot as noon had been north of Talagh. The landscape changed, and changed again, and yet again, flat miles of fields, green wooded hills, dry and broken ground where immense flocks of sheep and goats were herded, ancient forests full of strange calls and odors, cities, villages, fortresses, grand houses ringed by rich estates.

Only the road did not change. Broad as a fair-sized river, well paved from side to side, it headed on south. Despite the Emperor’s decrees it was thronged from dawn to dusk with travelers, all of whom must have proved they had good reason for their journey. The wind swung round to the east and for three long days rain fell, warm and dense, from sagging low clouds. The road became truly a river, ankle deep in places, but then shedding its load into the drowned fields on either side. Through the downpour everyone plodded on. The way stations were cleared each morning, to make room for the next night’s travelers, so there was nothing else for it but to endure the drenching. It was the Emperor’s will.

After what Silena had said about how she had traced them, Meena and Tilja were even more careful about using Axtrig to point the way they should go. They knew that by now there would be a new Watcher in Silena’s tower, who might notice the quick flicker of potent magic, moving further south each time. And perhaps more dangerous still, there was the unknown magician who had sent the great creature to attack the walls of Talagh. He was hiding now, Silena had said, but he had put forth that enormous power for the sake of the old spoon, and he would do so again, if he got the chance. But they had to take the risk, or the time might come when they actually plodded on past the point where they should have turned aside.

So sometimes, though at longer intervals than before, the two of them would slip away from the road during the midday rest, and Tilja would bring Axtrig out from under her sleeve, and Meena would stand well apart and whisper the name of Faheel, and the old spoon would wake and move.

Wake was the right word. Especially since Silena had come to the way station, Axtrig had seemed more and more deeply asleep. It was something Tilja was doing to her with her own increasing powers, wearing her against her skin day after day after day, not destroying her magic, but burying it deeper and deeper in the grained wood, where only Faheel’s name would wake it. At the whisper of that name there would be a pause, a stillness, and the strange, eager tree-life would wake and remember itself in a pulse of magic, and point their direction, with a greater sureness each time, as if the spoon heard more and more clearly the summoning voice of the man in whose garden the peach had hung whose seed had become the tree that had grown at Woodbourne.

Then Tilja would touch her with a fingertip and she would sleep again.

On the ninety-third day of their journey, at last, the great river rejoined them. They slept the night at a way station beside it. Here a mile-long bridge crossed to an ancient city, ringed with a turreted wall, and with a huge fortress crowning the rocky hill at its center. The bridge had been widened to make room for market stalls all along its length. Waiting for their dole of food that evening, Tilja heard an old man talking to the boy who was accompanying him to Goloroth.

“See that fort there?” he was saying. “Take a good look at it. You’ll be right glad to see it again on your way back. That’s Ramram, last city of the living. And that on the bridge, that’s the Ramram fair. You want something pretty to take home to your ma from the south, that’s the best place to look for it. There’s nothing else south of here except the place we’re going. That’s no place for a child, and it won’t have changed much since I came this way myself with my own granddad, this fifty-seven years ago. You’ll see what I mean tomorrow morning.”

He was right. Almost as soon as they had left the way station the nature of their journey changed. The road was as well kept as before, but less than half the width, and almost no one was using it except the old people going south to die, with their companions, and groups of weary children who had made that same journey earlier now trudging back north.

By that evening the river too began to change, breaking up into a network of reedy channels which spread out to left and right while the road speared straight on, striding from island to island on immense timber bridges.

“We are near the end,” said Alnor. “The waters can feel the sea. Can the man we are looking for still be south of here? There is nothing to come but Goloroth. You are sure, Tilja, about the way the spoon was pointing last time?”

“Yes, quite sure.”

They had checked their direction only the day before, when Ramram had come in sight. It had certainly looked the kind of place where a powerful magician might choose to live, but Axtrig had unmistakably pointed on past it, south. Still south.

“Then he’s got to be in Goloroth,” said Meena.

“I bet he isn’t,” said Tahl.

“Tell you one thing,” said Meena. “I don’t know how Alnor and me are going to get ourselves back out of here. We’re going to stand out like two sore thumbs, the only old folk going north.”

“There will be a way,” said Alnor, with absolute confidence.

That night’s way station was on one of the islands. Despite the steamy heat, braziers were lit all around it and piled with damp reeds whose smoke helped keep the swarming night insects away.

There was a change in the travelers. When they settled down in the dusk, one of the groups started to sing, as usual, but it wasn’t the usual kind of song. Tilja had never heard it before, and didn’t know the language of the words, but the long sad notes told her that it was a song of farewell, a song of ending. Everybody listened, and when it was over there was silence for a while before one of the other groups began its own song in answer. And so on all round the enclosure, some peaceful and resigned, some full of fierce grief for the bright world that the singers were leaving, but all saying good-bye. Tilja lay down to sleep that night with her cheeks wet with tears.

10

The City of Death

My, it’s getting strong here,” Meena muttered as they waited in the still, dense heat outside the walls of Goloroth. She clutched at Calico’s saddle to steady herself as if something invisible had suddenly cannoned against her. Alnor was already holding firmly on to Tahl’s shoulder, and ahead of them an old man staggered and fell, caught in the same gust. Tilja could feel nothing, and that in itself told her that Meena had been talking about magic.