He looked at her for a moment and nodded.
“Yes,” he said pompously. “You were with them. Five months back you came with”—he studied a clay tablet—“Qualif and his wife to the Lord Kzuva’s house in Talagh.”
Tilja recognized him now.
“That’s right,” she said. “You let us in.”
“Where is your friend?”
“They’re just there.”
The other three had seen what was happening. Tahl came hurrying back.
“Three?” said the man. “Yes, this boy, and the horse, but . . . there was a blind man and a lame old woman. You were taking them to Goloroth, I was told. Who are these others?”
“They’re our cousins,” said Tahl. “They went south before we did.”
“I’ve no instructions about them,” said the messenger.
“What do you want?” asked Tahl. “We’re in a hurry. We’ve got an urgent message for the Lady Lananeth.”
“She’s the one sent for you. She’s at the Lord Kzuva’s house. Your cousins can carry on home.”
“She’ll want to see them too,” said Tahl calmly. “They’re the ones with the message.”
The messenger hemmed and hawed, for the sake of it, but then, to Tilja’s relief, nodded.
The side road along which the messenger eventually led them dipped into a wooded valley with a sluggish river winding through. They came round a bend and there was the Lord Kzuva’s house. They stopped in their tracks and stared.
“My, that’s something!” Meena gasped.
Tilja thought it was the most beautiful building she had ever seen, not a house but a small palace, intricately varied and ornate, built on a series of massive bridges across the river. Workmen were busy adding another story to a structure of bamboo scaffolding that already rose well above the tallest pinnacle. Others at the center of the network seemed to be building some kind of column.
“What’s that for?” said Tahl.
“It is His Lordship’s pleasure,” said the messenger. “That is reason enough.”
He led them down to the entrance, where a groom came and took Calico. Then he showed them into a pleasant room with cushions strewn around and fruit and drinks on small tables for those waiting to see the Lord Kzuva or his officials. They could hear the river whispering below them, and feel its coolness through the stone floor.
There were a dozen other people already there, but they had hardly settled before the messenger came back and beckoned them out. This time he led them through several grand apartments and up a noble flight of stairs to another, larger room. Here a whole crowd of people were waiting to do their business. The messenger whispered to the official sitting by the doorway, nodded a haughty good-bye, and left.
Tilja assumed that this time they’d have to take their turn, but the official glanced at them, checked a list, glanced up frowning, shrugged bafflement, rose and led them not to the handsome doorway opposite the entrance but to a little door in the side wall, where he showed them into a much smaller room and told them to wait. They stood around uneasily until the hangings on the far wall stirred and two women slipped quietly in.
For a moment Tilja didn’t recognize either of them. Then she saw that the shorter one was Lananeth, and from that made the leap to seeing that the other was Zara, the Lord Kzuva’s magician. But the change in them both was shocking. There was that unnatural stillness and smoothness about them which all powerful magicians seemed to have—that look of a statue brought to life. Zara had already had something of it when they had met her in her warded room in Talagh, but then there had still been something human about her. Now even their smiles of greeting were stone smiles. The change was far greater in Lananeth.
“Our Lord Kzuva bids you welcome,” said Zara.
“How did you know we were coming?” asked Tahl.
“The forest told us. It has no language, but we could sense it struggling to master someone who was draining its power away, and guessed that could only be Tilja. But we were not expecting . . . you two are Alnor and Meena?”
“That’s us,” said Meena. “Fa . . . I think it’s all right to say his name now—anyway Lananeth knows it—Faheel gave us a bunch of grapes to eat to make us like this, so we could travel home with the other two and nobody’d ask any questions. And very nice too, it’s been.”
Exactly together, as if moving in time to unheard music, Zara and Lananeth stepped forward and each raised a hand and held it close beside Meena’s cheek, then Alnor’s, and after a moment or two, still exactly together, lowered their hands and backed away.
“We do not know how this is done,” said Zara. “You are in our warded room, where we are at our strongest, and still we cannot feel that you are not just what you seem.”
“We are, too,” said Meena. “Tilja touching us doesn’t make any difference, either.”
“He has changed time, not you. Somehow he has brought you out of your past and put you into this time.”
“Like Asarta undoing her years in the story, you mean?” said Tahl. “After she’d given the ring to Reyel and Dirna to take to Faheel?”
The magicians lost their smiles. Tilja gulped with sudden tension. She’d never imagined that the existence of the ring might slip into a conversation like this, and anyway she couldn’t have warned the others about it without telling them more than she dared. Tahl was staring at her, frowning. She shook her head in warning. He nodded and looked away.
“Ring?” said Zara softly. “Indeed, there was once a ring, but Asarta took it . . . or so it is said. Perhaps you should tell us the story. And your own.”
The four from the Valley looked at each other. Tilja could sense that the other three were feeling her unease by now. Alnor took charge.
“I think you’d better tell us something first,” he said aggressively. “How do we know you’re the people we met before? You’ve changed. You’re doing everything exactly together. Lananeth has not said a word. And you keep talking about ‘we’ as if Lananeth had not got a mind of her own. Is she in your power? Or are you both in someone else’s?”
The two smiles returned, but now Tilja was certain she didn’t believe them.
“We are one, joined,” said Zara. “It became necessary when His Lordship asked us to wake the forest. This was a very big undertaking, far too great for either one of us alone. Joined, it was just within our powers, but the effort itself changed us, wove us into each other’s mind, so now, though our bodies have separate existences, our thoughts are one thought.”
“And what’s happened to your feelings, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Meena. “Or haven’t you got any, anymore? All the thoughts you’ll ever think, they aren’t any good without feelings.”
Still with the same stony smiles the two women gently shook their heads. Tilja had been unhappily watching Lananeth while the magician spoke, looking for some hint of the strong and friendly human who had welcomed them to Ellion’s house. For a moment that Lananeth seemed to be there, a sad and desperate glimmer in the depths of the calm brown eyes. Yes, she was sure. Quite deliberately Tilja took a pace forward, put an arm round Lananeth’s shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.
The numbness exploded through her. Lananeth juddered and went rigid. Zara too, standing beside her. Zara became a sort of thick mist, which became taller and thinner, then solidified, and now where Zara had been, a man was standing, tall and skinny, dressed all in black. His eyes had no pupils. They were the color of ice. They blazed fury, but he too, for the moment, was locked rigid. Before he could break the spell Tilja reached out and took him by the wrist.
He was strong, far stronger than Dorn. Though she had taken him by surprise, he fought her with his fury, gathering it together, building it into a focused power.
She took Lananeth’s wrist in her other hand and with a huge effort closed her mind, shutting out the man, the fury, and searching into her own depths to find her central, secret lake among the mountains. Now the three of them stood on its shore. But its surface was torn by a mountain storm. Unheard winds shrieked between the snow peaks. The whole slope opposite was covered by the menacing dark shadow of the man, with Lananeth’s and Tilja’s shadows small beside it. The shadows were not thrown by any sun. There was none. Never again. No sun.
Still grasping both wrists, Tilja stepped into the raging water. There was no bottom. She sank, dragging the other two with her. Down they went, and down. The man melted into the water, dwindling away. She looked up and in the dim, watery light saw it was Zara and Lananeth she was dragging behind her. She could live in this water as long as she chose, but they would drown. She let go of their wrists, put an arm round each of them, and simply by choosing to do so rose to the surface, pulled them out and laid them on the grass. The storm was gone. Sunlight glittered off the glaciers, reflected in the barely rippled surface of the lake. Reluctantly she turned away and came back into the outer world.
She was in the warded room in Lord Kzuva’s castle, holding Lananeth and Zara by the wrists. A black-clad body lay at their feet. Tilja could see the back of the head, an old, bald cranium, yellow and blotched and shiny. When she let go of the two magicians they both crumpled to the floor.
All this in an instant. Meena, Tahl and Alnor were still picking themselves up after being buffeted aside, as if by an explosion in the middle of the room, when, from somewhere outside, came a tremendous series of crashes, dwindling away amid the yells of human voices.
Tilja barely heard them. Shuddering with exhaustion and relief, she too collapsed and buried her face in her hands, gasping for air.
When she straightened and looked around, Meena was kneeling beside her, holding her close, Alnor was crouching and feeling for Lananeth’s pulse, and Tahl was staring at the body on the floor. Outside the room the tone of the voices had changed from alarmed shouts to bellows of command.
“She’s alive, at least,” Alnor whispered. “Wait. She’s coming round.”
“Grab hold of Til in case she tries something,” said Tahl.
Huddling together, the four of them watched the magician slowly straighten her body and lie still for a little. She groaned and pushed herself up onto her elbow, shook her head slowly from side to side and gazed round the room.
Seeing Zara’s body, she jerked herself to her knees, crawled across and laid her hand against the ashen cheek. With a gasp Zara sat up, and they helped each other to their feet. They stood for some while face to face, holding hands and studying each other in silence, like old friends who haven’t met for many years. They were both very pale, but most of the stony look was gone.
At last Zara breathed a quivering sigh and smiled weakly.
“Are you much hurt, my dear?” she whispered.
“The worst pain I have ever known,” said Lananeth. “But it’s gone now. And you?”
“The same.”
They fell silent, still looking at each other with the same amazed relief.
“But what happened?” asked Tahl. “Who is this, anyway? One moment he wasn’t there, then he was, and then . . . Did Tilja do all that?”
“I do not know,” said Lananeth. “I remember nothing since I came into this room.”
“Nor I,” said Zara. “Only the pain. Did you do this, child? Did you have any idea what you were doing?”
Tilja pulled herself together.
“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I ought to have asked. I—I just couldn’t stand it like it was. It was all wrong.”
“Yes, it was wrong,” said Lananeth. “I fought against it still, but Varti was far too strong for me.”
She gestured toward the body on the floor.
“This was Varti,” said Zara. “He was North, most powerful of all the Watchers. My Lord Kzuva asked Lananeth to try to close the hills against all comers, which was beyond her powers, so she came to me for help. It was still too much for us, far too much. Then Varti came. He told us that if we all three joined our powers then we could do as My Lord asked. He had good reason, he said. There was a powerful, unknown magician at work in the Empire. This man had first destroyed the towers of the Watchers, and half the Watchers with them, and was now hunting down the rest. Varti hoped to close the hills against this enemy. So we agreed and between us we closed the hills, but Varti then possessed us, as you saw, until Tilja set us free. . . .What is happening?”
Tilja realized that the sounds from the antechamber, and beyond, had quietened. Now they broke out again in a wailing cry that rose and fell in slow pulses. Somewhere a deep gong began to sound, keeping time with the wailing. Lananeth had her hand to her mouth and a look of horror on her face. Zara was standing rigid. Her eyes were dull as pebbles. Then the light came back into them and she bowed her head.
“My Lord was building a tower for Varti, thinking it was for us,” she said somberly. “It has fallen. My Lord was beneath it.”
They stared at each other in dismay.
“We shall be blamed,” whispered Lananeth. “Who else is there, if it was magic that destroyed the tower?”
Zara nodded somberly.
“We must go at once,” she said. “You four also. Come.”
She led the way out by a small door behind the hangings through which she and Lananeth had entered.
By the time they reached the bottom of the narrow stair that led down from the warded room, both magicians looked like menials of some sort, with different faces and wearing coarse clothing. Zara led them out through back passages. None of the frightened servants hurrying by questioned or even noticed them. They found the stables by the squeals of panicking horses. Some of them had broken loose from their stalls and were cantering wildly round the stable courtyard. Zara quietened them with a gesture, allowing Tilja to enter the stables, find Calico and lead her out. Tilja returned to the courtyard to find that the two magicians had each chosen one of the loose horses, which was now standing placidly beside her, unharnessed and unbridled. When Zara led the way on they followed as if on invisible halters.
As they crossed the bridge Tilja halted to fiddle with her shoe, sure that Tahl would stay with her.
“Whatever you’ve guessed, don’t tell the other two,” she whispered. “I think Lananeth and Zara have forgotten. Try not to think about it. It’s dangerous, anyone knowing, even you.”