Angel Isle

by Peter Dickinson

  “How old are you, Maja?” he asked.

  “Twelve, sir.”

  “I thought so. I have a granddaughter just your age. If ever she achieves half of what you have done for Larg I shall be proud of her indeed.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Benayu had the same pronouncement read over him. His medal was laid on his chest, but he didn’t get kissed—perhaps because it would have been a hands-and-knees job, and Presidents don’t do that.

  Another Proctor stepped forward, opened yet another scroll and started to make a speech.

  “Last night will live in the memory of Larg as long as our walls remain, and with it will live the names of these chance-come strangers, who are now strangers no more, but…”

  And so on, for some while. When he was finished, servants came round with trays of sweet fizzy white wine in silver goblets, and there were several toasts, after which they stood around finishing their wine and chatting. Ribek was in his element, and Maja stayed close by, not talking much but enjoying his enjoyment. The man who’d lettered the scrolls came up and explained what the Freedom of Larg meant. They got a month’s free board and lodging whenever they passed through, and if in old age they decided to end their days in Larg, the city would keep them in comfort till they died. Furthermore, Larg had treaties with all the seaports up and down the coast, and if they showed their scrolls at any of these they’d be treated as honored guests and helped on their way.

  “I don’t suppose Barda’s one of them,” said Ribek. “I think it’s just a fishing village—or used to be.”

  “Yes, we have a treaty with Barda. It’s certainly a regular seaport, and has been for many years. It’s still famous for its oysters, but it’s a great deal more than a fishing village these days. After all, Larg must have been a fishing village once. It’s a fair distance north. If that’s where you’re heading for you could consider taking a sea passage, though the season of storms is approaching, and after what we saw last night…”

  “That sounds helpful,” said Ribek. “I’d love to be able to listen to the sea.”

  Maja tugged at his sleeve.

  “What about Benayu?” she whispered. “Zara said her powers were weaker over the sea.”

  “Good point. Better not risk it,” he said, and explained to the man.

  It was midmorning before they were able to move off with six of the guard to accompany them as they skirted Zara’s ward. A handsome barge took them across the river, and on the further shore there were several hundred citizens and groups of schoolchildren lined up to cheer them as they disembarked and a flute-and-drum band to lead them to another feast laid out under a vast scarlet and gold pavilion.

  As they were being shown to their places one of the Provosts stopped them.

  “One moment,” he said. “There’ll be a few speeches afterward, and it would be appreciated if one of you would reply.”

  “Not me,” said Saranja instantly.

  “All right, I’ll give it a go,” said Ribek.

  “It needn’t be more than a few words,” said the Provost, clearly doubting this stranger’s ability to produce an oration up to the high standards of Larg. “And after that you would be well advised to rest. We are arranging with one of the desert tribes to guide you to the Highway, and they prefer to travel by night, when the snakes and scorpions are less active.”

  “We won’t have much trouble getting to sleep after we’ve had a share of that lot,” said Ribek, with a nod at the loaded tables.

  That was true. Maja, in fact, couldn’t wait, and fell asleep during the speeches. She was woken by the sound of laughter. Ribek was on his feet obviously enjoying himself, with his audience in the palm of his hand. He waited for the laughter to die.

  “One last thing,” he said, still in his usual light tone. “We—Maja and I—met and talked to the Sleeper. It’s something we’ll remember as long as we live. None of you have been so lucky, but you know she’s there, asleep. She always has been, and as far as you’re concerned, she always will be. But she won’t. She’s very old, and tired and lonely, and longing to be released from her task and go. It must be terrible to die alone, far from the people you most love. At least she isn’t that. She’s right here, among them, among you. And the best thing you can do for her is to love her back. I am sure you admire and respect and honor her no end, but that isn’t the same thing. Love her. Show your love for her. Plant a rose in your garden for her sake. Teach your children to love her—don’t use her to frighten them when they don’t behave. That sort of thing. I’m sure you’ll think of ways. Whatever it is, she’ll know. Even in her dreams, she’ll know.”

  He sat down. The first speech, before Maja had nodded off, had been followed by polite applause. This time there was silence. Everyone looked a bit stunned. Somebody started to clap dubiously. Slowly the rest joined in. There was nothing as crude as outright cheering, but it seemed to Maja that the clapping had a different feel about, more than polite. Meant, natural. It stopped only when the President rose smiling to thank Ribek and declare the feast over.

  A tent had been got ready for the travelers to rest in for the few hours before their guides arrived. Benayu slept unstirring on one of the beds with Sponge curled up at his feet. There was a well-licked dish and a bowl of water beside the bed. Maja flopped onto hers fully clothed and was asleep before she had drawn three breaths. The next she knew she was on a horse somewhere—Levanter, her extra sense told her—with her right cheek numb from pressing against his mane and neck. The air was cold and dry. The sound of the horses’ hooves was no more than a soft pad, pad. She opened her eyes, and immediately screwed them shut against the glare of moonlight. In that glimpse she had seen a ghost, black against the glare, swathed from head to foot in a hooded cloak, its only visible feature one spidery arm holding Pogo’s bridle. Then she was asleep again.

  Next time she stirred enough for Ribek, riding in the saddle behind her, to realize she had woken and steady her as she sat groaningly up.

  “High time,” he said. “It’s past midnight. Best try to stay awake now, or you won’t sleep during the day. Stay there a moment.”

  He slid himself down, helped her back onto the pillion and remounted. She stared around as they rode on. In every direction the desert stretched away, seeming almost featureless under the big moon. A little way ahead of the party two shadows danced along over the dusty earth. She could barely see the guides who cast them. Saranja and Rocky were on her right, with another guide beyond them. Pogo was still there on her left, led by a guide. For a moment Maja thought he was carrying some kind of sack on his back, but then she realized it was another of the tribespeople facing away, hunched down, riding sidesaddle. Benayu’s litter followed, with another guide leading each pony.

  A quiet, throbbing vibration, not like anything she’d felt before, was coming from behind her. Craning round, she saw two more of the guides bringing up the rear, walking with a peculiar gliding pace and carrying short branches. As she was looking at them they halted, turned and waved their branches in the air. A breeze sprang up out of nowhere, picking up little flurries of dust and depositing them over the stretch that the party had just crossed.

  Now she realized that the same sort of thing was happening ahead of them. The two tribespeople leading the way weren’t merely there as guides—they were using the same sort of magic to do something else. Drive something away, she thought—yes, of course, snakes and scorpions. She shuddered. There’d been only one kind of snake in the Valley, and it wasn’t poisonous, but still she had a horror of the creatures. She didn’t know much about scorpions, and she didn’t want to.

  The night seemed endless, the desert all the same, the moon moving oh so slowly westward, the constellation of the Fisherman in the northern sky circling around the Axle-pin, invisible below the horizon, at the same slow pace as the earth turned over. She felt herself falling asleep again.

  “Pinch me,” she said.

  “No fun. Why don’t you sin
g to me? What about ‘Cherry Pits’?”

  “‘Cherry Pits’?” she whispered.

  “Cherry Pits” was an old, old song which mothers sang over cradles and children used for counting games. The words, when they meant anything at all, were about two lovers sharing a bowl of cherries and making some absurd promise and sealing it with a kiss for every one they ate.

  “What’s so awful about ‘Cherry Pits’?” he asked.

  “Nothing…Nothing…”

  “Tell me.”

  “I…I can’t.”

  She knew perfectly well what was wrong with “Cherry Pits,” but it was a place in her mind she didn’t go. It had a door like the one in the corner of the Council Chamber at Larg, a door which she had magically caused to disappear. She had made a gap in time. On one side of the gap she had let the chickens out and scattered their grain for them and collected the eggs and brought them back into the kitchen, and on the other side of the gap, two evenings later, she had put the chickens away for the night and was coming back into the kitchen with the eggs they had laid in their secret nests during the day.

  And in that gap Saranja had gone away.

  Ribek was silent for a while, then said, “Well, if you can’t, you can’t. How about something else? ‘The Gooseboy’?”

  “All right.”

  She was astonished to find that Ribek, who could do everything so gracefully, couldn’t sing in tune. Never mind. It was still a lot more fun than being pinched. They sang on for the rest of the night, all the songs they could remember. Songs and stories were almost the only thing Maja’s mother had managed to give her. Dawn came much sooner than she’d expected, and then, almost at once, it was day.

  The tribespeople halted and gathered around. Some of them threw back their hoods to reveal dark, beaky faces, their cheeks patterned with tattoos. By daylight she saw that several of them were carrying stout staffs, pointed at one end. Three of them were only shoulder high to the others—women, Maja knew through her extra sense, but without that it would have been hard to tell. The sack-like figure from Pogo’s back was also a woman, but very old. The men lifted her down, set her on her feet, handed her a staff and waited.

  She stood for a while, muttering to herself, and then hobbled off using the staff, halted again and drew something from under her cloak. As far as Maja could see it was just three twigs lashed together to form a triangle with pebbles fastened to two corners and a length of cord to the third. She gripped the end of the cord between finger and thumb, swung the object back and forth a couple of times and with a twist of her wrist set it circling in a vertical plane at her side, raising a thin, throbbing whine as the air whistled through it. More of the same mysterious desert magic began to flow.

  Maja heard Ribek gasp beside her.

  “She’s calling to the water!” he muttered.

  The woman turned slowly. The note changed, rose shriller and shriller, almost beyond hearing, began to fall again. She turned back a little, until the pitch was at its highest, and pointed.

  Two of the men stood side by side with their arms round each other’s waists. A third man placed a leather pad on their shoulders, lifted the old woman, settled her onto the pad and took her staff from her. It was all quickly and easily managed, as if they’d done it many times before. They strode off, black against the glare of the risen sun. Everyone followed.

  Twice they stopped to let the old woman, without dismounting, swing her water charm again and correct their course. The third time they let her down and she hobbled forward and swung her charm again. The whining note didn’t vary its pitch as she turned. She took her staff back and prodded it feebly into the ground.

  Five of the guides gathered round, three using the pointed ends of their staffs to loosen the earth, and the other two scooping it away. The old woman took out her charm and swung it again. The rest stood by, humming in the backs of their throats, varying the sound in time with the pulsing throb of the charm, as the old woman spun it faster and faster.

  “There’s some kind of water-spirit hiding here, I think,” said Ribek. “She used her charm to find it, and now they’re summoning it up. I can hear the charm talking to it, not in the water-language I know, but it’s words all right. It sounds as if they’re bargaining. Maybe the spirit doesn’t want to come, and the charm’s saying it’s got to unless it sends us some water…Ah, here it comes.”

  Silently the hole that the guides had been digging filled from below with beautiful clear water. The tribesmen stood aside and gestured to their charges to drink.

  When everyone had had all they wanted and filled their flasks and gourds the horses drank hugely, but the pool stayed full. The old woman swung her charm briefly while the tribespeople chanted.

  “We from the north would also like to add our thanks, O spirit of the desert,” said Ribek formally.

  As he spoke the water seeped away as quickly as it had come. The tribespeople filled in the hole they had dug and tamped the earth carefully down.

  “Shade for the horses is the next thing,” said Saranja. “You can’t tell with Rocky, the ponies look pretty tough, and Pogo’s got desert blood in him. My warlord used to ride a beast like him, and it was astonishing what it could put up with. But Levanter’s really going to suffer. I’ll try and explain to them. I’m not sure how much they know about horses.”

  Enough, it turned out. According to the functionary at Larg who’d made the arrangements, the tribespeople understood as much of the language of the Empire as they needed to know what was being said to them, but refused to speak it themselves. They nodded as soon as Saranja pointed at the horses and the sun and then the shadow of her hand held over Levanter’s flank. Everyone formed up as before and they headed off northwest. The only difference was that four of their guides now led the way. Every hundred paces or so, all at the same time, they broke into a little dancing shuffle, gesturing in front of them with a pushing-apart motion, and now and then Maja could sense some poisonous creature scuttling or slithering out of their path. But nonetheless the ones with the main party walked with bent heads, as if scanning every step of the way ahead, and from time to time would use their staffs to tip a rock over, in case anything might still be lurking beneath it.

  The sun was already seriously hot before they reached the place they were apparently heading for, a low, rocky outcrop, promising little relief, but it turned out to have a narrow gully on its northern side. A few wizened bushes clung to the rock in what shade there was. The tribespeople broke off enough branches to light a small fire in the middle of the gully, and once it was going they twisted scraps of oily rags round the ends of short sticks, got them smoldering and worked down the gully, poking them into crevices in the rock. They used the butts of their staffs to squash whatever came scuttling out.

  That done, they placed the rags carefully against the embers so that they would continue to smolder without actually burning, and then rigged up a remarkably effective awning over the gully, using their robes and the rugs from the travelers’ saddlebags laid across cords weighted with boulders at either end and propped here and there by a couple of staffs lashed together to form a pole. Stripped off, they seemed astonishingly skinny, with tough little nodules of muscle clinging to the narrow bones. Every inch of their skin was covered with patterns of tattoos. They obviously preferred to eat separately, so the travelers settled at the other end of the awning, with the horses in between, and picked and chose among the excellent fare provided by the citizens of Larg.

  “I’ve been thinking about the covenant,” said Saranja in a low voice, though there was no one to overhear. “The one between Zara and the Watchers, I mean.”

  “So have I,” said Ribek. “I don’t get it. All right, we can guess what’s on her side of the bargain. Larg is a sort of hostage. Her wards round the city are obviously pretty impressive, but the Watchers must be strong enough to deal with them if they want to….”

  “And they must want to,” said Saranja. “They aren’t goin
g to stop until they control everything in the universe.”

  “So what’s Zara got by way of a hostage to stop them?” said Ribek.

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” said Saranja. “Do you remember Benayu telling us that serious magicians had to find somewhere safe to put their…what’s it called?…anima outside themselves so it didn’t get in the way of their magic?

  “The Watchers do everything together, Chanad told us. Perhaps they did that together too—put all their animas into one safe place….”

  “Larg?” said Ribek. “Larg isn’t exactly out of this universe. This curry comes from Larg. And…What’s up, Maja? Come on, tell us. Don’t leave it all to Saranja and me. Your guess is as good as ours. Better, probably.”

  Maja couldn’t open her mouth. An odd little buzzy feeling had woken in the back of her mind while Ribek was talking, like the warning noise a stinging insect makes when you try to swat it away. She was thinking of what had happened when they’d just come back into the Council Chamber, in that instant before the door vanished—the appalling brief jolt of magic, the sense of something hidden beyond Zara’s cell, a secret inside a secret, in a place that wasn’t there, a place that was somewhere else. A way into another univ…The buzz was louder now…louder, closer…

  “Stop!” she croaked. “Don’t talk about it! Don’t even think about it! The Watchers…!”

  They stared at her. Saranja started to say something, and didn’t. The muttered talk of the tribespeople did not falter. The horses fidgeted. The strange, bitter smoke from the smoldering rags drifted slowly through the gully, in the oven-like heat. Ribek nodded, serious-faced for once.

  “I want to tell you how my cousin Arissa was murdered,” he said. “We don’t usually talk about it. It’s a terrible story…”