“Now look. This won’t do. The instructions are absolutely clear. You’re just trying—”
“Nonsense. We’ve got to do what’s in the best interests of Larg. Are we going to upset everything for the sake of one madman?”
Maja stopped listening. Something was happening. Not here, but soon. Coming. Distracted by the surface events, Maja had paid no attention to what was happening outside the Council Chamber. It was all there, of course, at the back of her consciousness—behind her the almost empty anteroom, to her left the bustling entrance hall with the river flowing majestically beyond it, opposite and to her right smaller rooms, offices and such, perhaps, but over in the far right corner, though the walls there seemed to be no different from the rest of the room, just paneling and portraits, a small blank patch where everything seemed to stop at the surface of the wall.
By now she’d come across enough wards to be able to tell from the very density of its blankness how powerful this one was, and so guess the immense power of the magic it was warding, here in the very heart of unmagical Larg. And what she had felt, what had drawn her attention, was the first faint beginnings of a change, a weakening of the ward, a faint seeping through of the power beyond it. It was unlike anything she had felt before. She started to shudder.
“Hold me,” she gasped.
Ribek put his arm round her and hugged her firmly to his side, but the shuddering wouldn’t stop. Through it she heard snatches of what was going on. The tinkle of the bell, “…motion is that…as either a product of the witness’s lunacy, or not truly magical activity of the sort referred to…and those against…carried with Proctors Benter and Gald dissenting—”
“Hold it! Hold it!”
The Gate Sergeant’s bellow overwhelmed the shuddering. He was standing by her side with pike gripped in both hands as if he intended to use it.
“Orders is orders!” he yelled above the growing hubbub. “Twelve years, morning after morning, I’ve been reading out that clause Three-a there. Made no sense to me, but when it happened I did what it said, ’cause I know an order when I hear one. Same with what the gentleman there read out of his black book. That’s an order, and you don’t argue it to and fro, you do what it says. So now where’s this Sleeper, and how…?”
Maja raised a juddering arm and pointed at the far corner.
“Right,” cried the Gate Sergeant. “Out of the way there…”
Clamor filled the room, only to be stilled in an instant. A thin whisper came out of the air, faint and dry as the scuttle of a mouse in a hayloft.
“I have woken. Bring the strangers to me.”
“Maja—she can’t stand strong magic. It will kill her,” said Ribek in a low, strained voice. He’d spoken to empty air, but the whisper answered.
“I will protect her.”
The shuddering died away. Ribek lifted her into his arms.
“This way then,” said the Gate Sergeant. “It’s where the lassie was pointing, over in this corner. Stand aside, please.”
Maja could have walked, but she needed to cling to Ribek, to his beautiful ordinariness, although something else, something invisible, was now also holding and protecting her. A door had appeared now in the corner, its carving and gilding matching the other doors in the council chamber. It hadn’t been there when she had looked before, but she sensed nothing from it as the Gate Sergeant tried its handle, found it unlocked, opened it and held it for Ribek to carry her through.
“Do I come too, ma’am?” the Gate Sergeant croaked.
“No need,” said the whisper. “You have done well, Sergeant. My blessing is on you and yours, and on this whole, loved city. Farewell.”
The Gate Sergeant hesitated, turned, stopped, turned back, and forced his voice to function.
“You’re going then, ma’am?”
“Yes. The covenant is broken, and when all is settled I may go.”
The Gate Sergeant saluted and closed the door.
“Phew!” said Ribek.
“You can put me down now,” said Maja. “I’m all right. Someone’s shielding me. Like Jex. Only…” Only so much more powerfully than Jex could have done. He would have been utterly overwhelmed by what now surrounded them.
She looked around. They were in a plain, stone corridor dimly lit by ordinary-looking lanterns with unmagical flames in them. No doors opened off it. They went along it, Ribek moving with short, effortful steps as if he were walking through something much denser than air, and then down a flight of stone steps.
“We’ll be well underground now,” Ribek muttered. “Land slopes up from the river. Ah, this looks like it.”
In front of them the passage ended, with an open door on the right. Maja had never heard him sound so nervous. Like a shy schoolboy, she thought. She herself felt utterly unafraid. There was a kindliness in the shield around her, like the mother’s love she had never really known. Hoping to share some of that with him, she took his hand as they reached the doorway.
“Come in.”
This time the whisper came through human lips, a voice full of human weariness. They crept into the room.
It was a very ordinary space, stone-walled, windowless, unadorned. But for the vaulted roof it might have been a storeroom in a well-built farmhouse. At the same time, Maja recognized that it was extremely old, far older than the Council Chamber they had just left, older even than the ancient walls of Larg, almost as old as the hills. And despite the shielding that wrapped her round, she knew it for a place of power.
There was no furniture in it apart from an iron bedstead. On it a dark green bedspread stitched with what Maja guessed were magical symbols, though she was unable to sense them through her shield. White sheets and pillowcase, looking as if they had been laundered yesterday. On the pillow a skull.
No, not quite. A head next thing to a skull, hairless, the almost transparent skin drawn tight over the fleshless bone, the mouth a slit, invisible lips drawn in between toothless jaws, the eyes clouded over with a gray, bloodshot film.
The slit of a mouth opened, revealing the two thin lines of the lips, so dark a purple they were almost black. They barely moved to release their whisper.
“Welcome. I am the Sleeper, Guardian of Larg. Two hundred years and more I have waited here for you, though under the covenant between myself and the Watchers I could not stir to help you. And now, though they have broken the covenant, there is little I can do. All but the last shreds of my power are gone.
“You, child. What is your name?”
“I’m Maja Urlasdaughter,” whispering too, as if in the presence of the dead. “My friend is Ribek Ortahlson. We come from the Valley.”
“Of course. I knew your ancestors, Meena and Tilja, Alnor and Tahl. With Lananeth I was the earliest of the Ropemaker’s helpers.”
“You’re Zara! You’re in the story we tell in the Valley! You were Lord Kzuva’s magician!”
The corpse-face woke with the ghost of a smile.
“I used that name. When our first tasks were done, and the major demons bound beneath the earth, Lananeth chose to return to natural life and die in human time. I stayed by the Ropemaker’s side.
“By then he had other helpers. His is a restless soul. He fretted to be away from his task, back in the life he knew, exploring and learning. With our agreement he bound us into a covenant that during his absences we should cooperate for the general good of the Empire. Time passed, and all seemed well. Before he last left he told me, and no one else, that he had discovered the gateway into another universe, and there was one extremely difficult task that he could at last accomplish there, and there alone. He could not tell when he would return. I was already old and weary, and asked to be released from my binding and my tasks, and he agreed.
“I chose another course from Lananeth. To preserve what was left of my inward self I came to Larg. Over three years I built a barrier of wards around the city almost as strong as those around the walls of Talagh. That done, I laid my powers aside and surrounded myself with ordinariness, as devoid of magic as I could make it. I healed, and taught others to heal, by ordinary natural means. My old colleagues remained in Talagh, increasing their powers. We waited for the Ropemaker’s return.”