Peter Dickinson - The Ropemaker

“There,” she whispered. “He was just coming out of that door.”

“Good,” said Faheel. “Then we are ready. I will tell you what I am trying to do. My object is to prevent your friend being installed as a Watcher, and perhaps, if all goes well, to destroy the whole system of the Watchers. In passing I may be able to do what you ask for your Valley.

“These woman warriors are not here by choice. They have been snatched from their homes at their Emperor’s will, and trained to recapture your Valley. That is not their only purpose. The Emperor has peculiar tastes. He is delighted by women dressed in uniform, so he holds these parades often, and takes any that catch his eye for his own use. The women are furious about this, and long to return to their homes, but they are afraid. The punishments for desertion and mutiny are unspeakable. Now I propose to make use of both his lust and their anger.

“But I dare not use more strength than I must. Whatever I do will wake the Watchers, and I shall need to hold them off for at least a little time, or we will both be destroyed and all will be lost.

“So, when I tell you, you will take the ring out of the box and clasp it in your hand. The world will move on its course once more. After a little while I shall work a very ordinary bit of village magic, a love charm, as it were, beneath the notice of the Watchers. When this has had its effect I shall wake the anger of the soldier women. What then happens should be enough to distract the Watchers on the terrace, and I will use what strength I have left to hold off those in the towers until events have taken their course, and then I will tell you to put the ring back in its box, and time will stop, and we will go as we came.

“And if I should fail . . .”

He paused, and she looked up, waiting. More strongly than ever now she could feel his immense age, his frailty, his weariness. His voice became little more than a whisper.

“If I should fail, you must put the ring back in the box and go by yourself. The roc will wake at your presence and carry you to my island. As you pass between shore and shore, take the ring and throw it into the sea. In the time that would have been a day and a night for you, had the sun still moved through the sky, the effect will cease and your friends will wake. You will be safe enough on my island.”

He straightened and spoke more strongly.

“Now we begin. Take the ring out of the box.”

Fail? With the whole of the next age poised in the balance? Now, as soon as I take hold of the ring?

Tilja almost froze at the thought, but then a quite different thought steadied her, ordinary, everyday, but as important to her as the balance of the whole next age.

I promised Da I’d get back to Woodbourne.

Her hands didn’t shake as she opened the box and closed her fingers round the ring. At once she felt the strange deep humming that she had felt when she had held the ring in her hand in Faheel’s room, the long unchanging tremor that seemed to be vibrating through all creation, apart from her own body. The women on the floor of the room didn’t stir from the enchanted sleep into which Faheel had thrown them, but the gold coin finished its fall and went rolling across the floor. Beyond the screen the parade flowed smoothly into movement. Drums and gongs, pipes and trumpets thundered, blared and whistled as the soldiers came marching round the end of the rank, followed by two resplendent court officials, and then the leading pair of slaves who carried the portable throne beneath the canopy, and then the throne itself, more bearers, dignitaries and soldiers.

Tilja got a clear look at the man on the throne as it turned the corner. He was wearing a small crown with three golden feathers at the front. Beneath that his face was pale as a mushroom, fleshy, with a snub nose and pale lips showing through a weedy little beard. He didn’t look any older than the young men Tilja had watched kick-fighting at the Gathering, but his body was so fat that she wondered whether he could have walked even a few steps without help. Where had she seen that shape before? Yes! The inflated goatskin floats on the raft that had brought them down the river! Despite the glittering surcoat that enveloped it, the gross shape looked more like one of those than anything human.

So this was the Emperor. In all her life Tilja had never seen anyone looking so bored. He could have anything in the world he pleased, but nothing in the world could please him. Seeing him for that brief moment, she felt a shudder of horror both at him and for him. Then, as the throne vanished behind the next rank, she thought, And he wants to reconquer the Valley. No!

She looked at the terrace. The Ropemaker had come through the door and was moving behind the group of Watchers. He stopped a little beyond them, turned and stood waiting. He hadn’t changed. He had the same fidgety, inquisitive look he’d had in the Pirrim Hills, the same laddish awkwardness, as if he hadn’t ever quite grown into his adult shape.

Faheel must have been watching him too. She heard him murmuring to himself, “No, not too late. Not too late.”

Nothing else happened as the little procession moved along behind the next rank. As it neared the end Faheel gripped the metalwork of the screen, as if to steady himself. She heard him draw a deep breath. The procession stopped with the throne once again just in sight. A dignitary came forward and bent to hear the Emperor’s command. He straightened and walked round and back along the rank, where he spoke briefly to one of the woman soldiers and led her back toward the Emperor. As they came fully into view Tilja saw that he was leading her by the wrist, and she was following reluctantly.

“Now, be ready,” said Faheel in a far stronger voice, and Tilja poised her clenched fist over the open box.

He clapped his hands. The sound was like a crack of thunder close by, that went rolling away across the parade ground, while Tilja’s head still rang with it. She saw the woman soldier flinch and stagger, and then turn her head and call out to her comrades. Instantly they broke rank and swarmed toward the Emperor like a bee swarm clustering round their queen. Scimitars flashed in the air. The canopy tilted, toppled and was gone. The guards struggled a little longer and then they too went under. And now, as Tilja’s hearing returned to her and she could hear their wild high whoops and yells, the whole enraged regiment was streaming toward the terrace.

Even the Watchers seemed to have been taken by surprise. When Tilja looked, they were struggling in a mass of panicking courtiers rushing for the door beyond them. A great beast rose amid the crush, squatting on its hind legs and batting everyone around it out of its path. Two fiery shapes and a shadow-thing burst away upward and soared on wings of flame and darkness toward the towers of the Watchers. And then everything gave a sort of shudder, and changed.

At first Tilja thought something had gone wrong with her eyes. What they were seeing didn’t make sense. The towers rose straight and true still, but they weren’t straight with each other. Each of them made the rest look crooked. And the same with everything else. Palace and spectators seemed to be floating, not above the ground, but loose, as if they were somewhere else, and the courtyard walls and towers seemed to get larger as they reached away into the distance. And the people too. The further away they were the more gigantic they became.

But the sky beyond was too near. It was much too near. It was nearer than the towers, inside out. As the dark and burning magicians fled toward their towers the sky wrapped itself round them and they disappeared.

Tilja could actually see the bottom edge of the sky, where it touched the ground. That edge swept across the terrace, and Watchers and courtiers were gone.