“I think this may be where we’re going,” called Saranja over her shoulder. “To start with, anyway. I didn’t ask him to land, and he can’t be hungry yet. There’s got to be a shepherd somewhere around. Perhaps he’ll tell us what happens next.”
The dog below yapped a warning. The sheep started to scatter and the dog raced to round them up as Rocky swung in a full circle and glided in toward the slope, closer and closer, and with a sudden bell-like booming of wings landed some twenty paces below the cedar.
All three riders climbed stiffly down. Rocky folded his wings and started to nose discontentedly at the sheep-nibbled turf, too short to be much use to him. The dog streaked toward them, snarling, only to halt almost as suddenly, but with hackles still bristling.
Maja stared around. Something was wrong. Apart from the spectacular view she couldn’t see anything different from any of the half-dozen lonely and peaceful places where they’d stopped to rest, but the feel of this place was like the twanging stillness before the thunder breaks.
“If there’s a shepherd he’s probably hiding in the wood,” said Ribek, apparently untroubled. “That’s where I’d be, seeing something like us show up. Unless that dog’s magical.”
“No,” said Maja. “But the place…”
“What about the place?”
“It’s…worried.”
They looked at her. Saranja shrugged.
“Rocky chose it,” she said. “We may as well stay here for a bit, anyway. There must be some better herbs in this lot of woods. I didn’t like the look of that leg of yours at all this morning. How’s it feeling?”
“Not too good,” said Ribek. “It’s been throbbing a while. But it’ll do a bit longer. I’ll just see if that stream’s got anything to say.”
Maja helped him limp across the slope. He paused at an odd little pool, an exact circle of still clear water cut into the grass.
“Nothing there for me,” he said. “Somebody made that.”
“By magic,” she whispered, afraid of her own voice.
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, and limped on.
For a while he stood by the stream with his head cocked, apparently listening to the ripple of the water over the boulders. Maja had a strange notion while she waited for him that she could actually feel whatever he was listening to. Not hear it, the way he seemed to, but feel it as a sort of soft rippling tickle somewhere at the back of her mind. Momentarily it soothed the throb of tension.
“Well?” muttered Saranja sarcastically, when Maja had helped him back. “What’s the news from nowhere?”
“That tree’s watching us,” said Maja.
Ribek turned and looked.
“Isn’t that a cedar, Saranja?” he asked gently.
Saranja too turned.
“Oh, gods!” she yelled as she strode toward the tree and thumped her clenched fists against the bark. “I never asked for any of this! I tell you I don’t want any of this!”
A breeze woke in the stillness of the afternoon and whispered among the needles of the tree. Just as with the stream, Maja imagined she could somehow feel its mutterings in her mind. Saranja listened to them, frowning and biting her lip, and strode back unappeased.
“All right,” she said. “So this is the place, and we’ve got to wait. Same from the stream, I suppose. And I’m starving, and there’s almost nothing in the saddlebags.”
“There’s mutton,” said Ribek with a jerk of his head toward the flock. “Only I don’t like the look of that dog.”
Maja jumped with sudden shock. A moment later, with a faint sound of air abruptly displaced, a basket landed on the turf beside them. The smell of fresh bread added itself to the mountain odors.
“And you don’t want any of that either?” said Ribek. “What do you think, Maja? You’re jumpy about something?”
“I think it’s all right,” muttered Maja. “It was just the way it came. And this place.”
“Still worried? Any idea what about?”
Maja concentrated. The worry-feeling was like an itchy patch of skin round an insect bite that causes it, sometimes almost too small to see, but…yes…there.
“Rocky,” she said.
“What are you two talking about?” said Saranja, still sounding inwardly furious.
“Maja seems to be extra sensitive to magic,” said Ribek. “That’s why things like putting Rocky’s wings on shake her so badly. That must be really big magic. I bet that cedar is watching us, too. You’re not going to trust her about the food?”
“I’m not that pig-headed,” said Saranja.
They settled either side of the basket and checked through the contents. Ribek took out a mutton chop, shrugged, bit and chewed.
“Tastes fine,” he said. “But I suppose it would. Help yourself, Maja.”
She took one too. No thrill of magic came from it, though it tasted still warm from the grill.
“Well, you haven’t grown donkey’s ears,” said Saranja sourly, and started to eat. She continued to brood as she munched.
“What now?” she said. “Just sit here and wait for the Ropemaker?—Is there any reason, by the way, why we can’t just call him Ramdatta?”
The whole landscape answered her. The three syllables throbbed through Maja as if she’d been a hard-struck bell. Rocky lifted his head and neighed, a sound that seemed to shake the hillside. Birds exploded from the wood and wheeled clamoring above it. Something thumped onto the turf behind them. They turned and saw two figures sprawled on the ground beneath the downsweeping branches of the cedar. These now rose groggily to their feet, shaking their heads as if to clear them.
All three travelers stood to face them. They saw a man in early middle age, stocky, muscular, with close-cut curly brown hair, a smooth, unreadable face, clean-shaven but with remarkably hairy legs revealed by the odd leather kilt he was wearing. His skin was golden brown tinged with olive. Next to him stood a gawky boy with a strong family likeness despite the difference in build.
“One moment,” said the man, and strode past them with the boy beside him, then stood staring out southward across the immense landscape. They could feel the tension too. Maja could see it in their poses, and feel it humming from them. They relaxed at last, and the man shrugged his shoulders and sighed as they turned to face the newcomers.
“That name,” he said. “Don’t say it again, please. Your horse is more than signal enough of your presence here. Can anything be done to mitigate that?”
Maja could hear the strain in the quiet, slow-spoken words.
“I can take his wings off,” said Saranja. “Maja says he doesn’t feel at all magical without them.”
The man glanced at Maja, frowning.
“Maja seems able to feel magic,” said Ribek. “She knew you were in the cedar.”
Saranja picked an apple out of the basket, cut it in quarters with the knife from her belt, walked down to Rocky and offered him a piece of it, which he took neatly from her open palm. She waited while he munched, gave him another piece, teased at his mane and moved to his shoulder, and gave him the rest of the apple. She reached for the wing-roots and stroked her hands gently up the massive bones.
“Hold me,” said Maja, and braced herself against Ribek’s side.
This time she was ready and could pay attention to the actual event. For a few moments the fierce electric tingle seemed to vibrate through the whole mountain on which they stood, and through her too, as if she’d been a boulder on that mountain. She watched the wings shrink into themselves, dwindling to a pair of golden plumes which Saranja could ease free, and Rocky became his other self, no more than an unremarkably handsome golden chestnut. He followed Saranja up the slope, clearly hoping for another apple, and not thinking anything at all strange had happened to him, but was distracted by a pile of fresh clover that had appeared on the turf beside him. When it was over Maja realized that the mountain pasture was almost at ease, though deep beneath the turf something remained. Something extremely
strange.
“I hope that’s better,” said Saranja, turning toward where the man had been. But by now he was crouching beside a large blue and yellow lizard that had appeared on the rock close to where they had been sitting. It seemed to be having some kind of fit. Spasms of shuddering overcame it and its eyes kept closing to vertical slits and opening again.
“Much better,” he said over his shoulder. “Thank you, and let us hope it is not too late.”
“We would have known by now, wouldn’t we?” said the boy, obviously as anxious as the man.
“Probably,” said the man with a sigh, and rose to his feet.
“I must apologize for the informality of your reception,” he said, pulling himself together. “I am Fodaro, and this is my nephew Benayu. That’s his dog, Sponge. And this on the rock here is Jex. The name you spoke must have affected him even more powerfully than it did us, but he seems to have done his best to protect us before that happened. Evidently he has not yet recovered from the effort. The food is to your taste?”
Maja stared at the lizard, bewildered. She’d assumed it must be some kind of pet, but it didn’t sound like that. She couldn’t feel anything like the magical vibrations coming from it that she’d felt from Rocky when he had his wings on, though there was a sort of silent humming from both the man and the boy. They were still really scared of something too—something, she guessed, that might have noticed the explosion of magic when Saranja had spoken the Ropemaker’s name, and Jex had been trying to protect them from that happening. Yes, and they’d have known by now if it had done so….
Ribek glanced down at her. His face seemed unusually drawn. She realized that his leg must be hurting more than he let on, but he caught her expression, laughed, shrugged and spread his hands. He was as bewildered as she was.
“The food?” he said, turning back to Fodaro. “Just what we needed. Thank you very much. I’m Ribek Ortahlson, and my friends are Saranja and Maja Urlasdaughter. They’re cousins, but I’m not related to them. In fact we barely know each other.”
“Those are your true names?”
“What on earth is the point of a false name?” said Saranja. “That’s who I am.”
“Hm. And you appear not to be yourselves magicians?”
“Not as far as we know,” said Ribek. “There’s very little magic where we come from.”
“But the horse…?”
“Rocky’s different,” said Saranja. “He doesn’t belong there. At least his wings don’t. I put them on for him, but I’m not a magician. The feathers told me what to do. It’s a long story. Thank you for the fodder, by the way.”
“My pleasure,” said the boy.
She turned and stared at him.
“You too?” she said, as if this were the last straw.
“The talent runs in the family,” said Fodaro, “though his is in some ways different from mine. He takes more after his father, my brother-in-law.”
“And, um, Jex?” said Ribek.
“Jex is something else,” said Fodaro.
Ribek waited for him to explain, but he changed the subject.
“May we please look at your feathers?”
Without hesitation Saranja drew them out of her belt-pouch and offered them to him, but he held up both hands in a gesture of refusal and simply studied them as she held them, his nephew coming to his side to do so too. Their breathing slowed as they stared, while Saranja twisted them to and fro to let them see every aspect.
“Astonishing,” whispered Fodaro. “Can you tell us what they are?”
“Ask Ribek. I’m still trying not to believe it.”
“I’m not,” said Ribek. “After all, I believe in the Ice-dragon. They are roc feathers, according to the story we tell in the Valley, which so far has proved a pretty good guide, judging by what’s happened to us in the last few days.”
“Roc feathers. I have never seen one. But yes, of course. And the hair that binds them? That is something of another order.”
“It belonged to…to the Ropemaker—the fellow whose name Saranja said just now, but mostly he’s called the Ropemaker in the story we tell in the Valley.”
Fodaro didn’t respond, didn’t even move. It seemed as if he had stopped breathing. Benayu stared at him frowning.
“You know the Ropemaker’s true name?” he whispered at last, speaking the words even more slowly than before. “You carry a hair of his head? But you know nothing of magic? What brought you to this place? How do you come by a horse with the wings of a roc? Are you, at last, who I think you are?”
“Rocky brought us here,” said Saranja. “We were just running away from the Sheep-faces, but he seemed to know where to go. Until I found the roc feathers he was just an old nag who insisted on following me, but then everything changed and Ribek showed up and I knew what to do because of the story. Then the Sheep-faces came looking for us, but Rocky was faster than they were so we got away, and after that we just came where he took us.”
“Come to that,” said Ribek, “I think we’re entitled to ask who you are and what you are doing here.”
Fodaro relaxed enough to manage a smile.
“We are in much the same boat,” he said. “We too are running away, or rather hiding. Until you came we believed we were here to take advantage of certain magical aspects of this place to conceal ourselves from our enemy, and to develop Benayu’s powers with the help of Jex. I cannot tell you more about Jex because we have promised not to, but I’m extremely worried about him, both for his sake and ours. We need him well.”
He turned to Saranja.
“Will you try something for me?” he said. “I’ve never seen him like this before. He should have started pulling himself together by now, but if anything he’s getting worse. This may not work, but it’s the best I can think of. Kneel beside him, and when you are settled untie the quills, lay them close in front of him on the boulder, without the hair—don’t let that touch him. Leave them there only an instant. Don’t even whisper the name—just think it, and then pick them up and retie them at once. I’m sorry to have to ask you. I wouldn’t if I thought it was safe for anyone else to do this.”
Saranja actually grinned at him, if a bit sourly.
“If it works, it works,” she said. “I just don’t have to pretend to like it.”
With deft, careful movements she did as he’d told her. The feathers rested on the rock for little more than a heartbeat, but for that splinter of time the hillside again seemed to twang with tension. The lizard gave a convulsion that almost toppled it from its boulder. And then Saranja was rewinding the long gold hair round the quills, and the hillside was at peace, and the lizard was no longer shuddering but crouched in the sunlight with its eyes closed and the slow come-and-go of its breath gently stirring the ruffles of its neck.
Saranja slid the feathers into her pouch and rose. Fodaro held his spread hands above the lizard, as if warming them over a fire.
“Well, he’s here, at least,” he said. “But not yet as fully here as we need him to be.”
“Would that work on Ribek’s leg?” asked Saranja, obviously impatient with such abstractions. “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it, Ribek, by the look of you?”
“Not too good, but it can wait. Depends how urgent everything else is.”
“Not that urgent, I hope,” said Fodaro. “But Jex and the roc from which your feathers came are of a different order of being from ourselves,” he said. “A human hurt requires human healing, whether physical or magical. Benayu will see to it…. No, better not for the moment. I’m sorry.”
“I’d rather let Saranja take a look at it first, in any case,” said Ribek wearily. “I’m sorry, Benayu. I don’t distrust what you do the way she does, but I’m not used to it, and I prefer to stick with what I know. And there’s always a price, if you’ll excuse my saying so. Where Saranja’s been these last six years the men did precious little besides fighting each other, so she knows about wounds. Mine wasn’t too good when she dealt with it t
his morning, but your mountain water is clear and clean. I’ll ask it to help. They’ve all got a bit of deep-earth healing in them, water sources, until we start poisoning them lower down.”
He turned and limped over to the stream. The other four followed him. The two magicians watched for a while in silence as Saranja unwound the ragged bandage as far as she could, cutting off a bit of the loose end and using that to sponge and soften the clotted blood until she could pick the next winding free with her knife-point. It was clear from her movements that as he’d promised she knew what she was doing.
“Yes, you are right,” said Fodaro suddenly. “Any use of magic demands a price from the user. Out there, in the Empire, a serious magician would have demanded silver for healing a wound like yours—gold, even, if the wound was badly infected. Up here, though—”
“‘Would have demanded’?” interrupted Saranja without looking up, but Fodaro waited as she eased the last winding away and began on the blood-drenched pad that covered the torn flesh. The blood was still oozing, and the scabbing for the most part soft enough for her to peel the pad gently away. Ribek’s breath hissed between teeth and lip, but he didn’t flinch. The wound was a tear rather than a slice, not deep but angry-looking, running slantwise across the upper part of the calf. Saranja sniffed at it and frowned.
“Do you know what you need?” asked Benayu.
“Should do. Ribek told you. Mothermoss would be nice, but I’ll be lucky to find it here. There should be harmsain in the wood, though. Here, Maja—clean it up best you can, while I look. When you’ve finished, put a pad over it—here—and wrap it up to keep warm.”
She dampened one of the cleaner bits of bandage, folded another into a wad, gave them to Maja.
“Don’t go too far,” said Fodaro. “It’s still possible that you may need to leave in a hurry.”
She nodded and walked off toward the trees. Benayu glanced enquiringly at his uncle, who shook his head.
Ribek had caught the look.
“Let her find what’s there, if that’s what she wants,” he said. “I’ll do. We aren’t used to this sort of thing. There was almost no magic in the Valley. Saranja’s family can hear what the cedars are saying, and mine can listen to moving water, and that was about it. There was a chop or two left in the basket, wasn’t there?”
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