“I don’t smell any people,” Elle whispered uneasily.
Bear cast herself down under a stone tree with an overhang of drooping branches and lay as one dead. She had not said a single word since coming out of the water. Billy lay his jacket over her and lifted her head onto his knee. He stroked her fur, his face haggard with fear.
Rage knelt down beside them. “Billy, stay here with Bear and the others. I’ll go and see if I can find out anything about the wizard.”
Billy looked up at her, eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I’m afraid for Mama,” he whispered.
Rage saw that all of his new power to think, and his delight in it, had been consumed by fear for Bear. She thought of her own mother but dared not dwell on her. She was responsible for herself and the animals being in Valley. It was time for her to think and act instead of letting everyone else do it for her.
“Bear’s old and the water wasn’t good for her, but she’ll be all right if she rests,” Rage told Billy with a mixture of Mrs. Johnson’s kindness and Mr. Johnson’s gruff certainty. She had to be firm because she knew the voice of fear must even now be whispering to Billy. “You must keep her warm. I will be as quick as I can.”
She motioned to the others to withdraw and talk.
“The river did it,” Elle said, looking more troubled than Rage had ever seen her before.
“It got inside her,” Mr. Walker added.
Drawing a deep breath, Rage told them her plan. “I’m going into the city to see if I can find out where the wizard has gone.”
“But we know that already. He has gone to the shore of the Endless Sea,” Mr. Walker argued.
“Yes, but maybe the Endless Sea in the riddle isn’t the real Endless Sea, if there is such a thing. Maybe it’s the name of a place right here in Fork.”
“Wouldn’t those women in the cart have told us if it was?” Elle objected.
Rage shrugged. “It’s a big city. And I asked about the Endless Sea, not about a place called the Endless Sea. Anyway, we have to do something.” She directed a pointed look at Bear.
“All right,” Elle said. “But you’d better not go alone. It might be dangerous.”
“I’ll take Mr. Walker in my pocket,” Rage offered.
“He can’t fight for you! He can’t protect you!” Elle cried, but Rage was firm.
“Mr. Walker can hide in my pocket and come back for help if I get into trouble. Billy will need you here.”
Rage felt a lot less sure than she sounded. But there was no point in burdening the others with her uncertainties. And maybe luck was on her side. She still found it hard to believe that the blackshirts had simply let her find her own way to her uncle’s house.
Once she was out of sight of the park, her steps slowed and she tried to decide which direction to take. All of the houses looked exactly the same, and there was no sign of any people, nor of the circular, black Willow Seat Tower, to which the animals had been directed by the blackshirts.
Rage made up her mind to keep the river at her back and the skyscrapers in front. Surely such imposing buildings would be at the heart of the city, and among them she would be bound to find groups of people in which she could mingle and eavesdrop. She had no fear that she would not be able to find her way back to the others because the river would be her guide.
She had been walking for perhaps an hour when she entered a street that ran up a steep incline. At its apex, a perfectly round black tower stood in the center of a flat, open area paved in blocks of gleaming black marble that glittered as if studded with pieces of mirror: the Willow Seat Tower.
There were no signs of shops or stalls or anyplace where one might buy food or clothes. But here, for the first time, were people. Most of them were clad in long white gowns. Rage guessed these were keepers.
The thought of the High Keeper rejecting the pleas of the sprite and the winged lions made a cold, cruel picture in her head, even if it was true that Valley would be doomed if the wild things were fed any more magic. Still, something drew her toward the tower. Obeying the compulsion, she was careful to stay in the shadows and move as slowly as everyone else.
Rage was close enough now to see that all the people in the white gowns were men. But there were also men, women, and groups of boys and girls in plain gray tunics and trousers. Not a single spot of color was worn by anyone. No one spoke loudly or moved quickly. This crowd of harmoniously dressed people moving slowly and silently ought to have been beautiful, but the scene was strangely stiff and unreal. Everyone moved as if they were part of an old and complicated dance with many rules and tiny, intricate steps. No one looked happy.
This was a dance of obedience, Rage thought, each person doing only and exactly as he or she was bidden. This was Order, and clearly there was no joy in it.
“Have you noticed there have been no streetlights these past few nights?” Rage overheard a man observe to his neighbor in a low voice.
His companion nodded. “I heard there were orders that they should not be switched on, to conserve magic.”
“Powering the lights doesn’t consume magic any more than the enchantments that keep the provinces in Order. Besides, we don’t need to conserve magic. It’s those witches who need to do that.”
There were indeed unlit streetlights—balls of glass on iron stalks attached to the walls lining the streets. Rage was intrigued by the news that there was more than one way to use magic. Apparently the keepers had some way of working it to organize the provinces where natural animals were kept. If what these men said was true, the keepers’ working of magic did not deplete it. Rage wondered if the creation of the wild things was what had used magic up on the other side of the river. It must take more complex enchantments to create a living, thinking being than to organize animal habitats. If she was right, it would explain the keepers’ dislike of wild things. But unless the witches were mad, there had to be more to it than that.
An ornately carved litter, borne on thick poles by eight muscular men, drew up beside the entrance to the tower. Rage watched closely as it was set down carefully by its bearers. Two men emerged from it, both elderly and clad in white. One, bent almost double with the weight of the years he carried, wore a tunic edged in gold trim. A troop of blackshirts marched toward the tower and saluted the two men. Rage scuttled hurriedly into a lane. It was too dangerous to stay here. She turned her back on the circular tower and began to walk in the direction of the black skyscrapers again.
“Where are we going now?” Mr. Walker asked, poking his head out to look around. He was a bit pale, but she supposed it was none too comfortable riding in her pocket.
“I am looking for a place where there are people. A market or a square,” she told him.
“We must find an inn,” Mr. Walker insisted. “You can buy some ale for someone, and they will tell you about the wizard.”
Rage felt exasperated. “I haven’t seen anything that looks like an inn, I don’t know if they have ale here, and I have no money to buy it, even if they would serve someone as young as me!”
Mr. Walker looked disgruntled. “Those sorts of things never matter in stories.”
“Well, this is not a story,” Rage snapped. She had gone only a few more steps when Mr. Walker spoke again.
“You could knock at one of these houses and say you are trying to find your uncle Samuel, who lives near the big market. Then you could get directions.”
It was a good idea, but before she could say so, the little narrow street ended at a broad avenue, and as if at some hidden signal, dozens of front doors opened simultaneously, and dozens of gray-clad men and women emerged. The doors closed behind them soundlessly and almost in unison, and Rage had a dazed vision of all the doors in Fork opening up at the exact same moment and hundreds and hundreds of gray-clad people pouring into the streets in a silent flood.
Glancing around, she was shocked to see the black Willow Seat Tower in front of her again. How could that be possible when she had been walking away from i
t? Yet there was no mistaking the tower. The streets must twist about very strangely for her to have come back so close to it.
Not daring to walk boldly along the avenue, she peeped out and sought another lane. When there was a gap in the flow of people, she darted across the avenue and ran down the lane, until once more it ended at a broad avenue. This happened three more times before she recognized a pattern. The avenues all radiated out from the tower, while the lanes ran around it like the concentric rings in a tree trunk. But no matter how far she ran along an avenue before entering another lane, there was the Willow Seat Tower again, the exact same distance away!
Finally she gave up trying to make sense of the city. It had been built in an enchanted valley, so perhaps ordinary rules didn’t apply. Taking any turn not filled with people, she walked and walked, always turning her face away from the Willow Seat Tower. But the black tower proved as hard to leave behind as the skyscrapers were to approach.
Then, all at once, she turned a corner, and there they were, the skyscrapers, right in front of her. They were not modern skyscrapers after all, but ancient-looking towers made from huge blocks of rough-dressed, greenish black stone, with only a few unglassed windows set high up. Each tower had a tall iron door at street level, with a long lever worked by a complicated mechanism of cogs and meshed teeth instead of a doorknob. Over the doorways were spidery markings that reminded her of a picture she had seen in a history book of the writing on the walls of Egyptian tombs.
As Rage stood dumbfounded, a woman in gray came rushing around the corner and cannoned into her.
“What on earth are you doing here?” the woman demanded crossly. Her eyes fell to Rage’s wrists, and in a flash she pounced. Rage found herself being marched briskly back the way she had come. In minutes they were approaching the black tower.
Rage began to struggle, though she could not bring herself to scream and draw the attention of all the silent walkers.
“Be still, child,” the woman snapped, tightening her already viselike grip. “You are out of Order. By the look of your barbaric attire, you come from one of the outer villages. I suppose, being a bit older, you just thought you’d slip away from the banding house and do a bit of exploring.”
Rage opened her mouth to tell the woman about the uncle she was supposed to stay with, but then she found herself being marched smartly past the door to the Willow Seat Tower!
Her relief that she was not going to be made to face the High Keeper was so great that she felt dizzy. She decided that she would not try to get away from the woman after all. She had no idea how to negotiate the strange, magical city, nor how to find information about the wizard. The banding house might be the very place to learn what she needed, especially if it was as easy to slip away as the woman’s words implied. Far better to go there than wander stupidly in circles looking for some sort of public place. Anyway, if she did wrench her hand free and manage to get away, the woman would just summon the blackshirts and they would begin to comb the city for her, perhaps finding Bear and the others as a result.
They had walked no more than fifteen minutes when the woman stopped at a wooden door in a high stone wall and rapped at it imperiously. A young woman wearing a white apron over her gray clothes appeared.
“This girl is unbanded!” Rage’s captor announced accusingly.
The young woman’s eyes fell to Rage’s wrists and widened. “I see, but what do you wish me to do? She was not registered here by the blackshirts. We are not expecting any new children before the next ceremony.”
“She ought not to be wandering the streets! Look how close she is to womanhood.”
“Her placement is the responsibility of the blackshirts,” the younger woman said stubbornly.
“I will tell the brigade captain that you said as much. No doubt he will investigate the lapse in Order,” the older woman snapped. “Meanwhile, the girl will remain here.” She gave Rage a push that sent her stumbling into the arms of the younger woman, and departed triumphantly.
Inside the dimly lit hallway, the woman took a small notepad and pencil from her apron pocket. “What is your name?” Rage told her, and she wrote it down. “You may have to sleep top-and-tail tonight. The banding house is growing smaller, and there is less space than usual.”
Rage was hardly listening. Instead, she contrived to drop a little behind as they walked so that she could ask Mr. Walker if he could stand to remain hidden a while longer.
“Not for too much longer,” he whispered in martyred tones.
“In here,” the woman said, and they entered a large, bare room with high, slotted windows that let in daylight, though Rage could not look out of them. Like everything else in the city, all of the surfaces were black and unpatterned.
The woman turned to Rage again. She was beautiful, with dark, lustrous hair smoothed into a bun and big, long-lashed eyes.
“My name is Niadne,” she said. “I am one of the banding-house attendants. Are you hungry, child Rage?”
“A little,” Rage admitted, puzzled that the woman did not ask how she had come to be wandering the streets.
“Nearly everyone is hungry when they arrive in Fork. And you have come very far. I don’t suppose you were properly provisioned for the trip?”
“Not really,” Rage said. “I didn’t know how far I was to come when I set out.”
“That is often the way of journeys,” Niadne said serenely. “Especially journeys that lead to Fork. But come. You must wash your face and hands before you eat, and perhaps I can find you a gray tunic. You will have a proper gray gown for the banding. You will need to be fitted for it today, since the ceremony is tomorrow night. We must also find time to cut your hair. The High Keeper does not like hair to be so wild and curly. Too witchy.”
Rage said nothing. She had no intention of being in the banding house long enough to have her hair cut.
Splashing her face and arms with warm, scented water, Rage was delighted to hear Niadne ask if there was anything she wanted to know. “I am aware that little is known of Fork in the outer villages,” her companion added.
Rage’s mind swarmed with questions, but she decided to begin simply, and asked if Niadne had been born in the city.
“I came from one of the villages on the other side of the river. Not an outer village like yours. But that is so long ago, it seems a dream.”
“I suppose you love Fork now?”
There was a silence. “No. I could not say I love it, but I have grown used to it here.” A hovering attendant handed Rage a simple gray shift and a pair of sandals, and watched as she stripped off her clothes to don them.
“These are queer garments,” Niadne said, examining one of the ripple-soled hiking boots curiously.
“Can I keep my old things?” Rage asked.
“Of course you may,” Niadne said kindly, which saved Rage having to try to think of what to do about Mr. Walker, who was still in her coat pocket. Niadne watched her bundle the clothes up very gently before saying, “You probably won’t ever wear them again, but there is no reason you should not keep them as mementos.”
“Why does everyone in Fork wear gray or white or black?”
“The High Keeper wishes us to live in harmony with one another. To do so, we must give up selfishly asserting our individuality, even in our attire.”
“What will happen after I am banded?”
“You will live in one of the childhouses, or if you have family here who claim you, you will be assigned to live with them. You will be given work to do and classes to attend each day, for idle hands make much mischief. But because you are older, and indeed almost a woman, an offer may be made for you. If that happens, you will go to live in the house of your future husband.”
Rage’s feelings must have shown clearly on her face. First they kept saying she was on the verge of womanhood, and now they were talking about marriage. She had barely begun secondary school! Niadne gave her a look of mild pity. “I suppose in your village girls and boys st
ill choose their own partners, but here we are more efficient. The keepers will listen to proposals from boys or their fathers and then choose the most appropriate match for you.”
“I’m too young to get married,” Rage protested.
“You will not be wed immediately, but it is the High Keeper’s belief that women are better growing in the will of their husbands from an early age.”
All the better to stop them leaving Fork, Rage thought, wondering if Niadne had any thoughts or opinions that were not given to her by the High Keeper. But she reminded herself that she was supposed to be finding out about the wizard, not making judgments.
“Where is the Endless Sea?” she asked baldly, sick of trying to find clever ways to avoid asking outright for the information she needed.
Niadne smiled indulgently. “There is no such thing. It is part of a myth about the River of No Return. The story claims that once the river leaves Valley, it pours into a vast sea that laps between all worlds.”
Rage’s mouth fell slack. The ferryman had claimed that the River of No Return was connected by magic to the very river from which the wizard had drawn Valley. But what if it did flow to the Endless Sea? Common sense told her it was more likely that the Endless Sea was an inn, but this was a world held in place by magic! Why shouldn’t it contain a river that flowed to a magical sea? In fact, where else would a river that flowed endlessly from a magical land go but into an enchanted sea?
“What is the matter?” Niadne asked.
Rage discovered that she had stopped halfway through putting on a sandal. “Nothing. I was just wondering about boats.”
Niadne’s eyes widened in outrage. “Who would speak to an innocent, unbanded girl about such dreadful things?”
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