The Ropemaker Page 3

  More peaceful seasons came and went, as the horse plague continued to ravage the plains, and the problems of the Empire boiled up elsewhere. Indeed, there was such turmoil south of the forest that the Emperor’s clerks forgot that the Valley even existed, and for long years nobody came to collect the taxes. It was a full generation before shepherds came running into market one evening with the news. They had been with their flocks in the high pastures and had seen a party of wild-looking horsemen beneath them, at the lip of the pass, looking down at the Valley, and pointing and laughing. It had been clear from both stance and gesture what had been in their minds, before they had turned and trotted away north.

  By now those sitting around over their cider were the children of those who had listened to Sonnam telling the story of Asarta. Indeed, there were two of his sons among them, in one of whom the old soldiering blood still ran strong. It was he who said, after they had listened with dismay to the shepherds, “There is nothing for it. We must arm ourselves and fight.”

  This, with much misgiving, they did. They caught the raiders in an ambush beside the river, but they had no experience of battle, while the raiders were hardened to it, so it was a desperately close affair, but in the end the raiders broke and fled. When it was over they met in council. Some said, “We have beaten them once. We can do so again.” Others said, “Next time they will be more, and warier. We must send to the Emperor for help.” Yet others said, “The Emperor’s help will destroy us as surely as the horsemen.” At last somebody said, “We might as well send to Asarta.”

  This was, or was meant to be, a joke. By now “sending to Asarta” had become a sort of proverb in the Valley, something one said when one was in a fix and couldn’t think which way to turn. Then someone said, still joking, “At least it would be better than sending to the Emperor.” And someone, joking rather less, said, “Indeed it would.” So, gradually, without their noticing how it happened, the joke became a proposal, and the proposal became a decision, and they were discussing how it should be done.

  Sonnam was no help. He was an old man now, with his memory half gone, and all he could tell them was, “Asarta? Yes, yes. She demanded a great price.”

  The thought was dismaying. The Valley was prosperous, but mainly in goods. People had full barns and byres, but little by way of money or jewels, or what counted as wealth in the Empire. But they gathered what they had and chose a delegation to go and see if Asarta would help them. Since half the farms in the Valley were inherited through the female line, they sent five men and five women.

  From the first they met with misfortune. One was murdered, and three were seized on false claims of debt and sold into slavery. The rest were cheated and robbed. Moreover, they heard not one word of Asarta, for all their asking. There seemed to be neither tale nor memory of her.

  When they had lost almost all that they had brought, four decided to give up and go home, but one man and one woman said that they would continue the search, penniless and hopeless though they were. Their names were Reyel Ortahlson and Dirna Urlasdaughter. These two journeyed on, choosing their roads at random, until they came to a city on the very edge of the immense desert that marked the eastern boundary of the Empire.

  It was here one morning, sitting in the shadow of a gateway, they saw two women walking out of the desert. As they passed under the arch, one said to the other, “So that is the end of Asarta. I never thought I should live to see her go. It will be a strange world without her.”

  The two from the Valley jumped up and caught the women by their cloaks and said, “Asarta? You have news of Asarta? We have journeyed from the furthest north to find her.”

  The women shook their heads and said, kindly enough, “You come too late. She is gone into the desert to undo her days. An hour after moonrise she will be no more.”

  “There is still time to find her,” said the two from the Valley. “Which way did she go?”

  “She went east,” said the women. “But you will not find her, not unless she chooses to be found.”

  Reyel and Dirna filled their flasks from a reeking tank by the gate and set out east across the burning sands. There was no path and no shade. The water was too foul to drink, so they wetted themselves with it and trudged on. A time came when they knew in their hearts that if they did not turn back they would die in the desert, but they plodded on east, and as the sun went down and their shadows stretched far in front of them they came to a rocky hollow with a carved stone slab at its center. Sitting by the slab with her head bowed was an old woman in a gray cloak.

  The two went quietly down and stood a few paces to one side, afraid to speak, knowing the place was holy. But the woman looked up and said in a mild voice, “You come on an errand. You have something to ask. Tell me your trouble.”

  They told her, and she nodded, and said, “You have brought me a fee?”

  “We have nothing,” they said. “We started our journey with friends and money and jewels, but we were cheated and robbed all the way, and now we have only the clothes we wear.”

  “Nothing?” said Asarta. “You are asking a great work to be done for nothing?”

  “I have half of a stale barley loaf I begged in the city,” said Dirna.

  “There is a little water left in my flask,” said Reyel.

  “Give them to me,” said Asarta.

  They did so, and she moistened her lips from the flask and broke a corner from the loaf and ate it, and then handed them back.

  “Very well,” she said. “I cannot in any case do what you ask. I have put all that aside. But I can tell you what you must do. First, you must wait here and watch what happens until I am gone, and then you must journey to the city of Talak and find a man called Faheel and ask him to help you. He will demand a fee and you will give him this ring. Keep it safe, and do not attempt to wear it. I trust you with it, because you have shown that you have the will to carry a task through.”

  She took a gold ring from her finger and put it on the slab beside her. With a twist of her hand she broke off a corner of rock and blew on it and it became fine sand. This she rubbed out between her thumb and forefinger, spinning it into a braided cord which she threaded through the ring, rubbing the ends together so that they joined without a knot. She gave it to Dirna, who slid the cord over her head and tucked the ring down inside her blouse. The cord assumed the color of her skin, so that you would not have known it was there.

  Asarta nodded to show that she had finished and sat as they had first seen her. The two climbed to the lip of the hollow and settled to watch. While they waited they ate some of the loaf and drank from the flask, and found that the bread was soft and fresh, and smelled as if it had just now come from the oven, while the water was as sweet and clean and cool as a snowmelt stream in the Valley.

  The sky darkened and the stars came out. The moon rose, shining bright across the desert, but the hollow by which they sat was still in dense shade, from which now they heard the whisper of Asarta’s voice, old and thin, like dead leaves trapped in a wind eddy. As the moon climbed and began to shine into the hollow the voice became stronger, harsher, like a queen’s commanding her armies, or the chant of a priestess with the knife raised for the sacrifice. By the time it shone full down into the bowl there was a tall woman standing beside the carved slab, wearing the same gray robe that Asarta had worn, but with long dark hair flowing around it, so that it could hardly be seen. Her voice was a ringing chant that made the boulder on which they sat tingle and quiver, while flecks of light like crumbled star-stuff darted to and fro across the bowl. Then the stance eased and the voice softened and the chant became a song, while the flecks of light whirled closer around the young woman who stood by the slab so that she was lit by their light as well as by the moon’s. The song ended, and she stood in silence, waiting.

  Time also waited. The two from the Valley had watched, not understanding what they saw. But they remembered what the women by the gateway had said, and guessed that if they took any step d
own into the hollow they would be trapped in the backward eddy of the years, sucked into the vortex where Asarta sang. Now that the song was over the eddy stilled.

  Asarta threw back her cloak and with her bare arms made a slow ritual gesture, as if offering an invisible vessel to the starlit sky. The shimmering flecks that had whirled around her gathered between her palms, making a shape like the drop that is left at the center of a ribbed leaf after a shower, lit with its own light, paler and brighter than the moon’s.

  She gazed at it for a while, unblinking. Then, continuing the interrupted movement of her arms, she raised it above her head and it floated away, widening and widening until it seemed to disperse itself into moonlight. Reyel and Dirna watched it disappear. When they looked down into the hollow Asarta was also gone.

  The two from the Valley trudged back to the city and asked directions to Talak. It was a long and dangerous journey, but they made it without trouble apart from the ordinary weariness of endless walking. The barley loaf and the flask of water sustained them, not merely staying fresh but renewing themselves, so there seemed always as much of them left when they next needed them as there had been the time before. When armed bandits raided a resting place for travelers and stripped all who were there naked so that they could better search them, they seemed not to notice the two from the Valley where they sat quietly under the wall.

  And again, when they came to Talak itself they found lines of travelers at the gateways, where guards questioned and searched each one, demanding monstrous fees before they let them pass. But when the two reached the front of their line the guard was interrupted with the news that his wife had just borne him a son, and in his delight he just waved the pair through.

  But once inside the city their troubles began. Talak is very ancient, with the Emperor’s palace at its heart, and broad streets leading to it from the twelve great gates. Between these open ways it is all twisting lanes and alleys. People who have lived in Talak all their lives can lose themselves in a strange quarter and take a day or more to find their way home. Furthermore the people of Talak are a suspicious, scurrying lot, and when the two from the Valley asked where they could find Faheel they were met with blank faces or shrugs or, sometimes, a quick, sharp stare, as if the question were dangerous, or mad.

  So the two gave up asking and wandered this way and that, loster than they had seemed in the desert, but hoping they might hear a snatch of conversation in which Faheel’s name was mentioned, which was how they had found Asarta. Again and again they crisscrossed the city, but however many of the radiating avenues they passed they seemed always each evening to fetch up, by accident, in the same dim street, with only a single door in it, and that bricked up, and no window below the second story. After a while they came to regard this as their temporary home. It was very quiet—indeed not once did they see another person using it—and the arch of the blocked doorway was a convenient place to sleep.

  One morning, as they were breakfasting, a small yellow bird flew down to look for crumbs. The two were normally sparing with their water and bread, as if they must not take their magic for granted, but without thinking Dirna broke off a corner of crust and held it out and the bird flew fearlessly up and perched on her finger to peck. The man laughed, startling the bird, which flew off, brushing against the pillar of the archway as it passed. For a moment, brief as an eye blink, the brickwork wavered and was a door. Then it was brick again.

  Reyel rose and found the place and laid his hand on it. The door appeared, but it had no handle or knocker.

  A voice said, “Whom do you seek?”

  “Faheel,” they answered.

  “What do you want of him?”

  “Peace for our Valley.”

  “You have brought an appropriate fee?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enter.”

  The door opened, and they went through into a dark, cool hallway. There was no one about. Several arches led toward other rooms, but as they stood wondering which to take, all but one seemed to mist over, so they could see only vaguely what lay beyond the rest. They went through the one clear arch into another such room, where the same thing happened, and the same again. But this third time they saw sunlight beyond the archway, and on reaching it they found themselves in a garden at the center of the house. Here were roses, and lilies, and flowers they had never seen, and also peach trees, apricots and nectarines, with their laden branches neatly tied into place. Clear water whispered through channels in the paving. Birds trilled. Rounding a corner, they found a man intent on his task of lashing a grafted slip into place on a pear tree. He seemed aware of their presence, but unhurriedly finished what he was doing before he turned.

  He was a stout, smooth-faced man with a neat black beard. He wore a plain green turban and a brown jacket with pockets for his gardening tools. He raised his eyebrows, as if he had not expected to see them.

  “We are looking for Faheel,” they said.

  “Well, the door knows its business,” said the man. “I am Faheel.”

  “May we tell you our troubles?” they said. He nodded, so they told him about the wild horsemen from the north, and the Emperor’s armies from the south, and how all the Valley longed to be rid of both and live in peace.

  When they had finished, the man said, “This is a considerable thing you ask. Why should it be worth my while?”

  Dirna lifted the cord from round her neck and handed him the ring. At his touch the cord crumbled into the sand that it had been. The ring seemed to move a little and change on his palm, but before they could see quite how, he closed his fingers round it.

  “How did you come by this?” he said.

  They told him what they had seen happen with Asarta, and what she had told them to do, and to prove that what they said was true they showed him the half of barley loaf that never grew stale or less, and the flask of water that never ran dry.

  He listened, and looked for a while at his closed fist.

  “I do not know what this means,” he said. “For a hundred years I have sought ways to take this from her, and now she sends it to me. Very well. We will use her powers to do what you ask. Take the water and the bread with you and go home. Your house, I think, is close under the mountains. A stream runs past its door.”

  “That is so,” said Reyel.

  “Two full moons after the nights become longer than the days, climb to the place where the snow becomes water. Pour the last of your flask into the source of the stream, and as you do so, sing to the snows.”

  “What shall I sing?” said Reyel.

  “Listen to the stream. It will tell you. And your farm, I think, lies next to the forest. A little way off is a small field with a stone barn at its corner.”

  “That is so,” said Dirna.

  “As soon as the field is plowed after harvest, take what is left of the loaf and crumble it finely along the furrows. Next spring let the field then be harrowed and sown with barley. Set the harvest aside in the barn. When the first snows fall, take two sacks of the barley and leave them in piles beside the lake nearest your farm in the forest. As you do so, sing to the cedar trees.”

  “What shall I sing?” said Dirna.

  “The cedars themselves will tell you. Do the same each full moon after, until the barley is finished and the snows are gone. And again next year, at the same seasons, both of you must sing, and Dirna must set the field aside for barley to leave by the lake in the forest. And so on, year after year. You, Reyel, will have sons, and you, Dirna, daughters, and one of each will hear the voices in the mountain stream, and in the cedars. They in their turn must sing the songs and grow the barley and take it into the forest, and one of their sons or daughters after them, for twenty generations. No power, not even Asarta’s, can hold time still forever, but during those generations your Valley will have peace.

  “And now, since you have asked for nothing for yourselves, take these.” He chose two peaches, which he gave to them. They thanked him and left. They ate the f
ruit for their midday meal, wondering what would happen, but they felt no magical effects. So when they had finished, Reyel threw the stone of his away, thinking that it would never bear fruit as far north as he lived, but Dirna kept hers and planted it at Woodbourne when they returned home, which they did after many more days, but without danger or trouble.

  They found the Valley in turmoil. There had been two more raids by the horsemen, in greater force, and though the men of the Valley had fought them off in the end, it had been at the cost of many lives. And then the four who had been on the search for Asarta had come home and told of their failure. In desperation, knowing that the horsemen would come again, and yet again, the people of the Valley had sent to the Emperor for help. So when Reyel and Dirna returned and told their story, nobody was greatly impressed.

  Nevertheless the two did as they had been told. Two moons after the nights became longer than the days, Reyel climbed up by the stream that ran by his father’s farm and poured the last of his flask into the place where the water dribbled from the snow line. As he did so he listened to the rustle of the infant stream as it tumbled over the boulders. Threaded through the sound he heard a song, one he seemed already to know in his heart, so he straightened and joined in the singing, full voice, and the wind carried the words away and the cliffs echoed them back to him. By the time he had finished, the wind itself had risen almost to a gale, and before he was safely home the first flakes of snow were whirling round him.

  For five days the snow fell on the Valley. Never had there been such snows, with houses often buried to their eaves. Throughout a difficult winter it snowed again and again, so when at last the spring came, the little river that had always run from the mountains to the forest had grown to a wide torrent. Shepherds climbing to the upper pastures discovered why. If the snowfall in the Valley had been heavy, that in the mountains had been monstrous. Where the Emperor’s road used to climb to the col there was now an immense glacier, from whose melting forefront the waters of the river thundered down.