He led Levanter on down the road. At exactly the point where Rocky had shied, Levanter started to do the same, until Ribek halted and turned him.
“Easy, boy, easy,” he said. “You weren’t just copying Rocky again, were you? It’s what Chanad did to you. Come and take him, Maja, and I’ll try on my own.”
He turned, walked twenty paces down the road and came back.
“Didn’t feel a thing,” he said. “Your turn, Maja.”
She had just enough warning—the light fizz of something utterly new to her waking into life, a burning sensation in her arm—to snatch herself back from the invisible barrier. It didn’t mind Saranja, she thought. It was Zald it didn’t like.
The amulet? But it wasn’t magical at all now. Unless the black bead…
There was a large, branched cactus by the road, with a gold ring hanging on one of its vicious thorns and an elaborately decorated head-scarf spread across a flat leaf. Both looked far too good to be left by the roadside. The black bead must do something, only she didn’t know what yet. She hung the amulet on the cactus and tried again.
There was the same fizz, but no pain in her arm, only a feeling that a hand had been placed against her thigh and was pushing her back. Jex? But his magic (if it was magic) was utterly different. She herself couldn’t feel it at all. Nevertheless she took him out of her pouch and hung him on the cactus too. The whole hillside to left and right of her was alive with natural magic, and she could feel the made-magic impulses from Zald behind her, and the permanent light hum that surrounded Benayu, and the rather different ones from the horses, but still nothing at all of that kind from the city below. And nothing from the invisible barrier itself, until she’d passed through it.
Then, instantly, it all was there. And yes indeed, there were Eyes on all the gates, including one set to guard the whole width of the river where it flowed between two massive bastions toward the sea. The Eyes were as old as the walls themselves, and that was very old. But apart from them, nothing man-made. All the natural magics were still there, speaking to her as clearly as those around her on the hillside, the stones of the walls, the majestic, calm flow of the river, the buzz of the citizens’ lives, and much more generally, coming from the whole city below, a sense of ease and freedom that she hadn’t felt anywhere else in the Empire. But still no made magic at all apart, perhaps, from one strange, dead patch close to the nearer bank of the river. A ward inside the immensely powerful ward, or whatever it was that closed the city round? What was the use of that?
“Watchers, Maja?” called Ribek’s voice from behind her.
She heaved herself back to the hillside and returned to the others. As she crossed the invisible line the small sendings from the city below vanished in the blink of an eye. She picked up Jex and the amulet as she passed the cactus.
“No,” she said. “They aren’t here. They’ve not been, not for a long while. A very long while. They don’t do magic here. It’s like the Valley.”
They stood and gazed out over the mysterious city. Behind them, where the road crested the hill, a hoof rattled against loose gravel. They turned. A stout, elderly man was leading two laden mules down the hill.
“Trouble?” he said. “Something stopping you, right? Must be carrying stuff with powers in it—charms and such. Provosts won’t allow that. Best leave it here, pick it up when you come back. He’d be a bloody fool as touched it if it didn’t belong to him. Cactus would rip him to bits. I’ll show you.”
While he’d been talking he’d rolled up his sleeve and removed an intricately plaited armband and settled it into a crook of the cactus.
“Missus has me wear that to keep me faithful,” he explained. “Works a treat, too. Never want to look at another woman while I’ve got it on. Not my fault, I tell her, if I’ve got to leave it behind while I take the wool down to the market, is it? Either that or starve, I say, and you wouldn’t fancy starving.”
“Trouble is we’re not coming back,” said Ribek. “We’re going on through.”
“That case, one of you’d better go down to the city, hire yourself a pass-box at the gate—costs a bit, mind you—bring it back and put your stuff in it. It’ll seal itself shut minute you’re through the barrier, and won’t open again till you’re out the far side. You’ll need to get a move on. Gate closes, hour after sunset.”
“There’s no way round then?”
“Not worth thinking about. Easy enough this side far as the river. Back up the hill, right, and right again at the third real road, then down—take you a bit over half a day to reach the river. Then you’ve got to find a boat, take you over to the West Highway.”
“Surely there’s a ferry,” said Ribek.
“Provosts won’t have it. They want everything going through Larg. But suppose you’re lucky, beyond the river it’s still three, four times further before you reach the North Highway beyond the marshes, and that’s all desert. Spots may look green enough from here after the rains, but that’s all gone into the ground. No surface water. No way you can carry water enough for the horses. And there’s vicious snakes, and little black scorpions—one sting and you’re dead. You’d have to get some of the desert folk for guides. They’re weird—not like us, but they can find water anywhere, only they won’t do it for chance-come strangers. Worse yet going east. You’ll never get your horses down the cliff, you’ve got to find a boat again, and then it’s all marsh and bog crocodiles, and then desert again to the north. Can’t be done.”
“Well, thanks,” said Ribek. “We’re going to have to think. Don’t wait for us. Best of luck at the market, and tell your wife she married a good man.”
“Long as I’m wearing my armband she did,” said the man, and led his mules on down the hill.
“Brute,” muttered Saranja. “You too, Ribek, encouraging him. I hate men.”
“Just backchat,” said Ribek, unabashed. “Bet you he’s as fond of his wife as the next man, and doesn’t do anything more than glance at the city wenches.”
“Wenches,” snarled Saranja. “Oh, forget it. We’re not going to make it down to the city and back up with this pass-box thing and down again before the gate closes. Let’s think a bit. They don’t want magic stuff brought in. We can put Zald and Maja’s amulet and Jex, I suppose, in the pass-box—sounds as if she won’t need them again till we’re through. But that’s no help with Benayu and the horses. And you’d never get three horses across a desert—they need a lot of water. Unless Benayu can do something about that.”
“I might be able to,” said Benayu. “Water’s tricky stuff—it’s a bit different—but if the desert people can find it I should be able to work it out. And I daresay I can undo whatever’s been done to Pogo and Levanter, so you could take them through the city. Then it’d be only me and Rocky to find our way round. That’s a lot of complicated stuff to screen, and I don’t know how much of it Jex is up to absorbing. Maja?”
“I think he’ll say yes. He’s getting a lot stronger. But we’re going to have to spend the night out here anyway, aren’t we? Why don’t we wait and see if he says anything?”
“Sounds like the best we can do,” said Ribek. “And I could go down and see if the river’s got anything to tell me, supposing it can, and get a bit of fresh food, and maybe I can hire a mule and bring out some fodder for the horses, and then we’ll all sleep on it and see what Jex says.”
“Can I come too?” said Maja. “I like it the other side.”
It was wonderfully enjoyable to walk down the long slope with the naked hillside on either side and the town below. The steady, quiet, unconscious sending from rock and plant and creature blended with more pungent and complex human magics to form a balanced and harmonious whole, like the glorious rich dumpling stews Maja’s aunt used to make for special occasions at Woodbourne, which even the permanent rancor and tension of those who ate the food could do nothing to spoil.