Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

“It’s all right,” Tilja whispered. “We were just a bit late, that’s all.”

The three didn’t answer, but turned and sat, slumped and un-caring, as they had done before. Ahead, the lights of torches came nearer and nearer, reflected from the water under the archway that led into the City of Death.

There was no magic in Goloroth, none at all. Tahl had felt the change the moment the raft slid through the arch, he said later, but it took Tilja a while to notice, because it was a difference in something she didn’t feel with any of her bodily senses, nor in any way she could put words to. But all the time she had been in the Empire, since they had first come through the forest, whatever it was in her that so stubbornly resisted the pervading magic had been at work, and now it could relax.

By the time the revelation came to her, she and Tahl were last in the line of children who had arrived on the rafts, and were being led along a pitch-dark street between the blank walls of two long buildings. There was a man carrying a torch at the front to show them the way, and another bringing up the rear. She was so astonished by the revelation that she relaxed her guard and spoke aloud.

“You were right, Tahl! There isn’t any magic here!”

He glanced toward her with a sharp, warning frown, but the man immediately behind them had already heard.

“That’s right, lassie,” he said affably. “Second-best-warded place in the Empire, Goloroth.”

“And you don’t mind talking about it?” asked Tahl, instantly.

“What’s the harm? The bastards can’t get at us here. Death has its compensations, eh? No magic, no Watchers, none of that nonsense. Haven’t you got it? You’re outside the Empire now. You can die here, and no one has to pay a drin.”

“And it’s warded like that to keep it out of the Empire?” said Tahl. “I don’t see . . .”

“Why should you,” said the man, who clearly liked to talk, “seeing the trouble they’ve gone to keep everyone from getting the idea? You’re a thinking lad, by the sound of you. You must’ve wondered, coming south, about how much all this is costing, the guides, the free stops at the way stations, and now you’re here the rafts—couple of thousand a day and working all night when we’re busy—and the food and stores, and everything, and the Emperor not getting a drin back out of it by way of taxes. Doesn’t make sense once you’ve thought about it, eh?”

“No,” said Tahl. “It’s been bothering me pretty well since we started. People don’t spend money like that unless they’ve got to.”

“Said you were a thinking lad,” said the man. “Well, they’ve got to, and here’s for why. While you’ve been wondering about things, has it ever crossed your mind to wonder where all the magic is coming from? It comes out of us, that’s where. We’ve all got a bit of it, right? All our lives it kind of settles into us, like dust, and then it comes out again when we die. Some of us find how to take it and use it, and they’re the ones who become magicians, but most of us don’t even notice it’s there. Me, I’ve not got that much, because I’ve lived all my life since I was a kid here in Goloroth, where there isn’t any magic. But these old folk who come down here to die, they’ve been living years and years out in the Empire, and they’re full of the stuff. Notice how it was blowing around outside the walls?”

“We certainly did,” said Tahl. “It was knocking us all over the place.”

“That’s because the old folk are starting to lose it, soon as they get here. Mostly it blows out to sea—the Watchers back in Talagh look after that. But it’s nothing to what they let go of when they actually come to dying. You just think what it would be like if you had that happening all over the Empire all the time.

“And another thing. Suppose I was starting out to become a big magician—where’s the easiest place for me to pick up a bit more magic than I’ve got on my own? There’s some of it floating around loose in the air, but it’s too much like hard work gathering all that in and making something of it, and I want quick results, so I’ll do much better taking it away from somebody else, and the easiest time for that is just when that somebody else is dying and giving up his magic. Right?

“Now, suppose I’m not a magician, I’m the Emperor, and I want to stop this kind of thing happening and a lot of magicians getting more power than I’ve got myself, what do I do? I make laws against magic, of course, and I hire Watchers who’re magicians themselves to keep an eye on things, but most of all I try to see to it that people don’t go dying promiscuous all over my Empire, not unless they can prove to me they’ve got the money to have their deathbeds properly warded, and if they have, no harm in them paying a bit of tax on top of it for all the trouble I’m taking, right? But for everyone else I set up a place they can get to before they die, and then get taken away outside my Empire. That’s Goloroth here, and old Fugon the Fifth must’ve been more than pleased with himself when he thought of it. . . .”

Tilja had been doing her best to listen. What the man was telling them was useful and important, though at the same time almost too horrible to think about, but her mind kept straying. Where were Meena and Alnor? Where was Faheel? What would happen when, in the heart of this warded city, Meena tried to use Axtrig to find him?

“. . . only one snag,” the man was saying. “Get a lot of old people passing through a place like this all the time, and some of them are going to start dying before they’re on the water. And since there weren’t that many dying anywhere else, not unwarded at least, you got a lot of magicians hanging around down here hoping for pickings. Started happening pretty well the moment the place was built, which is why after a bit old Fugon decided to have the place warded like it is. And he built way stations everyone’s got to sleep at, warded too, in case they go dying on the way. Once you know that, everything else kind of falls into place, you’ll find. But the Emperors never wanted it to get about that’s how it is, because the only way they can run things is if everybody more or less believes the Emperor’s all-powerful, whereas fact is he’s only just about in control of it all.”

“I see,” said Tahl in a tone of delighted wonder. “And—”

“That’s enough, sonny,” said the man. “We’re where we’ve been going, so there’s not time. But just keep your ears open and you’ll learn a lot here. You’ve got the rest of your life for that.”

They had come out of the area of large blank sheds and reached a courtyard surrounded by low buildings. Here several women were waiting, and the man at the head of the column halted and called the children round him. Listlessly they gathered.

“Well, my young friends, you’ve arrived at last,” he said, sounding just as friendly as the one who’d been talking to Tahl. “You’ve had a rough time, but remember that everyone you meet here has been through all that themselves. We know what it’s like, and we’re out to make it as easy for you as we can. Now the women here are going to show you somewhere to sleep and see you’re comfortable, and in the morning they’ll—”

He stopped dead. His head began to turn. Every torch in the courtyard went out. Tilja was knocked sideways by Tahl being flung violently against her. She grabbed him and managed to prevent them both from falling. There were shouts and yells nearby, heavy crashes from further away, more cries and screams floating in from further yet, but only for three or four seconds, and then complete darkness and silence, until Tahl groaned and shuddered in her arms.

She reached for his hand and held it tight, and now she felt the same sense of something being sucked or pushed to and fro that she had felt when her fingers had locked into the fur of Silena’s beast, and knew that in spite of what they had been told only a few minutes before, the wards of Goloroth had been broken and magic was flooding into the city.