Angel Isle

by Peter Dickinson

  So they battled on, losing all the time, pace by agonizing pace. The nature of the struggle barely altered when Ribek gave a final, dreadful groan and passed out in her arms. His eyes closed, his mouth sagged open, and his head fell sideways as if his neck were broken. But still his legs drove them forward.

  So far she had been clutching him to her side with her arms around his upper body, wrestling to haul him back. Now she changed her grip, losing a precious couple of paces to do so as she worked herself round to get her shoulder against his belly. His body slumped above her, forcing her to bear half his scant weight. Gasping, she heaved with all her strength against the staggering onward drive of his legs. Her sandals lost their grip on the slithery turf and they toppled in a heap.

  He fell on her, half winding her. By the time she’d got her breath back he was on his hands and knees, crawling blindly toward the demon, now desperately near. She saw it stoop, reaching out an arm to scoop him up. The fingers at the end of the ivory sleeve had no knuckles, no bones, but a double row of suckers along their inner surfaces, each like a tiny mouth.

  Desperately she flung herself forward, grasped his ankles and hauled him back. Effortlessly the arm extended itself. The talons closed round his waist. She screamed, and her scream was answered.

  Answered from high overhead by a sound she knew, a long, clanging neigh, like a war cry. The demon loosed its hold and she tumbled back, dragging Ribek with her.

  In the moment that she was facing skyward she saw Rocky above her, wide wings hurling him forward, Saranja and Striclan on his back, the fiery line of the demon-binder snaking out, bright against the storm clouds, curling itself widdershins around the demon’s shoulders as Rocky swung the other way to begin the binding. The demon didn’t resist. It seemed not to respond in any way, or even to turn its head to watch them go. Nor did Maja. Immediately, with her lungs still heaving, her heart still thundering from her previous struggle, she started to drag Ribek further away.

  All round her the Jexes, those who could still move of their own will and not the demon’s, were doing the same. She caught a glimpse of Benayu standing in the middle of them, with his staff erect in the turf in front of him. Half blinded with her own sweat, she couldn’t see quite what he was doing, but he seemed not to be even looking at the demon but at an invisible ball that he was holding cupped between his two hands close above the top of the staff.

  She didn’t have time to think about it, to wonder what he was up to, or whether there was anything he could do to save them. All that mattered was to drag Ribek further away.

  Another wild neigh from Rocky. Different. Terror? Rocky?

  She looked up and saw that the demon had moved at last, effortlessly bursting several coils of the fiery binding to raise an arm and beckon.

  Rocky was responding, swinging in toward the terrible darkness under the hood, while Saranja, protected by the demon-binder, fought to turn his head and force him back onto his course.

  Useless. He was almost there. Another heartbeat and they would all three be gone.

  It never happened. Before Maja’s heart could thud once more, it stood still. A gulp of air stayed in her windpipe. She could no more look to left or right than she’d been able to do when she was a rag doll. Rocky and his riders remained poised in front of the darkness. The racing storm clouds stayed in their places. Even sound was stilled. Not a mutter from the waves, not a whisper from the wind, broke the silence.

  Something moved in that stillness. A small black object floated up at the edge of Maja’s vision, surrounded by…

  By what? Nothing visible, but…Nothing, visible because it was less than nothing? Negative zero…?

  Something below it now, grayer than gray…the top of Benayu’s staff, with the black thing floating above it like the dot on an i. Benayu’s hand gripping the staff, his other hand just below it, his arms, Benayu himself, floating up and forward into view, locked into total stillness like herself and Rocky and the demon and all the rest of the universe, his face set to stone as he poured all the powers in himself and the staff into keeping that single impossible sphere whole and balanced above the staff.

  So in time outside time, he drifted up and forward, past where Rocky and his riders hung timebound, to the very edge of the darkness.

  At that point time resumed. Benayu thrust staff and sphere forward with a twist of his wrists. The staff was still in his hands as he plummeted earthward, but the sphere was gone, engulfed by the darkness. Maja’s delayed heartbeat thudded within her rib-cage. The gulped air poured into her lungs. With a triumphant neigh Rocky swung clear. And the demon…

  The demon ate itself. The darkness under the hood became an inward-whirling vortex, dragging hood and robes and the whole huge ivory figure into its emptiness, and then was gone. All of it gone into the sphere of nothingness that Benayu had somehow formed and kept in existence in the world of things by creating a space between two instants of time in either of which it would have been an impossibility. All that was left of the Watchers was a patch of dead turf.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Still gasping and shuddering with effort, Maja got to her feet, heaved Ribek onto his back and felt for his pulse. Nothing. Nothing. Yes—was it?—yes, desperately faint, but there. She looked up for somebody to tell. Benayu was picking himself up from the turf close beside her.

  “He’s alive!”

  He stared at her, dazedly shaking his head, stunned either by the fall or what he’d done.

  With a boom of wings Rocky landed beside them. For the first time Maja noticed that Striclan hadn’t been riding pillion, with his arms round Saranja’s waist, but in front of her, as if he’d been a child who needed to be held in place. Saranja slid down, deftly caught him as he collapsed sideways, and helped him sit. His face was almost the same horrible pale yellow as the poisoned grass.

  “Here’s your banbane,” she told him. “No, don’t try and say anything—you’re still not making sense. Just keep on breathing it in. It’s working. Look, it’s changing color. That’s right.”

  She turned to Maja.

  “Are you all right?” she said. “I thought we were all done for when Zald wasn’t strong enough. What’s happened to Ribek? Where’s the Ropemaker?”

  “He was getting old too fast. Ribek lent him some of his own life so that he’d be strong enough to deal with the Watchers. Then he summoned them, and they came. They knew the Ropemaker’s name. They almost got him, but Benayu managed to hide him somewhere. And Zara and Chanad. They were here too. Then the Watchers turned themselves into a demon—the one you tried to bind. It poisoned the Jexes….”

  “Them too? So’s Striclan. He’s pretty bad. A demon breathed on him just as I got there. I’d spotted some bog oaks on the way there so I looked coming back and found him some banbane.”

  “Banbane?” said Maja.

  “It grows on rotting bog oaks. It’s a bracket fungus. You can use it for snakebite and things.”

  “Have you got any more?” said Maja. “It might help with the Jexes.”

  “Not enough for all of them,” said Saranja, fishing in one of the saddlebags and bringing out a fawn-colored object about the size and shape of a cowpat.

  “I suppose you could try it on Jex,” she said, breaking a piece off. “If it works I could take Rocky and look for more. Break a bit off and put the broken side under his nose so that he breathes the fumes in. If it’s working it’ll start to go orange.”

  “Can you look at Ribek while I’m doing that? I can only just feel his pulse. He was fighting to get to the demon and I was fighting to stop him. Then he collapsed, but he kept on trying to go forward.”

  “He is asleep,” said Benayu in a dazed voice, as if he were half asleep himself. He shook his head, squared his shoulders and gave the ghost of a smile.

  “He’s dreaming about—”

  “You mustn’t look! It isn’t fair!”

  Benayu wasn’t good at looking ashamed, but at least Maja’s
snarl had woken him up.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought…Anyway, it was just an ordinary kind of dream. I don’t think he’s poisoned, just tired.”

  “All right,” Maja muttered. “I suppose you had to. Thanks.”

  Still unfairly furious, she took a piece of the fungus and settled down beside Ribek with her back, deliberately, to Benayu.

  “Jex. Jex. Can you hear me? How are you?”

  “Not well, but not as sick as many of my friends. Some of us are dying.”

  “I’ve got some banbane. Saranja says it might work. But you’ve got to breathe it.”

  “Take me out and put me on the grass.”

  She still had him in her grasp when he changed his form. His eyes were glazed and the clear blue and yellow of his scales muddy and dull. The taut and muscular body was as floppy as dead meat. The broken edge of the banbane was oozing with opaque pale droplets and reeked of rotting timber. Carefully she arranged it close to Jex’s nostril-slits, propping it in place with her sandal. His neck ruffles rose and fell in time with his deep-drawn breaths.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, that appears beneficial. Ah, Benayu is fetching some more. Leave me to breathe this piece, while you take pieces to my friends. Some of us are unaffected. They will show you who is most in need.”

  “Striclan’s looking better already,” said Saranja. “He kept trying to tell me something urgent he’s got to tell Benayu, but he wasn’t making much sense. Ah. His bit’s started to change color. It forms a crust, Maja. When it’s bright orange you can crumble that off and start again…No, love. Keep breathing. Benayu’s busy. There’s a lot of stuff going on, but it looks as if he’s done for the Watchers. Cedars and snows! Where did you find all that?”

  Maja glanced round. Benayu was standing, looking smug, in a pile of banbane up to his knees. It was as if he’d decided he’d fulfilled his vow and destroyed the Watchers and could now keep his promise to himself and revert to the boy he had been not all that long ago, playing with his powers among the sheep pastures.

  “Here and there,” he said airily. “Hope it’s enough to keep you busy. Now I’ll see if I can bring the other three back. I’m going to have to take it slowly, as I don’t know what sort of state they’ll be in. They took the full shock of it. I was just lucky I happened to be holding the staff.”

  “You’re sure Ribek’s going to be all right?”

  “Pretty sure. He’s not been as near the edge as you were. Just let him rest, while you and Saranja do what you can for Jex’s friends.”

  It didn’t take as long as she’d feared, anything like. It turned out that when the Jexes had decided to help distract the demon, they’d agreed among themselves that some of them should remain hidden. These now emerged and thronged round Maja and Saranja as they broke off bits of banbane for them to carry to their stricken comrades.

  When the first flurry of distribution was over Maja fetched Ribek’s bedding roll and made him more comfortable. His pulse seemed stronger and steadier and there was a little bit of color in his cheeks. Striclan was looking a lot better, very pale still, but no longer that ghastly yellow, and holding himself as if he wasn’t about to collapse any moment. Between breaths at the banbane he was talking in a low urgent voice to Saranja, and she was trying to calm him down.

  Now he fell silent and they both sat watching what Benayu was up to, so Maja turned to do the same. He had moved over to the other side of the arena, and somehow cleared a circular patch among the mass of Jexes. He was leaning on his staff in the middle of it. He had changed again. He wasn’t the shepherd boy now, but ageless, human still, but also something other than human, the look that the Ropemaker had worn when he had summoned the Council.

  He did nothing for a while, then whispered a few slow syllables. A ripple swept across the Jexes like the ripple of a breeze over ripe wheat. He positioned the staff upright at the center of the circle, let go and watched it sink for a third of its length into the ground. He grasped its top in both hands, bent and blew gently down it as if he were blowing into a reed pipe.

  A bulge formed immediately below his hands, moved slowly down the staff and disappeared into the ground. As soon as it was gone he blew again, and another bulge formed and was gone. And again, and again, for some while. At length he stopped blowing, stood upright, took a fresh grasp on the staff and firmly but without obvious effort drove it right down into the turf. Then, as the Jexes made room for him, he stood back outside the circle.

  While he waited, the other-than-human look faded away until he seemed to be just another spectator, waiting to see what would happen. Maja assumed that one of the now familiar eggs would appear, and if all was well the three magicians would be alive inside it. Instead, the turf inside the circle shimmered over and a pool of tangled light formed from which a flock of white gulls emerged, screaming, and fled away.

  The surface of the pool stirred and something began to rise from it. Chanad’s head, her shoulders, her body down to the waist. Benayu reached out, took her hand and helped her up onto the turf. She turned and waited beside him.

  The surface of the pool stirred, but nothing happened. Benayu shrugged and knelt. Chanad knelt beside him. Together they reached down with both hands into the pool, adjusted their grip and with some difficulty lifted out the inert body of Zara and laid her on the turf. The Ropemaker followed, climbing out without help. He was wearing his turban and looked much more like himself than he had after the Watchers had so nearly destroyed him. Immediately he knelt beside Zara, put an arm under her body and cradled her against his chest. Chanad knelt on the other side, took her hands and began to whisper quietly. They were doing some kind of healing, Maja guessed.

  Benayu stood watching for a moment, then turned and gave a brief whistle. Sponge went bounding toward him, put his front paws on his chest and reached up to lick his face. Benayu pushed him away, laughing, and walked over.

  “That’s your fault, Maja,” he said. “He thinks it’s allowed now.”

  “Could you come, Benayu?” said Saranja. “Striclan’s got something important to tell us. It’s a bit complicated.”

  “Can it wait a moment? I’m hungry. It seems a long time since breakfast. What do you want?”

  “Whatever’s quick and easy. Some of Maja’s broth for Striclan, if that’s not a nuisance.”

  “And for Ribek too,” said Maja. “I think he’s waking up, and it’s my turn to be tough with him.”

  “And if you could do something about the weather,” said Saranja.

  By the time the meal arrived the sky was already clearing and the wind abating as it swung round to the south. The smell of food brought the Ropemaker over. He had changed, still friendly and interested, but less eager and inquisitive, and moving more slowly and with the beginnings of a stoop. He seemed to be aging even as Maja looked at him. It was as though the minutes were weeks and the hours were years. Chanad had stayed nursing Zara, so he carried a bowl of soup over to her, with a chunk of bread and an apricot, and returned. He was frowning, puzzled by something.

  “Where’s the old ring, then?” he said. “Can’t feel it. Gave it to you, didn’t I? Memory’s going, along of the rest. Got rid of it already?”

  “I think so,” said Benayu. “You’d set it up to destroy itself, and Jex told us the only safe place for that to happen was in the sort of non-space between the universes—what he called ultraspace. I think it’s the same thing as the negative zero in Fodaro’s equations. Neither of them makes any sense to me, but they do it in the same kind of way. Anyway the demon was consuming anything with any kind of magic in it, so I used the equations to fetch a sphere of ultraspace into our universe and keep it there—that was the tricky bit—and put the ring in the middle of it as bait. Then I let the demon have it, but as soon as I released it the sphere had to return to ultraspace. The demon kept right on swallowing so it had to go with it. And then, if I got it right, the ring destroyed the demon along with itself.”

  “Tidy,�
� said the Ropemaker.

  “How’s Zara?” said Saranja. “Striclan says the Pirates are all set to attack Larg, so…”

  “Too late for her. Can’t do anything. Ready to go. Me too. Time to undo our days. Didn’t want to do it on an empty stomach.”

  “Oh, but Larg!” Maja blurted out. “Couldn’t you stay long enough…?”

  He shook his head and finished his mouthful.

  “Nothing to give,” he said through the crumbs of it. “Taking all the magic I’ve got keeping my teeth in place. Who told you? This chap?”

  “He’s called Striclan,” said Saranja. “He was a Pirate spy when we met him, but he’s on our side now. He was poisoned by a demon on his way to tell us.”

  “Sure about him?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Take your word for it. When’s this going to happen, then? Soon, you say?”

  Striclan tottered to his feet and Saranja rose to steady him.

  “The day after tomorrow, I believe, sir,” he said in a barely audible whisper, but speaking as formally as ever. “The battle fleet is already on its way.”

  “They need a battle fleet to attack Larg?” said Saranja. “There isn’t any magic in Larg. They could take the town with a couple of barges.”

  “That is the point. A delegation of the Syndicary—”

  “No time for that,” interrupted the Ropemaker. “When I’ve gone. Know who’s running the show? Be with the fleet?”

  “I believe so, sir,” said Striclan. “They will be aboard their largest vessel, the All-Conqueror. Admiral-General Pashgahr is the Fleet Commander. Supreme General Olbog, who is in charge of the whole operation against the Empire, will almost certainly be there to make sure the Syndics are impressed by a successful operation against Larg.”

  “That’ll do. Show up. Stop it in its tracks. Impress them that way. Right, Benayu?”