The Ropemaker Read online

  “Who knows? Nothing. The whole world. Suppose one man loses a bet he would have won. He needs money to pay. He steals and is found out. He is punished and loses promotion. So he does not become the Emperor’s favorite, does not get to rule and ruin a province, but another man governs it well—why, then, you have changed the happiness of many hundreds of thousands of people. Or the other way round. Time, I tell you, is a great rope. Wearing the ring, I have stood outside it and seen how its strands weave into other strands, back and forth, far beyond the instant in which we all live.

  “Now, come, and we will see what we can see.”

  The whole parade that Tilja had seen in Faheel’s table was now visible through the screen, rank beyond rank of soldiers, all in glistening armor, with banners and standards and pennoned spears. They had their backs toward Tilja, so she could see nothing of their faces. Beneath their spiked helmets they wore head scarves, something like the women of the Empire wore, different colors for the different companies. Almost all of them must already have been standing still when time had stopped for them, but to one side and toward the front Tilja could see an officer with his head thrown back and mouth open, in the act of shouting a command, and on the opposite side of the parade there was a group of people who must have been on the move when they were halted. A double line of soldiers, bearing drawn scimitars across their shoulders, had just rounded the end of the rank. They were picked men, a bodyguard, fierce and bearded like the ones below in the tower, and a head taller than the men on parade. Whoever they were guarding was still out of sight beyond the rank, but Tilja could see an ornate canopy, followed by the helmeted heads of further guards.

  Something was puzzling her, something she’d seen only just before, but for a moment couldn’t quite lay her mind on. Frowning, she glanced back at the officer giving the command, young, slight, beardless . . . a blink, and the thing became obvious . . . all of them! The head scarves, their smallness compared to the men, the very way they stood and carried themselves . . . a whole regiment of them!

  With a flash of intuition she realized what they were for.

  “They’re women!” she gasped. “They can go through the forest! The Emperor’s going to use them to retake the Valley!”

  “Yes,” he said quietly, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

  “Can’t you do something?”

  “Later, perhaps. Look now. Over there beyond them. By the gateway, on the right.”

  Unwillingly Tilja did as she was told. On either side of the doors of the central palace there was a raised terrace, from which groups of people, fantastically garbed, were watching the parade. Some had great plumed headdresses, or steeple hats with floating veils. Some wore jeweled masks, or the skins of exotic beasts with their fanged heads snarling above their own. Others had robes so voluminous, so weighted with jewels, that it took several slave children to carry their hems.

  The group directly opposite Tilja were stranger than any. Several of them looked hardly human at all, though they wore clothes and stood like people. One woman—was it a woman?— seemed to have six arms. Another had no face at all, only a pale, smooth blank beneath a plain black velvet cap. Tilja knew who these creatures were before Faheel spoke.

  “Fifteen Watchers,” he muttered. “Four still on watch in their towers. Dorn is dead. When the Emperor has finished his inspection of the regiment, a new Watcher will be installed. Do you see your Ropemaker? My table showed us that he is in or near this courtyard.”

  The wonder and excitement of the last few hours had driven Tilja’s worries about the Ropemaker from her mind. Now, at this last instant, they came rushing back

  “The Ro-Ropemaker?” she stammered. “But . . . I . . . I meant to ask you . . . if . . . if he was the unicorn, then he almost killed Ma!”

  Faheel nodded.

  “We all make mistakes,” he said sadly. “The more powerful we are, the worse they will be. I have no time now to explain. I must ask you to trust me when I tell you that this was a mistake in innocence. But once your Ropemaker accepts the powers of a Watcher he will be lost beyond recovery. Some of those who stand there now were once honorable magicians. Dorn had been my own pupil.”

  He waited. Tilja realized he was allowing her, even now, to decide to refuse to help him. That itself decided her. She nodded and turned to the screen.

  “Do not stare at them,” he muttered. “They may sense your attention. Look for the Ropemaker.”

  Tilja searched along the terrace. Could she have missed that extraordinary headdress among all the other fantastic costumes? No, not on the right-hand side. Wait. Under the little door, close to the inner end . . . The top half of the figure was in deep shadow, but she could see a trousered leg, as far up as the hip, the leg of a tall man with a curiously gawky stance, both awkward and powerful. . . .

  “There,” she whispered. “He was just coming out of that door.”

  “Good,” said Faheel. “Then we are ready. I will tell you what I am trying to do. My object is to prevent your friend being installed as a Watcher, and perhaps, if all goes well, to destroy the whole system of the Watchers. In passing I may be able to do what you ask for your Valley.

  “These woman warriors are not here by choice. They have been snatched from their homes at their Emperor’s will, and trained to recapture your Valley. That is not their only purpose. The Emperor has peculiar tastes. He is delighted by women dressed in uniform, so he holds these parades often, and takes any that catch his eye for his own use. The women are furious about this, and long to return to their homes, but they are afraid. The punishments for desertion and mutiny are unspeakable. Now I propose to make use of both his lust and their anger.

  “But I dare not use more strength than I must. Whatever I do will wake the Watchers, and I shall need to hold them off for at least a little time, or we will both be destroyed and all will be lost.

  “So, when I tell you, you will take the ring out of the box and clasp it in your hand. The world will move on its course once more. After a little while I shall work a very ordinary bit of village magic, a love charm, as it were, beneath the notice of the Watchers. When this has had its effect I shall wake the anger of the soldier women. What then happens should be enough to distract the Watchers on the terrace, and I will use what strength I have left to hold off those in the towers until events have taken their course, and then I will tell you to put the ring back in its box, and time will stop, and we will go as we came.

  “And if I should fail . . .”

  He paused, and she looked up, waiting. More strongly than ever now she could feel his immense age, his frailty, his weariness. His voice became little more than a whisper.

  “If I should fail, you must put the ring back in the box and go by yourself. The roc will wake at your presence and carry you to my island. As you pass between shore and shore, take the ring and throw it into the sea. In the time that would have been a day and a night for you, had the sun still moved through the sky, the effect will cease and your friends will wake. You will be safe enough on my island.”

  He straightened and spoke more strongly.

  “Now we begin. Take the ring out of the box.”

  Fail? With the whole of the next age poised in the balance? Now, as soon as I take hold of the ring?

  Tilja almost froze at the thought, but then a quite different thought steadied her, ordinary, everyday, but as important to her as the balance of the whole next age.

  I promised Da I’d get back to Woodbourne.

  Her hands didn’t shake as she opened the box and closed her fingers round the ring. At once she felt the strange deep humming that she had felt when she had held the ring in her hand in Faheel’s room, the long unchanging tremor that seemed to be vibrating through all creation, apart from her own body. The women on the floor of the room didn’t stir from the enchanted sleep into which Faheel had thrown them, but the gold coin finished its fall and went rolling across the floor. Beyond the screen the parade flowed smoothly into m
ovement. Drums and gongs, pipes and trumpets thundered, blared and whistled as the soldiers came marching round the end of the rank, followed by two resplendent court officials, and then the leading pair of slaves who carried the portable throne beneath the canopy, and then the throne itself, more bearers, dignitaries and soldiers.

  Tilja got a clear look at the man on the throne as it turned the corner. He was wearing a small crown with three golden feathers at the front. Beneath that his face was pale as a mushroom, fleshy, with a snub nose and pale lips showing through a weedy little beard. He didn’t look any older than the young men Tilja had watched kick-fighting at the Gathering, but his body was so fat that she wondered whether he could have walked even a few steps without help. Where had she seen that shape before? Yes! The inflated goatskin floats on the raft that had brought them down the river! Despite the glittering surcoat that enveloped it, the gross shape looked more like one of those than anything human.

  So this was the Emperor. In all her life Tilja had never seen anyone looking so bored. He could have anything in the world he pleased, but nothing in the world could please him. Seeing him for that brief moment, she felt a shudder of horror both at him and for him. Then, as the throne vanished behind the next rank, she thought, And he wants to reconquer the Valley. No!

  She looked at the terrace. The Ropemaker had come through the door and was moving behind the group of Watchers. He stopped a little beyond them, turned and stood waiting. He hadn’t changed. He had the same fidgety, inquisitive look he’d had in the Pirrim Hills, the same laddish awkwardness, as if he hadn’t ever quite grown into his adult shape.

  Faheel must have been watching him too. She heard him murmuring to himself, “No, not too late. Not too late.”

  Nothing else happened as the little procession moved along behind the next rank. As it neared the end Faheel gripped the metalwork of the screen, as if to steady himself. She heard him draw a deep breath. The procession stopped with the throne once again just in sight. A dignitary came forward and bent to hear the Emperor’s command. He straightened and walked round and back along the rank, where he spoke briefly to one of the woman soldiers and led her back toward the Emperor. As they came fully into view Tilja saw that he was leading her by the wrist, and she was following reluctantly.

  “Now, be ready,” said Faheel in a far stronger voice, and Tilja poised her clenched fist over the open box.

  He clapped his hands. The sound was like a crack of thunder close by, that went rolling away across the parade ground, while Tilja’s head still rang with it. She saw the woman soldier flinch and stagger, and then turn her head and call out to her comrades. Instantly they broke rank and swarmed toward the Emperor like a bee swarm clustering round their queen. Scimitars flashed in the air. The canopy tilted, toppled and was gone. The guards struggled a little longer and then they too went under. And now, as Tilja’s hearing returned to her and she could hear their wild high whoops and yells, the whole enraged regiment was streaming toward the terrace.

  Even the Watchers seemed to have been taken by surprise. When Tilja looked, they were struggling in a mass of panicking courtiers rushing for the door beyond them. A great beast rose amid the crush, squatting on its hind legs and batting everyone around it out of its path. Two fiery shapes and a shadow-thing burst away upward and soared on wings of flame and darkness toward the towers of the Watchers. And then everything gave a sort of shudder, and changed.

  At first Tilja thought something had gone wrong with her eyes. What they were seeing didn’t make sense. The towers rose straight and true still, but they weren’t straight with each other. Each of them made the rest look crooked. And the same with everything else. Palace and spectators seemed to be floating, not above the ground, but loose, as if they were somewhere else, and the courtyard walls and towers seemed to get larger as they reached away into the distance. And the people too. The further away they were the more gigantic they became.

  But the sky beyond was too near. It was much too near. It was nearer than the towers, inside out. As the dark and burning magicians fled toward their towers the sky wrapped itself round them and they disappeared.

  Tilja could actually see the bottom edge of the sky, where it touched the ground. That edge swept across the terrace, and Watchers and courtiers were gone.

  Then, as it closed on the towers, it seemed to pause.

  All this in an instant, or in a different kind of time.

  Tilja heard a mutter from Faheel. She glanced up and saw that he was in his magician’s shape, tall and strong. His spread hands were raised beside his shoulders and his face was set and pale with concentration. She realized that this was the final effort, the moment for which he had been saving his powers so carefully, and when it was over he would have almost nothing left. The four Watchers still in their towers may have been taken by surprise, but they were in the places where they were strongest and they’d had a moment or two to rally their powers. Now they must be fighting back.

  She looked again through the screen. The center of the parade ground was empty, apart from a few bodies lying around the toppled litter. In the midst of them was a bulging golden object, like an outsize float for a raft. The Emperor. Dead.

  Tilja stared. It was difficult for her to take in. What had Lananeth said? We live and die at his will. No longer. He was dead himself, not at his own will, but Faheel’s. And Tilja’s too, perhaps. Faheel couldn’t have done it without her, and if she’d understood what she was doing she’d still have chosen to do it. For the sake of the Valley.

  Too shaken to think clearly, she forced herself to look away and see what else was happening. All around the parade ground the massed spectators were streaming for the entrance gate, and beyond it the regiment of women was charging toward the palace. Tilja could hear their whooping war cry, above the yells and screams of terror from the spectators.

  Her eye was caught by a patch of stillness, of difference, not part of the strange, sickening, lurching inside-out world that Faheel had created to do his work. In the middle of it stood the Ropemaker, alone on the terrace. Somehow the sky had managed to leave him behind. Now, instead of trying to escape, he had climbed onto a low stone platform against the palace wall and seemed to be gazing at the confusion as if it had been a show put on for his amusement.

  Something was happening to the towers above him. Still, if Tilja looked at any one of them directly, it seemed to stand upright and motionless, but the ones at the edge of her vision were tilting away at unbelievable angles. Some now bent sharply in the middle, as a stick seems to when thrust into a pond. Others stretched away out of sight, endless.

  The sky closed round the palace, and closed again. There was an immense, tearing crash, and a shudder that seemed to shake the world. Tilja staggered against the wall and managed to push herself upright.

  When she looked again the sky was in its rightful place. Out of a billowing cloud of mortar dust the stubs of twenty broken towers rose straight and true toward it. What was left of the palace rested on the ground. The Ropemaker no longer looked different from everything else, but was still gazing around as if waiting for something else to happen to amuse him.

  “It is done,” said Faheel. “With your help I have broken the Watchers.”

  “Are they all dead?”

  “No. Some fled before we had finished, and still have many of their powers, but they are Watchers no more. Now we can give the Ropemaker the ring and go. I will tell him you are here.”

  Tilja looked, and saw the Ropemaker stare toward the tower from which they were watching. He raised a hand in cheerful acknowledgment, but then stiffened and stared again, not at the tower this time, but beyond it. With a quick movement he un-tucked an end of his turban cloth. At a flick of his wrist the whole elaborate structure unraveled and his hair tumbled around him.

  Hair? The flaming orange cataract covered his whole body, hiding him completely. A shake of his head and it floated out, hair no more but a blazing ball of fire which grew, beca
me a shape, became solid, an immense flaming orange lion, a lion the size of a barn. It turned its head and stared again for a moment beyond the tower, then swung away and raced off, clearing the outer wall of the palace at a bound.

  Puzzled, Tilja glanced up to see why Faheel hadn’t stopped him. She gasped with astonishment and horror. Faheel was staggering back from the screen. His hands were up in front of his face, and his mouth was working. A faint groaning mutter came from his lips.

  One of the women on the floor writhed and screamed. The light dimmed as a darkness closed around the tower.

  No!

  Tilja unclenched her fist and dropped the ring into the box.

  Everything stopped. The woman’s scream cut short. Her writhings froze. The darkness stayed as it was. And Faheel, who was already toppling away from the invisible blow, hung suspended in midfall, but when Tilja seized him by the hand he crumpled to the floor and she had to ease him down. He didn’t stir.

  She couldn’t think what to do next. With a thundering heart she took the rings from his fingers and put them into the pouch at his belt. As she pulled the last one off he changed into an old man, lying half on his side, looking desperately frail and tired, and he still didn’t wake.

  “If I should fail,” he’d said, “you must go by yourself.”

  No, she told herself again, you’re not going to fail. And I am going to get back to Woodbourne.

  How long had she left before time started again for everyone else, and the powers that had overwhelmed him came swarming down into this room? And the roc still had to fly them home. Faheel couldn’t weigh much, but he was far too heavy for her to carry or drag that distance. If she could find a horse or a donkey, or even a strong man. A strong man. One of the soldiers below? But how . . . ?

  There was a gold coin on the floor beside Faheel’s left hand, the one that had fallen from the air and rolled across the floor when time had restarted. Tilja picked it up, found the purse itself and took it, then hurried down the stairs. It was very dark in the windowless room. The guards were as they’d left them, sprawled on the floor, held by the power of the ring and by Faheel’s enchanted sleep, and she wasn’t sure if her touch would overcome both forces. But at the moment when she’d dropped the ring back into the box, several other soldiers must have been running into the room to escape the magical encounter in the courtyard. She chose the one in front, took three gold coins from the purse and gripped the man’s hand. She had to hang on while he dragged her a couple of paces across the room, still in the frenzy of escape. He halted and stared around.