Angel Isle

by Peter Dickinson

  “But as I say I am not a true native of Charargh. I was born in one of its dependencies because a generation ago the authorities decided that the time had come to deal with what they regarded as the problem of the Empire. For a great part of their early history the seven nations had been more or less at war with each other.”

  Expertly, at Maja’s gentle nudge, he shifted his grip along the wound, but his voice didn’t falter. She stopped listening to concentrate on the healing. This was the difficult bit, where the slash was deepest, severing veins and nerves and sinews. She couldn’t reach in to touch them with the jewel, but she could reach through it to them and fill them with her own health and wholeness. She lost herself in a trance of healing. Striclan’s quiet voice was just a background to what she was doing, almost as meaningless as birdsong. A sharper interjection from Saranja broke through into her consciousness.

  “You mean you’ve actually fought wars to persuade people to do things your way?”

  “I’m afraid so. There was usually some kind of excuse, of course. And to the Southern way of thinking it would obviously be so much better for them in the end.”

  “Not the ones who were dead.”

  “No. And then they came up against the Empire. It was different from anything they had encountered before—so different and yet so obviously rich and successful that it seemed a threat to their whole way of thinking. They had known about it for centuries, of course, but…”

  Maja moved Striclan’s fingers again and worked on.

  Three miles to the south a traveling sandalmaker was riding a horse. He was drunk. Last evening, at a way station, he’d fallen in with a couple of friendly fellows and they’d wined and diced into the small hours, and he’d won heavily. But perhaps they’d drugged his wine, though they drank from the same flask, for he’d slept very late, and when at last he’d woken he’d found his companions gone along with his winnings and his mule and his stock of sandals and everything else he possessed. All they’d left him was a half-empty flask of wine, so he’d finished it off and started home, drunk again.

  And then luck had smiled on him. He’d found a stray horse by the roadside, ready saddled and bridled. It was flecked with dried foam, so he guessed it had bolted from somewhere. It had skittered a bit as he tried to mount it, but in the end he’d hoisted himself into the saddle and persuaded the animal to move. He would sell it at the next market town he came to, he told himself, and if someone claimed it before then, well, maybe there’d be a reward.

  Two dogs came loping up from behind him and started to pace along, one on either side. The one on his right raised its head and looked at him.

  “That’s not your horse,” it said.

  He blinked. He’d known he was drunk, but not this drunk.

  “I’m taking him to his owner,” he said.

  “That’s me,” said the dog.

  “Don’t be stupid. Dogs don’t own horses.”

  “You live and learn,” said the dog.

  Both dogs loped forward, turned and barred the way. The horse stopped. The sandalmaker shook the reins and drummed his heels against the horse’s ribs, but it stayed where it was. It lowered its head. The dog licked its muzzle. The horse began to shrink.

  In a moment it was no bigger than a pony, and in another his feet touched the ground. Two or three and more he was standing astraddle in the road with a child’s toy horse between his feet. The dog which had spoken to him picked it up in its mouth and winked at him. Both dogs trotted off the way they had come.

  Distantly Maja felt the tremor of mild, almost playful magic, and recognized it as Benayu’s work.

  “You can let go now,” she murmured, and moved to close the outer edge of the slash. She was swaying where she knelt, utterly weary, but at the same time wonderfully alive and fulfilled.

  “But that’s absolutely appalling!” said Saranja. “You mean that because their own spies kept getting found out they kidnapped several hundred innocent people and took them to Charargh and bred them like farm animals so that when the kids grew up they could send them back to the Empire as spies! That’s quite as bad as anything I’ve heard about the Watchers!”

  “In fact not many were kidnapped,” said Striclan. “Mostly we waylaid coastal shipping and persuaded some of those aboard to purchase men and women in the slave markets and ferry them out. They were then taken and established in a closed community on Palto, the nearby island which they already controlled, and there they replicated as closely as possible the conditions of the Empire. That is where I was born.

  “The captives were not required to have children but were given considerable incentives to do so. I am the eldest of four siblings, not all by the same father, and my mother often said that as a result her life had been a great deal more comfortable than it would have been as a slave in Shankrili. She never expressed any bitterness over what had happened to her. Nevertheless, Miss Saranja, I am forced to agree with you that it was morally reprehensible, and even in my earliest childhood I was dimly aware that this was the case. I knew I did not belong on Palto.

  “My mother spoke Shankri, a dialect of the Imperial common language, so that was what we spoke at home. She sang us the cradle songs and told us the nursery stories she had learned from her own mother. She was also encouraged to tell us about everyday life in the Empire. We played the games and ate the food we would have eaten in a well-to-do household in Shankrili—my mother was a very good cook.

  “When I was five I was sent to school, where I was first taught formal Imperial and Chararghu as second languages, and then began to be inculcated with Southern values and Southern ideas. I was a ready learner, but at the same time a cautious and secretive child. I found it easy to please my teachers, but I did not reveal to them that I neither accepted nor rejected what they had told me about the superiority of Southern ways over the ways of the Empire. One day, I determined, I would go there and see for myself.

  “I came to this conclusion well before I was taken to Charargh to finish my education and formally told that this was what had been planned for me all along. Even then I was careful not to sound too eager. I did not want them to suspect where my ultimate loyalties might lie. Since my earliest childhood I seem to have had a tendency to present a pleasant exterior to the world while concealing my inmost thoughts and feelings….”

  Yes, thought Maja drowsily. Yes indeed. But he isn’t doing it now. She stared at her hands as they repeated and repeated the same hypnotic pattern, coaxing the clean new skin to cover the shiny scar tissue that closed the wound. Like rolling pastry further and further across the board, she thought.

  There. Finished.

  “See how it feels,” she murmured, and slipped the healing stone into her pouch. As she let go of it her hand and arm went numb.

  Ribek rose to his feet and moved his arm around.

  “Tingles a bit,” he said. “As if it’d been something that happened years ago. Thanks, Maja. That’s wonderful. You look all in.”

  “I’m just tired. But it’s worth it.”

  “Indeed it is,” said Striclan, who had also risen from where he’d been kneeling at Maja’s other side. “I did not like to say so earlier, but in my opinion you were likely to lose the use of that arm, if not the arm itself. May I see? Astonishing. Not even a scar.”

  “And now you’re going to put it into your notebook and tell the Sheep-faces all about it,” said Saranja.

  The sharpness of her tone silenced them all. Ribek bent to whisper in Maja’s ear.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “My arm’s gone numb. And my head hurts where the man hit it with his slasher.”

  She felt his fingers gently probing the bruise, heard the hiss of his indrawn breath.

  “Got anything for bruised head, Striclan? Maja’s got a lump coming the size of an apricot where that bastard bashed her.”

  “I’ll get a salve.”

  “My turn to do a bit of healing,” said Ribek, and settled be
side her. He took her forearm into his lap, unstrapped her knife and gently began to massage the inert muscles. Almost at once Striclan returned and knelt behind her.

  “Tsk, tsk,” he muttered. “You carry on with what you’re doing, old man. Take a sniff at this, Maja my dear—it’ll help with the headache.”

  His hand appeared under her nose, holding a small pot containing a bluey-gray paste, reeking with a strange, sweet-sharp pungency. Even before she had drawn it into her lungs the headache was easing. She heard the snip of scissors and then he was deftly working the paste into the swollen flesh. His touch on the bruise made it feel almost pleasant.

  “Where were we?” He sighed. “Ah, yes. I have in fact written nothing about any of you directly. Miss Saranja saved me from a hideous death. Ribek told me she was not at liberty to say how she did it. How could I not respect that, and apply it to the rest of your party? All that I have written in my notebook has been information you have given me that might have come from any fellow traveler. I have not ascribed a particular source to it. Miss Saranja’s account of the origins of the desert war is a good example. Chararghi intelligence has a wholly different take on that, claiming, and probably believing, that the desert chiefs were instigated by the authorities in Talagh to attack the Chararghi copper-mining concession.”

  Dimly Maja heard a distant whinny, answered by Levanter, almost in her ear.

  “Here’s Benayu,” said Saranja. “He’s got Pogo back all right. Stupid horse. Benayu’s looking pleased with himself, which makes a change. You mean you’re not going to say anything about him turning himself into a dog in front of your eyes, Striclan?”

  “I see no need. I have already reported on consistent accounts of magicians being able to transform themselves into various animals. I shall simply add that I myself was a bystander at a similar event, and had no reason to doubt the evidence of my senses.

  “As for the way in which he disposed of our assailants, which seemed to me, in my ignorance, a much more remarkable exercise of power, I propose to say nothing about it at all.”

  Yes, thought Maja, as Benayu rode toward them, smiling and confident. Much more remarkable. And he’d done it as easily as flipping a coin. Well before he reached them she realized that he’d changed once more. The soundless hum that had come from him all the time, even when he wasn’t actually using his magical powers, until he’d lost the use of them at Larg, was back again. It was still quiet, still controlled and contained, but it was no longer mild. There was a depth and intensity about it, like the depths of a clear night sky before the moon has risen, going on for ever beyond the stars. The nearer he came the more it dazed her. She was going to have to learn to resist it, or she would need to wear Jex against her skin all the time, and then she would be no use to them at all. Not now, though. She was too tired.

  Pogo was in a sulk, and halted untold the moment he reached them. Benayu dismounted grinning.

  “We’d better move on,” said Ribek. “Somebody may have noticed you getting rid of those fellows.”

  “As you wish,” said Striclan. “I suggest that for the moment I separate myself from you and follow a little way behind, so that you can explain to Benayu what I’ve told you and you can then discuss it among yourselves and decide, among other things, whether I can be trusted.”

  “That’s all right,” said Benayu, smugly. “I’ve been listening. He was telling the truth.”

  “You mustn’t do it!” said Saranja, instantly furious. “I said so right at the start! Looking into our heads!”

  “I didn’t think he counted….”

  “Well he does! And anyway I don’t need a mighty magician to tell me someone’s telling the truth! And what’s so funny about that, Ribek?”

  “Just that it’s so wonderfully unfair.”

  “Please,” said Maja, before she could blast him too. “I’m tired.”

  Saranja sighed and turned to Striclan.

  “Suppose we needed to talk to the Sheep-faces,” she said. “Could you fix that? What do you think, Benayu?”

  “It might be useful. I don’t know yet. There’s a lot of stuff I can do now that I couldn’t before, but it’s nothing like enough even so.”

  “I might be able to arrange something,” said Striclan. “I would need to give my superiors reasons why they should take you seriously. One of my briefs is to make contact with any groups resistant to the rule of the authorities in Talagh, and I have had to tell them that I have seen no sign of any such movement. Apart from yourselves, of course, and so far I’ve kept my own counsel about you. Everywhere else, as far as I can discern, the general mood seems to be a curious mixture of fear and contentment. The people, by and large, enjoy peaceful and prosperous lives, but at the same time live in terror of offending the authorities, or even attracting their attention. But I have gathered from things that you have both said and not said that, one, you have already jointly caused the offense and, two, that you are engaged on this journey in an effort not merely to escape but also to resist the vengeance.”

  “Let’s get moving, anyway,” said Saranja. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  “Tell her to be careful,” Maja muttered as Ribek helped her onto Levanter’s back. “That night in the desert, when you told us ‘The Miller’s Daughter’—just before that, you and Saranja were starting to talk about something, and I said don’t. Don’t even think about it. It’s still like that. And I can’t tell you whether we’ve been noticed all over again after what Benayu’s been doing—not with him so close. He’s changed.”

  “I’ll tell her,” said Ribek, smiling. “Then we’ll drop back and you can see if that makes enough difference. If all’s well I’ll wave to Saranja and you can have a nap. You’re dead beat. All right?”

  It came in her dream—one of those ones that you know are a dream because you know you’re lying in your own bed and you’re having a dream there, but at the same time you’re in that dream and somewhere else, walking, talking, listening. So Maja knew she was half-lying face down on Levanter’s back, with a strap round her to keep her from falling, but at the same time she was sitting upright in the saddle in the Council Chamber at Larg, watching Ribek explaining something to the Proctors behind the long table, only when she looked at them again she saw that they weren’t the real Proctors, though they wore the Proctors’ gowns and hats, but they all had the same expressionless smooth ivory face or mask that the Watcher had worn when he came to the way station all those weeks ago.

  She was aware of an odd little buzzy feeling at the back of her mind. She couldn’t hear what Ribek was saying, but when he pointed at the corner of the room that held the hidden door to Zara’s chamber, the buzz instantly became louder, closer…

  “Stop!” she shouted, shoving herself violently up. The strap bit into her shoulders. She wriggled herself out of it, sat up and stared round. Ribek had halted and was looking at her. The sun was high. They were alone on the Highway. There was a way station a little further on. The others were nowhere to be seen.

  “Where are they all?”

  Ribek gestured toward the way station.

  “Gone on ahead to get some food ready. I was just about to wake you to see if it made any difference not having Benayu around. Well?”

  “I don’t know…. Yes, I think so…. I had a dream…. Wait.”

  She concentrated, focused back to that moment in her dream, the sinister buzz. She grasped it with her mind, let the real world expand around her, followed it as it faded off to the south. It didn’t dwindle completely away, but stayed faintly there, in the far distance, like the quiet tick of a clock somewhere in a house, a sound you’ve grown so used to that you never notice it. Only when you think about it, there it is, ticking endlessly away.

  “I don’t think they’re actually looking for us now,” she said. “It’s like…sometimes when I went fishing with my cousins there’d be a man there. He used to have three or four rods sticking out over the pool. He didn’t hold any of them in his
hands, but he watched the floats and the moment one of them bobbled a bit he’d know there might be a fish nibbling the bait. He just waited and watched until the float bobbled a bit more and then he’d know the fish had taken the bait and he’d grab that rod and strike. I don’t know, of course, but I’m scared that that’s what we’re doing when we start talking about…”

  Even to name the city where Zara lay sleeping now seemed charged with danger. She jerked her head round toward her shoulder, indicating something behind them. Ribek nodded understanding.

  “We’re nibbling the bait when we do that,” she said. “If we do it for more than a moment, they’ll start watching, ready, and as soon as we actually start talking about it seriously they’ll know where we are, and strike.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Once again, day followed day and week followed week as they had on the way south. The season changed as the world started to tilt toward winter. And it seemed to change faster than it would have if they had been staying in one place instead of traveling north, away from the sun. The grapes had already been beginning to ripen on the vines around Farfar. Now the vineyards were rare, and cattle grazed in kempt pastures, and the streams and rivers they crossed were already, to Ribek’s delight, beginning to foam and roar as the autumn rains that had fallen on the inland hills flooded back toward the ocean. Though they were still far south of the Valley, Maja began to sense, as she lay in the dark at the way stations, that she could smell the mountains.

  Vaguely she wondered what was happening there. Had the horsemen burnt or smashed or killed or stolen everything they could find and then melted away through the northern passes? Had the people of the Valley driven them off? No knowing. She realized she was strangely uninterested. She had never been happy in the Valley. Almost the only happiness she had known in her life had been on this journey, despite all its terrors and hardships. The reason the Valley mattered to her was that one day she was going to live there with Ribek, in peace at Northbeck mill. That made it worth saving. Apart from that, she would almost have liked the journey to last for ever.