Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

“It’s like a current round a rock,” said Tahl. “It can’t get in, so it swirls all round. I don’t think there’s going to be any magic in Goloroth. I bet those walls are warded, like Talagh.”

“There’s got to be,” said Meena. “ He’s in there. There’s nowhere else left.”

Only an hour before, when the low brown walls of the City of Death—so much smaller than they had expected—had first come in sight, she and Tilja had slipped aside from the road, in among the reeds, and there for the last time asked their question. Axtrig had still pointed south, straight at Goloroth. And Goloroth lay beside the mouth of the Great River, at the southernmost tip of the Empire. There was nothing but ocean beyond it. Unless Meena was wrong about what Axtrig was telling them, Faheel must be inside those walls.

“Perhaps that’s why he chose it,” said Tahl. “Good place to hide—no one would think of looking for him here.”

They were waiting in one of the lines that had formed to enter the city. There were several gateways in the otherwise blank wall. To either side of them officials sat at long tables. As each pair, old person and child, reached the head of the line they waited until a place was vacant at one of the tables and then went up to be interviewed by the official, who spoke to them briefly, wrote their answers in a ledger, wrote again on a sheet of paper and handed it to the child. The child then turned back and the old person went off alone through the gate. Chairs with carrying handles were brought for those who had difficulty walking.

Even here, under the walls of the City of Death, as everywhere else in the Empire, there were traders looking for a profit, selling food and supplies for the return journey, or offering to buy possessions that the travelers no longer needed, now that they had reached the end. Some of these too were sensitive to the gusts of magic. Tilja could see them automatically adjusting their footing as they carried on with their business.

Slowly the line in front of the gate edged forward. As it did so children came walking back, some solemn, some weeping, some seeming simply dazed that the thing was over and now they had to make their own way home, alone. Meena and the others seemed too preoccupied with fighting the invisible buffetings to notice, but Tilja became more and more anxious as she watched what was happening at the head of the line on their right.

Mostly the procedure went smoothly enough, but every now and then either the old person or the child would say something to the official at the table, and perhaps even begin to argue as the official shook his head, and then two other men would come up and lead the pair aside to say good-bye to each other, and though they might cling to each other and weep, before long the men would part them gently and lead them off in their separate directions. Tilja didn’t see a single child go on into the city. Neither Meena nor Alnor seemed very put out when she told them.

“I’d been wondering about that,” said Meena. “But no point meeting trouble till trouble meets you, I always say.”

“I also have been thinking about this,” said Alnor. “I am less certain than Meena that the man we are seeking is within the city. If he is here, perhaps he will do what we ask, and then help us to return. If so, well and good. If not, I do not care what happens to me. But if he is not here, then we have no choice but to search further on. Who knows what lands may lie south across the ocean? After all that has happened to us, I am fully convinced that our search will be rewarded, and that in the end we will find him. If I have to travel south on a raft, so be it. He cannot be very far. Every time Meena and Tilja have used the spoon, I have felt the pulse of magic more strongly.

“But let us for the moment assume that we find him here, and he is prepared to help us not only leave the city, but find Tahl and Tilja and return to the Valley. We cannot go home without his help. We would be questioned at every stage. So for the moment the best thing would be for you two to wait here for, say, five days, and then start north. Somehow, I do not know how, we will meet again.”

“Best we can do,” said Meena.

“I don’t want to leave you,” said Tilja. Despite Alnor’s confidence, she felt that when in a very short time they parted at the gates of the City of Death, she would be saying good-bye to Meena forever.

“Nor me,” said Tahl. “And anyway I want to see what happens. I mean, after getting this far . . .”

“I want to come with you,” said Tilja, already close to tears.

“Looks like we’ve got no choice,” said Meena.

“We’re still going to get in somehow,” said Tahl.

“What about Axtrig?” said Tilja. “She’s asleep now, but . . .”

“Think she’ll stay that way? Long enough for me to get her in, at least?”

“I don’t know. When I carried her into Talagh . . . you couldn’t have done it then. I only just managed it. But she’s different now. She’s asleep—like she used to be in the Valley. And you got her in past Lananeth’s wards. She didn’t really wake up till you said the name.”

“Well, I’ll still be needing her, risk or no risk. Leave it till last thing, and you put her into my bag, and we’ll just have to hope. . . . Ah, don’t you take it so hard, girl. I’m not like these others, come to the end and ready to go. I’ve had a good life, and I’m thankful for it, but I tell you it’s nothing like over, not yet. Come along then, cheer yourself up and say good-bye like we’d be seeing each other again tomorrow, which very likely we will.”

Uncomforted, Tilja fought with her tears until they reached the front of the line. There she watched Alnor and Meena take their turn at the tables, barely noticing the astonishing fact that there wasn’t anything to pay, no fee, no bribe, no extra, not one drin.

They moved aside to say good-bye, and the way Meena returned Tilja’s parting hug told her that inwardly her grandmother was feeling the same sense of grief and loss. Last thing of all she unstrapped Axtrig from her arm; Meena drew the leather bag out from under her skirt and Tilja slid the old spoon in with the other two. She managed to hold herself together while she said good-bye to Alnor also, and then watched tensely while the two of them helped each other through the gate. As they disappeared a blast of loose magic hurtled by, scattering the waiting lines, but nothing else happened. She led Calico back beside the way the way they had come, suddenly blind with tears.

Someone was speaking to her. A man’s voice.

“Thinking of selling that beast, missie? You’re from the north, by the look of you, so you’ve a long way to go, and she’s nothing like worth her feed all that time. Much better sell her now. I’ll give you a price you won’t be sorry for.”

Tilja could only shake her head, but Tahl butted in, asking questions as usual.

“What do you do with them when you’ve bought them?”

“Wait till I’ve got a string together, then take them up to the market at Ramram.”

“We don’t want to sell her, but how much to look after her for two or three days?”

“Well, now . . . what’s in your mind?”

“We want to see if we can get into the city and be with our grandparents until they actually have to go.”

The horse dealer laughed aloud.

“Some people!” he exclaimed. “No accounting . . . I’d have run a mile to get away from my own grandma. Look, sonny, there’s a lot of rules in the Empire you can get round, one way or another. But there’s one about Goloroth you can’t. Man or beast, once you’re into Goloroth you don’t come out alive, not until you go south yourself on the Great River. . . .”