Shakily she climbed to her feet. Everything was pitch dark after the glare, but the others must have hidden in the rut, as she had, because now she heard Ribek’s voice asking if she was all right, and a moment later Saranja’s furious yell.
“Benayu! Benayu! Wake up! Pull yourself together! Do something! You’re our only hope!”
And then the double crack of flesh on flesh as she slapped him twice on the cheek, and Benayu’s dazed voice.
“What…? Where…?”
“The dragon! It’ll get us next time! Do something! You’re our only hope, you and your stupid magic!”
“Oh…Sorry…Right.”
“Where’s the dragon, Maja?”
That was Ribek. She tried to concentrate.
“It’s starting to turn…It’s not coming back! Yes, it is, only it’s circling so it can come down the lane next time.”
And it would be no use hiding in the rut again when it did. The flaming breath would scour the floor of the lane and they’d all four of them be ashes where they lay.
“Right,” said Benayu’s voice, firmer now. “I think…yes…Tell me what it’s up to, Maja.”
She felt his magic beginning to gather itself, and further off the dragon nearing and nearing, fighting all the while to hold its course through the screaming wind. Steady-voiced, she called out the news of its approach. It was at the top of the lane, plunging down the slope…any moment now…
She reeled as Benayu’s magic intensified, but Jex’s shield caught her, steadied her. The magic built to a single intense, directed pressure, not against the dragon, but…
The wind fell suddenly still, as if the whole world held its breath for the encounter…
And now they could all four see the monster against the glare from Tarshu, hear the booming bell-beat of its wing strokes, watch as it lowered its head for the blast that would roast them alive…
Benayu withdrew his powers and at once the tempest they had been holding back for those short moments screamed in again, its fury doubled, tripled in intensity by being so pent. It snatched the dragon from its course and whirled it away like a blown leaf. Maja felt its powers flare up and vanish as it was smashed into something unseen.
Jex’s shield enveloped her in a bubble of calm.
Dazed by the sudden come-and-go of those immense forces, she needed a moment to gather her wits. Benayu lay in a huddle on the floor of the lane, with Ribek stooping over him. Now he knelt, expertly hoisted Benayu across his shoulders as if his inert form had been one of the heavy grain sacks in his mill, and rose.
Shakily they hurried on down the lane while the tempest roared inland. When they reached the mill they found that half its roof had been ripped clean off, and beams had fallen across the walkway by which they had come. As they worked to clear them, the horses came nervously into the mill yard, their panic-flight halted by the river. Levanter must have stayed with Rocky, as usual, and Pogo then found and joined them. Now, stumbling upon their human friends, and being offered a feed of grain from the store bins, they seemed to decide that sanity had been restored to the world. While they ate, Ribek and Maja rifled the larder for still-edible food. Ribek heaved Benayu across Levanter’s back, and then, weary beyond belief, they crossed the river, worked their way back along beside the splintered woods until they came to a stretch which the tempest had left comparatively undamaged, and there slept dreamless under the trees.
PART TWO
BARDA
CHAPTER
7
“Maja.”
The voice in Maja’s head seemed as level and toneless as ever, but somehow different, as though the rock from which it came was no longer granite, but something lighter and less enduring
“Oh, Jex, thank you! We’d all four be dead without you.”
“No thanks are due. I in my turn would be dead without you. In human terms I am now convalescent. Until I regain the true balance between my two modes of existence I will return to the form of a pendant that you can wear around your neck.”
“But it will be you now, not just an, um, extension of yourself?”
“Yes, I will be fully there, but protected from excessive magical input. Unfortunately that will also mean that I am unable to protect you from it. However, I will automatically be shielding you from everyday magic more effectively than I have recently been able to do.”
“I’m getting stronger, I think. I like being able to feel what’s going on, most of the time.”
“Wear me against your skin and I will give you all the protection I can. With clothing in between I will give you less. If you do not wish for my help at all, put me in your pouch. One more thing. I still cannot act with confidence in the material world of either of my existences, so except in an emergency I will continue to speak to you in dreams.”
“This isn’t a dream. You make dreams up, though you don’t realize that’s what you’re doing. This is happening while I’m asleep, but it’s real.”
“Yes it is real, just as the danger we are in is real. Two dangers. First, since I was unable to prevent it, the Watchers must surely have been aware of what Benayu did last night. They still have to recover from the major effort of summoning their storm, and then for a day or two they will be fully occupied in repairing their protective web over Tarshu. We must be far from here before they start to look for us, leaving no magical trail. Benayu would leave such a trail, faint but not too faint for a good magician to detect if one was to come looking, as one surely will. So would Zald-im-Zald and Rocky….”
“What about the other two? Chanad did things to Levanter and Pogo….”
“Chanad?”
“A magician we met on the way. She was all right. She said she was the last of the Andarit. She—”
“Tell me later. I cannot keep contact with you very long. The horses. Yes, probably they will now leave a faint trail. But if you and I follow last of all I will absorb all such traces. That is the best we can do.
“Secondly, I myself am a source of danger. Another creature of my kind may by an error of judgment have betrayed our presence in this universe to the Watchers, so…”
He paused for two or three seconds, and went on as if there’d been no interruption.
“…if that is the case, they would be hunting us by every means at their disposal, but for their preoccupation with repelling the Pirates. If they were to find me, they would find you. As it is, all of my kind are in hiding for the time being and dare not communicate with each other as we are used to doing, so I can no longer bring news of the Watchers’ activities. We will henceforth have to guess. Do you understand?”
“Yes. But I still want to say thank you. And I’m glad it’s me you can talk to.”
“I reciprocate your gladness.”
“Wait. Now we’ve got to look for the Ropemaker. How do we do it? Where do we start?”
“I had intended to ask among my friends. I cannot now do that. I will consider the matter.”
She slid back into dreamlessness until something began to snag at her sleeping mind. She woke, and knew it was something Jex had said. Just one word. She had a vague feeling it was something she wasn’t supposed to know. He’d made a mistake, hesitated, and then gone on. Perhaps she’d remember in the morning, when she was telling the others. She lay for a while looking up at a few stars shining through a gap in the branches overhead, and wasn’t aware of falling asleep again, but she must have done, because now the trees were gone and the sky was full of stars, far, far too many of them.