Angel Isle

by Peter Dickinson

  “Benayu did all the magic. He made the eggs.”

  “Let’s have a look…Hm. Nice bit of work. Eggs, you said?”

  “There’s two of them, this one and a big one. It’s near the touching point on Angel Isle. It’s too big to move around because he had to bring all four of us and the horses to get us away from the Watchers. They were trying to get through the touching point when I left.”

  “Can’t have that. Better get back. Tell me the rest on the way. You’re inside that egg, but you’re in control of the dog, right? Did the same sort of thing myself. Used one of the local life-forms. Must’ve got tired of waiting and pushed off. Dog pick this egg up in his mouth, d’you think, if I give him something to get hold of? Doesn’t weigh anything. Tell me the rest on the way. Now…”

  A small area right at the top of the globe sprouted into a mass of bright threads that immediately started to plait themselves together as they rose and became a glowing rope about as thick as her forefinger. When it was a foot or so long it stopped growing, looped itself over and wove its tip neatly into itself about halfway down to make a carrying handle.

  “Try that, then.”

  She stopped circling, swooped in, snatched up the loop in her jaws and swung away with the Ropemaker’s egg dangling in front of the one that doll-Maja was in.

  Where now? This time there was no trail to follow through this meaningless, no-thing world.

  “Home, boy. Find Benayu.”

  Good old Sponge, she thought, as the strong, confident wingbeats hurtled them though the meaningless maze.

  “This Benayu fellow. How old? Since my time, but could still be getting on a bit.”

  “No, he’s only fourteen or fifteen.”

  “Hm! Would’ve been way beyond me when I was that age. Tricky business, dimensions.”

  “His uncle Fodaro—he’s dead now—the Watchers killed him—he worked out the equations. Benayu says he still doesn’t understand them, but he knows how to use them.”

  “Ah. Thought there’d got to be something like that. Did it trial and error, myself. Not much room for error, mind you. Right. I’ve got it about the Watchers. Anything else going on?”

  “Well, there’s the Pirates, I suppose.”

  “Always been pirates. What’s new about this lot?”

  She was describing the attack on Tarshu when the first blast hit her. One moment she was back in imagination on that bleak hillside, watching the monstrous airboat hovering over the burning city while the lightning played around it, and the next she was tumbling helpless through darkness.

  Something caught her, held her, shielded her round, beat her wings for her while she gathered herself together. She was aware of a close presence, inside Sponge’s body now, sharing it with her, looking out through the same eyes, seeing the whole muddled scene ahead lit by pulsing and flaring light, brighter even than the glare over Tarshu.

  “Sorry. Strong magic does that to me unless I’m shielded. I wasn’t, because I had to follow the trail to find you.”

  “Right. Better see to that for you. Lot of stuff going to be happening in a minute or two. You take over now?”

  “All right. Do you think they’ve broken through?”

  “Looks like it. Should be there in time. Speeded him up a bit. Nice dog.”

  The presence withdrew. As before she let Sponge’s own instincts and perception pick their way. He was indeed now flying at unbelievable speed, banking almost vertical as he swung and curved his way through the backward-racing non-things, with wingbeats so rapid that they became a blur, like those of a flying insect. And now they were lit not only by the nearing glare of the landscape ahead but by a steadily brightening glow that could only come from the Ropemaker’s egg, dangling below her head.

  “Up now. Get above them.”

  Obediently she climbed into the magical glare, and now from this height she could see Benayu’s egg, flaming like a furnace, with all the strange vague colors that had swirled through it and gone at the Watchers’ earlier assaults. Around it, circling it completely, lay the body of an immense dark dragon. As Maja watched, it raised its head, and breathed out a single blast of oily orange fire, overwhelming the egg’s pale flames and totally engulfing it.

  “Down. Straight through. While they’re busy.”

  Three powerful beats of her wings drove her into the dive, and then she folded them and plunged like a stooping hawk into the heart of the inferno. It had barely begun to singe her fur before she was through and frantically buffeting the air to brake their onrush.

  They hit the turf with a thump. The egg she had been carrying in her mouth detached itself, rolled across the turf to where the little rope manikin stood against the rim of the pool, and exploded into human form.

  She felt she had known him all her life, though she had seen him only once before, and only in a dream, and then just as a shadowy shape beyond a magical doorway—tall, oddly gawky, with what at first glance seemed to be an unnaturally enormous head but she knew from the story to be an elaborately folded turban.

  He glanced around and pointed a finger at her. Her own egg fell apart, a tremor ran through the hitherto insensate body of the doll, and without even feeling the change apart from that she was back in her own true shape, too dazed with weariness to open her eyes. Only someone’s arm around her shoulders held her from falling.

  “Maja!” said Ribek’s voice in her ear. “Thank heavens! And you found him too! Nick of time, by the look of it. Massive stuff going on here. Benayu’s just about holding them. What about you? Can you stand it?”

  “I’m all right. He shielded me. What’s happening?”

  Before he could answer Saranja shouted a warning. An instant later the ground juddered beneath her. She felt Ribek stagger as he rode the shock-wave and held her upright. By the time he’d recovered their balance she seemed to be standing ankle deep in a rushing stream. With an effort she heaved her eyes open.

  The beautiful garden was a ruin. The trees were leaning awry. The perfect turf looked as if it had been rootled through by a gigantic hog. The inner surface of the egg flared and glimmered as it had seemed to do from the outside. The wall of the pool had split apart and its water was sluicing over her feet. The horses, over to her right, were deep in Benayu’s magical coma but still with instinct enough to have spread their legs apart to ride the quaking ground. Saranja waited beside them, tense and ready, watching the Ropemaker strolling long-legged toward Benayu…

  Benayu?

  The figure was wearing Benayu’s clothes and Sponge was there beside him, teeth bared, hackles raised, poised ready for the word to spring to the attack against whatever came. But the face was no longer that of Benayu, or of any particular human. It was a moon-pale mask like the one Zara had worn on the hillside when she had returned from the destruction of the demon Azarod.

  He stood perfectly still, seeming to be floating a little above the ground, so that he didn’t even stir as another shock-wave ground across the arena. Nor did the Ropemaker falter in his stride, but reached him, moved behind him and placed a large, bony hand on either of his shoulders. Benayu crossed his arms over his chest so that his palms covered the Ropemaker’s knuckles. There was a moment of stillness and everything changed.

  Or rather, it both did and didn’t. The garish lights in the eggshell died away as the fabric rapidly repaired itself, but otherwise nothing much happened that Maja could actually see. The trees didn’t magically right themselves, the water didn’t flow back into the pool, the turf didn’t return to its perfect smoothness, but at the same time it was all different. What must have happened, Maja realized, what she would have known for sure if the Ropemaker hadn’t mercifully numbed her extra sense (though she wouldn’t have survived the experience) was that the turmoil of magical energies that had been throbbing through the egg had now moved outside it, leaving a bubble of sanity and peace within.

  Ribek breathed out a long sigh of relief.

  “That’s a bit better,” h
e said. “Couldn’t have stood much more of that. At least it gives me some idea of what you have to put up with. How’ve you got on? Let’s have a look at you, then.”

  He took her by the shoulders, turned her round and held her at arm’s length. The smile of welcome vanished from his face.

  “Oh, my…dear! What have we done to you?”

  “I’m all right. I’m just tired.”

  “You are not all right! Look!”

  He let go of her shoulder and almost snatched at her wrist as he lifted her hand and arm for her to see.

  They weren’t hers. They were…they were Zara’s hand and arm, lying on the counterpane of her bed in the stone cell behind the Council Chamber in Larg. There seemed to be no flesh at all between the sagging ivory skin and the bird-thin bone. With an effort, though it should have weighed nothing at all, she raised her arm further and spread her fingers against the light. Yes, she could see the shadowy shapes of the finger bones through the translucent membrane.

  “I’m just tired, so tired,” she muttered, and allowed herself to collapse.

  Ribek caught her on the way down, effortlessly scooped her up and cradled her in his arms. She had never seen him looking so grim. She didn’t like it.

  “And I’m hungry,” she whispered. “Is there any oyster pie left?”

  He managed a smile—for her sake, she guessed—and started to carry her over to the pool. Saranja met them on the way.

  “What’s happened to…Oh, Maja!”

  Even Benayu must have heard the horror in her voice, for he turned his head to look. His face was his own now, but it too changed, as Ribek’s and Saranja’s had, the moment he saw her.

  And the Ropemaker was looking at her. She stared back at the narrow, long-chinned face framed by the extraordinary turban—bristling fire-red eyebrows, pale eyes set close together beside the bony nose, all strangely out of place with the wide and mobile mouth. He didn’t seem to have aged at all over the centuries, certainly not the way Zara had.

  “We’ve got to get her out of here,” said Benayu. “She can’t stand any more of this, however she’s shielded.”

  “Sooner the better,” said the Ropemaker. “Not much we can do here. One more jolt, Maja. Put you to sleep first, eh?”

  “I’ll be all right. I want to see.” And to be here, knowing I’m in Ribek’s arms, awake and aware, and with him if anything goes wrong and this is the end.

  “Tough as they come, these Urlasdaughters. Right. Anything you want to take?”

  “We’re all packed and ready,” said Saranja.

  “Fine. You three take the horses. I’ll shift for myself. Line ’em up by the touching point. Moment you hear my voice, go.”

  “Where’s Jex?” whispered Maja, as Ribek carried her over toward the horses.

  “There was more going on than he could cope with, so he turned himself into stone again and I put him in the saddlebag.”

  “Oh, look! The Ropemaker’s going to turn himself into a lion. That’s what he did in the story!”

  Craning past Ribek’s shoulder, she watched with growing excitement as the Ropemaker raised a hand, twitched out a loose end of his turban and with a flick of the wrist sent the intricately woven structure floating into coil after coil of cloth around himself. She never saw what happened to it after that because almost at once it was hidden beneath an immense mane of flame-gold hair, reaching almost to the ground, but then gathering itself back upward, revealing first four vast animal pads covered in flame-gold fur, then the muscular legs and the solid mass of the body and the skinny tail with a tuft of darker fur at the end. Within two or three heartbeats it had become the bushy mane of an enormous winged lion, big as a barn.

  It waited, motionless except for the to-and-fro flicker of its tail-tip. Its huge yellow eyes watched while Benayu woke the horses. Saranja held Maja while Ribek mounted Levanter, then passed her up to him and swung herself into Rocky’s saddle. Benayu was already up.

  “Ready?” he said, and led the way across the crumpled turf and the fallen cypresses. They lined up with the horses’ noses almost touching the eggshell. Benayu raised an arm.

  “I want to watch what he does,” whispered Maja, and Ribek adjusted his hold to let her see past his shoulder.

  The lion swung ponderously away from them and paced toward the further side of the egg. Halfway there it halted and stared slowly around as if it could see through the barrier and was studying something beyond it. It raised its head and roared.

  The sound was all there was, filling the universe. The eggshell blazed with light and melted inward. A few more moments and it would shrink to nothing. But the horses were already airborne and driving into the vague dark opening that led from universe to universe. Now there was only a glimmer from behind, a glimmer that vanished as the body of the lion filled the narrowing gap and burst through.

  A pale, faint light, marvelously familiar after all that strangeness, gleamed ahead. They were gliding peacefully toward it when Maja heard Benayu’s shout from ahead.

  “Down! It’s too narrow!”

  A thump and a clatter, and Pogo’s squeal of hurt and outrage, and Benayu’s voice again.

  “Hold it! Let’s have some light.”

  Immediately the walls of the tunnel glowed, and there was Saranja swinging down from the saddle and helping Pogo struggle to his feet and then starting to feel him over. The floor of the tunnel was strewn with broken boulders and its walls seemed to have been scorched with fire.

  “He’ll do,” said Saranja. “Oh, come on, you stupid horse, it could’ve been a lot worse. What’s happened here? It wasn’t like this when we came through.”

  “That was the Watchers getting through,” said Benayu. “I told you there’d be an explosion. At least I got one of them.”

  He gestured toward what looked like a bundle of charred gray cloth lying among the tumbled rocks. A skeleton hand protruded from between its folds.

  “We’re going to have to lead the horses, and take it slowly,” said Saranja. “They’re no good on this sort of footing. They’re not goats.”

  “Wait,” rumbled a deep voice behind them. Maja wriggled herself round and saw the lion’s body filling the tunnel. It opened its jaws and blew out a long, slow breath. A warm gale swept along the tunnel, picking them all up, horses, people and dog, and floating them out over a moonlit ocean where the animals could once again stretch their wings and fly. Behind them the tunnel collapsed in thunder.

  They rose, circled and landed on the summit of Angel Isle.

  CHAPTER

  19

  “Wake up, Maja,” said Ribek’s voice. “Benayu wants to know what you’d like for breakfast.”

  “Oyster-and-bacon pie,” she mumbled.

  “Bit rich for an invalid?”

  “I’m not an invalid. I’m just tired. I just want a little to taste.”

  “Provided you have some chicken broth first. Your stomach’s shrunk too, remember.”

  “All right.”

  “Good as my grandad made, I’ll have what you leave, well as my own,” said the Ropemaker.

  “Two oyster-and-bacon pies,” said Benayu’s voice. “One chicken broth, three lots of lamb chops, one raw and two medium-rare, one spiced kidneys. Lime water, ale, and coffee. Fodder for the horses. Anything else?”

  “Rhubarb-and-ginger crumble,” said Ribek. “Milaja Finsdaughter at Frog Bottom does a good one.”

  “Coming up. There’ll be a ten-minute wait on Saranja’s kidneys.”

  “They taste best if you can make them disappear from under a warlord’s nose,” said Saranja.

  “Look, I’ve got an Empire to sort out,” said Benayu, obviously delighting in the challenge.

  “First things first,” said Ribek.

  An extraordinary sense of well-being pervaded the little encampment. They were in a smooth patch of thymy turf ringed by a wall of the jutting rocks of which Angel Isle was made. Maja had seen the place only briefly last night, by the light of
the pale glow the Ropemaker, back in his human form and wearing his turban, had shed around him as he had knelt by her side and stared down at her. Now, even with her eyes shut against the morning glare, Maja could hear the exhilaration in everyone’s voices. Not wanting to miss a moment of it, she opened her eyes, rolled on her side and tried to push herself up. Instantly Ribek’s arm slid under her shoulders to help.

  “I can do it,” she said crossly.

  But she couldn’t, and in the end was forced to let him lift her and resettle her in a nest he’d made out of the bedding rolls with her back propped against one of the rocks, arranging her limbs much as he’d done when she’d been a rag doll inside a magical egg in that other universe. Not enough stuffing, she thought, gazing at the stick-thin legs stretched out in front of her.

  “How are you doing?” he said quietly.

  “Better. I think it was that extra-dimension stuff wore me out. I could feel it eating me away. It wasn’t Benayu’s fault, or Jex’s. They had to let it happen so I could follow the trail. I’ll be all right now we’re back in our own world. Look, I’m a rag doll still. Floppy legs.”

  “We need Striclan back to feed you up. Can’t go on asking Benayu to keep doing this.”

  “What about the Watchers? Won’t they notice?”

  “The ones who came after us are still trapped on the other side of the barrier, and he’s put a screen all round the island. He seems to think it’s all right. Ah, this smells like your broth.”

  “First things first, you said,” said Benayu, not bothering to hide the boyish pleasure he felt in showing off, just as he might have done on the mountain pasture where they had first met him all those months ago. The soup tasted as good as it smelled. She sipped it with dreamy relish as the warmth flowed into her bloodstream. She let Ribek have a taste of it and drank the rest herself. The next course arrived as she put the mug down.

  “I could show you the warlord’s face if you like,” said Benayu as he handed Saranja her pungent-odored bowl.

  “All right…Oh! That’s Tarab Arkan. He was a real beast. He treated his women like trash, punched them and kicked them when they had daughters and then gave them away to his bodyguard to do what they liked with. Nobody dared suggest it might be something to do with him that he didn’t have any sons. He’d have had them flayed alive! I’ll savor every mouthful.”