Angel Isle

by Peter Dickinson

  She felt some sort of a struggle going on behind her and managed to crane round. By now they were well clear of the ground. Ribek’s legs and waist were dangling down by the horse’s flank, with him grasping the after saddle and wrestling to hoist himself further, while the woman, with one hand twisted into Rocky’s mane, was reaching round with the other to help him. At last he made it and settled down, gasping, into the saddle.

  “Sheep-faces, and an airboat,” shouted the woman, as soon as she’d got her breath back.

  “More magic?” asked Ribek, like her, shouting to be heard above the wing-thunder. “People like you and me? Or something else?”

  “Oh, they’re people all right. Only where I’ve been we call them Sheep-faces. They just don’t think the way we do. And they don’t do magic. We’ll be all right. A horse at a canter is faster than bird-kites, and the birds get tired. The airboat is even slower but it’s driven by engines and can go on for ever.”

  “Any idea where we’re going after that?”

  “Just getting clear of the Sheep-faces, for the moment. After that…Maybe Rocky knows. He isn’t just bolting. He’s bolting somewhere. I’ve got to get him slowed down. He’ll kill himself, this speed.”

  Maja crouched out of the way to let her lean past her and over Rocky’s neck, murmuring in his ear, nudging gently on his bit, letting him feel her legs against his flanks. Ribek watched their rear, calling the news. The bird-kites, far outpaced, turned back to the airboat almost at once, but it continued to follow doggedly until it was a dwindling dot, almost out of sight.

  Sometimes in her dreams Maja could fly, and when the monsters came she could soar away from them. Then, at this exact moment, when the danger seemed gone, the gift deserted her, and she was plodding through heavy plowland with the pursuers only a field or two behind. Rocky gave a long shuddering sigh. Now. She tensed herself for the onslaught of terror as the frantic wingbeats slowed.

  It didn’t happen. Instead, she felt the tension of the great body ease as he started to glide. They came lower and lower. Looking down, Maja saw fields and a farm beneath them. A boy was driving cows in to be milked. He gazed up, and his mouth fell open. She heard his faint shout, saw him point, and Rocky shuddered again, deliberately this time, shaking away the final shreds of both nightmares, his and hers, and flew purposefully on. Somewhere.

  “If the story’s any guide—” Ribek said.

  “Don’t tell me!” snapped the woman. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know. That stupid story’s ruined my life. I’ve never believed it. I never wanted to believe it. I don’t now. If you’re trying to tell me that Rocky’s taking us to look for the stupid Ropemaker, I’m getting off right away, soon as we’re clear. You can keep Rocky, and welcome.”

  “I don’t know how to ride a horse,” said Ribek, obviously teasing. He seemed to be like that.

  “Then Rocky can tell you that too,” snarled the woman.

  “Maybe our new friend knows how to ride a horse,” said Ribek, still teasing. “Who are you anyway? We can’t go on calling you uh.”

  “Me?” said Maja, astonished to be asked, to be even noticed. “I’m…I’m Maja Urlasdaughter.”

  “Maja!” said the woman in a totally different voice. “You’re still alive! Oh, thank the stars! I’ve thought of you so often. It was the worst thing of all, leaving you behind there in that hell. I was sure she’d have…”

  She didn’t finish the sentence. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t important, swept away like a leaf in a stream on the flood of hope that welled up in Maja, unstoppable. Normally she would have pushed it away, having decided long ago that hope was only the insubstantial shadow that solid, real disappointment cast in front of it wherever it came. Not now.

  “You’re…you’re Saranja?” she whispered, and then had to say it aloud because her whisper was drowned by the wing-thunder.

  “Oh, Maja!” said Saranja, laying the reins down on Rocky’s neck and hugging Maja to her like a doll. “That’s wonderful! That’s absolutely wonderful! Ribek, this is my cousin Maja, who I never thought I would see again. I think this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “Hello, Maja,” said Ribek. “Glad to have you with us. Perhaps you can persuade your big cousin to stop talking nonsense about not coming to help look for the Ropemaker.”

  Saranja snorted, let go of Maja and picked up the reins.

  “What happened to them?” she said after a while. “My parents, your mother, the boys?”

  Maja told her about finding the bodies, and the bonfire she’d made on them. She didn’t say anything about the screams.

  “Your father and the boys went off to fight the horsemen,” she said. “I don’t know anything about them.”

  “If they were in the same fight I was,” said Ribek, “it wasn’t good. We held the horsemen for a while and it looked like we were winning, but then some of them came round and caught us from the side, and after that it was a massacre. I got out by the skin of my teeth, but a lot of people didn’t.”

  Again Saranja was silent for a while.

  “Well, that’s all over,” she said at last. “I suppose I can stop hating her now.”

  The Valley flowed backward beneath them. Maja had never been so far from Woodbourne and had no idea of the names of any of the farms and villages she could see, but Ribek knew the Valley well and told them old scandals and new gossip about the people who lived there, though Maja had to strain to hear through the wind-whistle and wing-thunder. After a while he got hard biscuity bread out of his satchel and passed it forward.

  “How come you showed up so pat at Woodbourne, Ribek?” said Saranja. “Or were you just running away?”

  “At first I was. Slinking back to Northbeck and hoping for the best—it’s pretty out of the way up there—but, well, I’d known we were for it when the Ice-dragon didn’t show up last winter. My grandfather saw him once, but mostly you don’t. You just know he’s there. I came down to Woodbourne and tried to ask your mother if anything was happening to the cedar magic. She didn’t answer. Her mouth was a slit. She just shook her head and shut the door in my face. So that was that. Nothing for it but to stand and fight and hope for a miracle. It didn’t happen.

  “I headed for the river with a bunch of others who’d been in the fight, but the horsemen caught up with us just as we got there. Some of us tried to hold them off while the rest got onto a couple of rafts. That’s when I got hurt, but someone hauled me onto a raft and off we floated. Down river, of course. South. That’s how I finished up less than half a day from Woodbourne. I thought after all I’d better come and see if your mother had changed her mind about talking to me—I’d never have thought well of myself again if I hadn’t. Pretty sure nothing would come of it, but, well, it didn’t turn out like that and here we are.

  “Know what we’re talking about, Maja?”

  “Me?” said Maja, again startled to be asked. “Er…er…Yes, of course. It’s in the story. There’s always one boy born at Northbeck who can hear what the stream is saying and when he’s old enough he has to climb up into the mountains and sing to the snows every year so that the Ice-dragon comes and blocks the passes with fresh snow and the horsemen can’t get through; and there’s always a girl born at Woodbourne who can hear what the cedars are saying, and when she’s old enough she has to go into the forest to sing to the cedars and feed the unicorns so that they bring the sickness that stops the Emperor’s armies coming through because they’re supposed to be defending us but they’re just as bad as the horsemen.”

  “And that’s what I ran away from,” muttered Saranja. “All that rubbish about being bound to those stupid unicorns and cedars.”

  Maja’s words, when they’d come, had come with a rush and now she was gasping for breath. She’d had to crane round Saranja’s body so that Ribek could hear her through the wing-thunder. He laughed.

  “So you know the story,” he said.

  “Do you want me to go on? It’s
rather complicated.”

  “Let’s get ourselves somewhere a bit more comfortable, so we can talk without having to shout. Your ancestor Tilja and my ancestor Tahl will have seen things differently, and there’s twenty generations of storytelling since then, so the stories themselves may be pretty different by now.”

  “All right.”

  Time passed, and more time. Gradually Maja became aware of a strange, throbbing sensation running through her—through all of her, body, mind and soul. She had no words for it. She had never felt anything like it before…Yes, she had! Those sudden, fierce thrills when Saranja was conjuring Rocky’s harness up out of nowhere—this was the same kind of thing, but very different, as different as a howling tempest from a breeze so faint that you can’t feel it, and can only tell it’s there by the drift of thistledown it’s carrying along. It came from Rocky.

  This was the feel of magic, she realized. When it was strong magic, suddenly happening, when Saranja had whispered the Ropemaker’s real name—Maja knew from the story that must be what she had said—it was like a thunderclap straight overhead, stunning the senses. Things like giving Rocky his wings and harness were thunder not far off, startling in its suddenness, thrilling in its power. But what came from Rocky now was like continuous thunder rolling along distant hills, almost beyond hearing, vaguely menacing but at the same time comforting.

  Rocky was magical all the time because the two gold feathers Saranja had found in the ashes of Woodbourne were roc’s feathers, and a roc is a magical animal. Twenty generations ago the magic that protected the Valley started to fail, and four people, Tilja and her grandmother Meena from Woodbourne, and Tahl and his grandfather Alnor from Northbeck, had set out into the Empire to look for the man who had put the magic there in the first place, a magician called Faheel. He had been very old and tired, and had sent them on to look for a magician who called himself the Ropemaker. But while they were on Faheel’s island Tilja had picked up a couple of roc feathers. Then, when they’d found the Ropemaker and he’d done what they asked him, he’d used the feathers to give Meena’s bad-tempered old mare a pair of wings so that Tahl and Alnor could fly safely over the forest, without being killed by the magical forest sickness that was only fatal to men and was now back in place to protect the Valley from the Emperor’s armies.

  The story, as Maja had said, was a lot more complicated than that, so she started sorting the rest of it out in her mind for when the time came to tell Ribek the Woodbourne version.

  By the time she’d done that they were flying up a prodigious valley carved into the northern mountains. Soon Rocky curved to the right and, still flying strongly, climbed steadily to cross a snow-covered ridge and glide smoothly down into the next valley.

  “By all the waters!” said Ribek. “I know where we are! Our mill’s in the next valley! Think we’re far enough in front to spend the night? If we haven’t lost them completely.”

  “We’re going to have to stop somewhere,” said Saranja. “Anything to eat at your mill? For him, I mean. He’ll need more than grass after that effort. Assuming we can get him over that.”

  She pointed toward the mountain spur now facing them, almost half again as high as the one they’d crossed.

  “There’s a good pass a dozen miles south,” said Ribek. “And it’s a mill, you know. Been a rotten year for custom, with all the fighting, so the barn’s full of last year’s grain. We do a line in crimped grain for horse-feed.”

  It was drawing toward evening by the time Rocky had beaten his way up through the thinner air to the top of the pass and started the long glide down.

  “He’s getting tired,” said Saranja. “No wonder—any ordinary horse would be dead, what he’s done. What are they going to make of him at your mill?”

  “If it’s there. If they’re there. Depends whether the horse people came raiding up this far. But if they’re there they’ll be all right. We’re Ortahlsons, remember—my grandad saw the Ice-dragon. But listen. I’ve been thinking. Those fellows who’re after us—they knew we were there. I’d heard an odd noise just as I was getting to Woodbourne, but then you started putting Rocky’s wings on and it stopped, and I decided it didn’t matter. They must’ve been trying to sneak up on us.”

  “Yes. My fault. I heard it too, but I was too busy dealing with Rocky to think about it, and I know what engines sound like. You’re right. They’d turned them off and started to drift toward us. The bird-kites are quicker, so they got them out as soon as they were close enough. They’ve got a magician on board. Anything magical the way Rocky is sends out a bit of a signal, and if he’s good enough the magician can pick it up until we can land somewhere and I can take his wings off him, supposing I can. I don’t know anything about flying horses.”

  “I thought you said the Sheep-faces didn’t do magic.”

  Saranja started to explain. Maja tried to listen, sleepy still, and only half hearing.

  “They don’t. But they want it. That’s what they’re like. Anything they haven’t got. You’ve got an opal mine, they want it. All the warlords keep a magician in their household. They’re not mighty magicians, not like the ones in the story, and when their warlords start fighting mostly they cancel each other out, but they can usually tell when someone else is brewing up magic anywhere near. The Sheep-faces have got hold of a few—they pay them the earth. I couldn’t help picking up a lot of this sort of thing because my owner liked to have a woman sitting at his feet when he was in council or anything—pet dogs, we were. Added to his status.

  “First off the Sheep-faces ran up against the Empire. Wanted to trade, they said. Empire took a look at them, worked out what they were at, wouldn’t let them in. So they tried to force their way in. They’ve got some amazing weapons, but they hadn’t met dragons before, or directed lightning, or some of the other stuff that got flung at them in the Empire. Those airboats burn—get a flame against one of those bags and it goes up like gunpowder….”

  “Gunpowder?”

  “Too long to explain now. So the Sheep-faces started trying to encircle the Empire and ran up against the warlords. The only thing that stops warlords fighting each other is somebody else to fight. Magic doesn’t work as well the other side of the desert, but some of the warlords’ magicians could fling fire—not as good as dragons or lightning, but enough to stop an airboat getting in close, and the warlords fought hit-and-run on the ground, which they’re good at and the Sheep-faces weren’t, so it was a really bloody business down south until the Sheep-faces backed off. Now they’re working to set the warlords fighting each other—doesn’t take much doing—and meanwhile mopping up all the magicians they can. I reckon that airboat was a patrol coming up through the desert, looking for magic stuff over on their left, and all of a sudden they found out there was more on their right than they expected now the Valley’s open. Six years ago, when I crossed the desert, nobody that side had any idea it was there. The Sheep-faces must have been coming to take a look when I happened to be giving Rocky his wings—that’d send out a signal you could pick up a hundred miles off.”

  “So they can follow us wherever we go?”

  “Until they run out of fuel for the engines. It’s a patrol. They’ll be carrying plenty. Could last for days. How far to your mill, Ribek?”

  “Five miles from the bottom of the pass. That’s it, ahead. You can see the river. Better get him down while we’re still over the forest, I suppose.”

  “Umph. Not something they teach you in riding school.”

  Maja saw her do something with the reins and felt the slight shift of her body. Rocky steepened his glide, landed with barely a jolt and folded his wings. Ribek and the woman dismounted. Saranja lifted Maja down and helped Ribek unbuckle the saddlebags and harness, then moved to Rocky’s flank. Her hands seemed to know what to do. She laid one on the root of each wing. She was a tall woman, but even on tiptoe she could barely reach across to the further one. At her touch the horse half spread both wings. Her lips moved, soundlessly.
Again that shock-wave, the fierce, glittering tremor in the golden evening light sweeping along the opposite mountainside, that pang of excitement deep in Maja’s soul, so intense this time that she cried aloud.

  Saranja looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  “I…I’m all right,” she said. “It’s just when you do that…”

  “Your Sheep-faces’ magician will have felt it too, surely,” said Ribek. “I felt it a bit myself.”

  “Uh-huh. Probably still feel it when they get here,” muttered Saranja.

  Gently she stroked each hand up the two massive bones that carried the wings. And again. And again. Each time she repeated the simple movement the wings became smaller, and the horse itself dwindled in proportion, until only an ordinary chestnut stallion stood there, in a harness of brown leather, with a couple of golden feathers lying on each shoulder. Even so, it was a handsome beast, tired after a long day, but well muscled, its coat glossy with health, and with an odd, humorous look in its eye, as if it knew some secret no other horse was aware of.

  Saranja unwound a golden hair from her wrist and bound it round the quills. As she did so Maja felt the strange Rocky-sensation die away. Saranja slipped the feathers into her belt-pouch, and the world was ordinary again.

  They walked the hundred paces to the edge of the woods. Maja gazed around as they went on. Small interlocking fields, not a square foot of good earth wasted, lay in two narrow strips either side of the river. She could see a dozen farms from where she stood. All had a winter-hardy look. There was no sign of the ravages of the horse people. The slopes above were clothed with dense woods all the way to the tree line.