The Ropemaker (20 page)

“We are near the end,” said Alnor. “The waters can feel the sea. Can the man we are looking for still be south of here? There is nothing to come but Goloroth. You are sure, Tilja, about the way the spoon was pointing last time?”

“Yes, quite sure.”

They had checked their direction only the day before, when Ramram had come in sight. It had certainly looked the kind of place where a powerful magician might choose to live, but Axtrig had unmistakably pointed on past it, south. Still south.

“Then he’s got to be in Goloroth,” said Meena.

“I bet he isn’t,” said Tahl.

“Tell you one thing,” said Meena. “I don’t know how Alnor and me are going to get ourselves back out of here. We’re going to stand out like two sore thumbs, the only old folk going north.”

“There will be a way,” said Alnor, with absolute confidence.

That night’s way station was on one of the islands. Despite the steamy heat, braziers were lit all around it and piled with damp reeds whose smoke helped keep the swarming night insects away.

There was a change in the travelers. When they settled down in the dusk, one of the groups started to sing, as usual, but it wasn’t the usual kind of song. Tilja had never heard it before, and didn’t know the language of the words, but the long sad notes told her that it was a song of farewell, a song of ending. Everybody listened, and when it was over there was silence for a while before one of the other groups began its own song in answer. And so on all round the enclosure, some peaceful and resigned, some full of fierce grief for the bright world that the singers were leaving, but all saying good-bye. Tilja lay down to sleep that night with her cheeks wet with tears.

10

The City of Death

My, it’s getting strong here,” Meena muttered as they waited in the still, dense heat outside the walls of Goloroth. She clutched at Calico’s saddle to steady herself as if something invisible had suddenly cannoned against her. Alnor was already holding firmly on to Tahl’s shoulder, and ahead of them an old man staggered and fell, caught in the same gust. Tilja could feel nothing, and that in itself told her that Meena had been talking about magic.

“It’s like a current round a rock,” said Tahl. “It can’t get in, so it swirls all round. I don’t think there’s going to be any magic in Goloroth. I bet those walls are warded, like Talagh.”

“There’s got to be,” said Meena. “
He’s
in there. There’s nowhere else left.”

Only an hour before, when the low brown walls of the City of Death—so much smaller than they had expected—had first come in sight, she and Tilja had slipped aside from the road, in among the reeds, and there for the last time asked their question. Axtrig had still pointed south, straight at Goloroth. And Goloroth lay beside the mouth of the Great River, at the southernmost tip of the Empire. There was nothing but ocean beyond it. Unless Meena was wrong about what Axtrig was telling them, Faheel must be inside those walls.

“Perhaps that’s why he chose it,” said Tahl. “Good place to hide—no one would think of looking for him here.”

They were waiting in one of the lines that had formed to enter the city. There were several gateways in the otherwise blank wall. To either side of them officials sat at long tables. As each pair, old person and child, reached the head of the line they waited until a place was vacant at one of the tables and then went up to be interviewed by the official, who spoke to them briefly, wrote their answers in a ledger, wrote again on a sheet of paper and handed it to the child. The child then turned back and the old person went off alone through the gate. Chairs with carrying handles were brought for those who had difficulty walking.

Even here, under the walls of the City of Death, as everywhere else in the Empire, there were traders looking for a profit, selling food and supplies for the return journey, or offering to buy possessions that the travelers no longer needed, now that they had reached the end. Some of these too were sensitive to the gusts of magic. Tilja could see them automatically adjusting their footing as they carried on with their business.

Slowly the line in front of the gate edged forward. As it did so children came walking back, some solemn, some weeping, some seeming simply dazed that the thing was over and now they had to make their own way home, alone. Meena and the others seemed too preoccupied with fighting the invisible buffetings to notice, but Tilja became more and more anxious as she watched what was happening at the head of the line on their right.

Mostly the procedure went smoothly enough, but every now and then either the old person or the child would say something to the official at the table, and perhaps even begin to argue as the official shook his head, and then two other men would come up and lead the pair aside to say good-bye to each other, and though they might cling to each other and weep, before long the men would part them gently and lead them off in their separate directions. Tilja didn’t see a single child go on into the city. Neither Meena nor Alnor seemed very put out when she told them.

“I’d been wondering about that,” said Meena. “But no point meeting trouble till trouble meets you, I always say.”

“I also have been thinking about this,” said Alnor. “I am less certain than Meena that the man we are seeking is within the city. If he is here, perhaps he will do what we ask, and then help us to return. If so, well and good. If not, I do not care what happens to me. But if he is not here, then we have no choice but to search further on. Who knows what lands may lie south across the ocean? After all that has happened to us, I am fully convinced that our search will be rewarded, and that in the end we will find him. If I have to travel south on a raft, so be it. He cannot be very far. Every time Meena and Tilja have used the spoon, I have felt the pulse of magic more strongly.

“But let us for the moment assume that we find him here, and he is prepared to help us not only leave the city, but find Tahl and Tilja and return to the Valley. We cannot go home without his help. We would be questioned at every stage. So for the moment the best thing would be for you two to wait here for, say, five days, and then start north. Somehow, I do not know how, we will meet again.”

“Best we can do,” said Meena.

“I don’t want to leave you,” said Tilja. Despite Alnor’s confidence, she felt that when in a very short time they parted at the gates of the City of Death, she would be saying good-bye to Meena forever.

“Nor me,” said Tahl. “And anyway I want to see what happens. I mean, after getting this far . . .”

“I want to come with you,” said Tilja, already close to tears.

“Looks like we’ve got no choice,” said Meena.

“We’re still going to get in somehow,” said Tahl.

“What about Axtrig?” said Tilja. “She’s asleep now, but . . .”

“Think she’ll stay that way? Long enough for me to get her in, at least?”

“I don’t know. When I carried her into Talagh . . . you couldn’t have done it then. I only just managed it. But she’s different now. She’s asleep—like she used to be in the Valley. And you got her in past Lananeth’s wards. She didn’t really wake up till you said the name.”

“Well, I’ll still be needing her, risk or no risk. Leave it till last thing, and you put her into my bag, and we’ll just have to hope. . . . Ah, don’t you take it so hard, girl. I’m not like these others, come to the end and ready to go. I’ve had a good life, and I’m thankful for it, but I tell you it’s nothing like over, not yet. Come along then, cheer yourself up and say good-bye like we’d be seeing each other again tomorrow, which very likely we will.”

Uncomforted, Tilja fought with her tears until they reached the front of the line. There she watched Alnor and Meena take their turn at the tables, barely noticing the astonishing fact that there wasn’t anything to pay, no fee, no bribe, no extra, not one drin.

They moved aside to say good-bye, and the way Meena returned Tilja’s parting hug told her that inwardly her grandmother was feeling the same sense of grief and loss. Last thing of all she unstrapped Axtrig from her arm; Meena drew the leather bag out from under her skirt and Tilja slid the old spoon in with the other two. She managed to hold herself together while she said good-bye to Alnor also, and then watched tensely while the two of them helped each other through the gate. As they disappeared a blast of loose magic hurtled by, scattering the waiting lines, but nothing else happened. She led Calico back beside the way the way they had come, suddenly blind with tears.

Someone was speaking to her. A man’s voice.

“Thinking of selling that beast, missie? You’re from the north, by the look of you, so you’ve a long way to go, and she’s nothing like worth her feed all that time. Much better sell her now. I’ll give you a price you won’t be sorry for.”

Tilja could only shake her head, but Tahl butted in, asking questions as usual.

“What do you do with them when you’ve bought them?”

“Wait till I’ve got a string together, then take them up to the market at Ramram.”

“We don’t want to sell her, but how much to look after her for two or three days?”

“Well, now . . . what’s in your mind?”

“We want to see if we can get into the city and be with our grandparents until they actually have to go.”

The horse dealer laughed aloud.

“Some people!” he exclaimed. “No accounting . . . I’d have run a mile to get away from my own grandma. Look, sonny, there’s a lot of rules in the Empire you can get round, one way or another. But there’s one about Goloroth you can’t. Man or beast, once you’re into Goloroth you don’t come out alive, not until you go south yourself on the Great River. . . .”

“That can’t be right,” said Tahl. “I mean, what about that man there? He’s just helped someone in, and now he’s come out again. They’ve got to have someone besides the old people going south, to clean the streets and cook the food and run things. It wouldn’t work, else.”

“That fellow’s not coming out,” said the horse dealer. “No more than just beyond the gates. None of ’em are, who you’re asking about, not until they go south on the rafts themselves. What do you think would’ve happened to you two, supposing your old folk had gone and died on the way here?”

“We’d’ve been sold into slavery,” said Tahl.

“Right—but not until Goloroth had taken its pick of you. It’s in all the dealers’ licenses, they’ve got to send us a quota of the kids they pick up from the way stations. And the reason you haven’t seen gangs of kids on the road alongside of you is that them that run it don’t want it getting about that’s what happens, so they move ’em at night, and ship ’em in this last bit by the river. Hang around down there till after dark, and you’ll see— only I wouldn’t try it. You don’t want to get taken inside yourselves, now, not after what I’ve just told you.”

He bellowed with laughter at the notion. Tahl caught Tilja’s eye and raised his eyebrows. Without thought, she nodded. Anything to be with Meena again, right to whatever end was waiting for them.

“How many days’ feed do you think our horse is worth, supposing we ask you to take care of her for a bit?” asked Tahl.

“Seven, and that’s being generous,” said the horse dealer instantly. “It’s only because I like your faces.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Tahl. “She’s got years of work in her.”

“And a mean eye with it,” said the horse dealer. “Look, three days, and I’ll be on my way to Ramram. You pick her up before I go and you can pay me for what she’s had. Otherwise I’ll take her when I go and when she’s had her seven days I’ll sell her for what I can get. Same with your bedding and stuff if you like.”

Tahl looked at Tilja again, and again she nodded, more soberly now, understanding the danger but at the same time sure in her heart that this was not how the adventure was meant to end.

“All right,” said Tahl. “It’s a deal.”

“You thinking of doing what it sounds like?” said the man.

“Don’t ask,” said Tahl.

“Crazy,” said the horse dealer as he took Calico’s reins, but this time he didn’t laugh.

For days Calico had plodded sullenly south, disgusted with the journey, with the heat, with the food, with everything around her, and clearly blaming it all on Tilja. But now, as soon as she realized what was happening, she gave a wild and piteous whinny and tried to wrench herself away. But the horse dealer was used to difficult animals, and cursed and wrestled her into obedience and led her off, still forlornly whinnying. The sound pierced Tilja through and through. She had never imagined that she actually loved Calico. There couldn’t, she’d felt, have been many less lovable horses in the world. But Calico was her last link with Woodbourne, and she was gone.

Goloroth was built of the mud on which it stood, on a headland at the main mouth of the Great River, whose broad, smooth flood swept out beside it. From a spit of shingle Tilja and Tahl watched huge rafts being floated down on the current. Each of these was actually made of a hundred or more small rafts lashed together. Just below the spit they were poled ashore and untied, and the individual rafts were then floated on down a separate channel into the city.

Much further along Tilja could see a jetty with a line of people waiting, tiny with distance. One after another the small rafts were brought to the landing stage, two or three people were helped to board, and men on the jetty then poled the raft along and shoved it into the main current, which swept it swiftly off so that those on it could die outside the limits of the Empire. Beyond the end of the jetty Tilja could see a never-ending line of rafts dwindling away to the southern horizon.

No one paid any attention to her and Tahl. There were a couple of dozen other children watching from the spit, as if in the hope of one last glimpse of the old person they had brought so far. Indeed, it was such a natural thing to do that there was actually a small food stall on the spit, in case those who were waiting had a few spare drin to spend.

“Goloroth’s tiny,” said Tahl. “They can’t keep them here long, or it would be bursting.”

“A day and a night and then they’re off,” said the woman who ran the food stall. “When did yours go through the gate, then?”

“About an hour ago,” said Tahl.

“They’ll be going south about that time tomorrow, then,” said the woman. “Maybe a bit earlier. It’s not been that busy. You’ll need to sleep out, mind, if you’re staying to watch them go, and the bugs’ll eat you alive, so I’ll sell you a salve. Five drin
.
”

Tahl haggled and got the little phial for four.

“Where will our grandparents be sleeping?” he asked.

“In one of the sheds, great big barns, more like, couple of hundred places in each. They don’t treat ’em too bad, if you’re worrying. They get supper tonight, and breakfast tomorrow with a bit of poppy juice in the water, so by the time they’re floating away they’ve not got that much idea what’s happening to them.”

Tilja had been listening with growing anxiety. Now, for a moment, her heart seemed to stop. Meena and Alnor were in Goloroth to find Faheel, who would then, somehow, get them out again. They had no intention of going south on one of the rafts. But what if they were too woozy with poppy juice to realize what was happening to them? She caught Tahl’s eye. Blank faced, he gave her the slightest of nods. No need to talk about it. They had to get into Goloroth. Tonight.

But all he said was, “We’d better have some food too,” and with a lot of haggling he bought enough for several meals.

The night was heavy and sticky, and barely cooler than the day, but at least it was dark enough, though there would be a moon later. Tilja and Tahl, smeared with the sharp-smelling oil the woman had sold them, lay in shadows a little below the spit from which they had watched earlier. They were as near as they could safely come to the separate channel down which the rafts were floated.