They hurried back through almost empty streets the way they had come. It was late evening by the time they reached the gate. The Gate Sergeant left them under the arch while he went into the guardroom for the pass-box. By now Maja felt deathly tired from the magical batterings in the Council Chamber on top of the long day on the road. She hoped the horses would come. She doubted if she could make it up the hill on her own feet.
They waited. The howl of the wind strengthened, for Azarod himself now rode in it. She could feel Zara’s great ward vibrate to his violence. The Gate Sergeant seemed to be taking a long time. A thought struck her.
“Can you ride with only one hand, Ribek?” she said.
“Walk if I have to. Where’ve they all got to?”
Almost as he spoke the horses arrived, a wizened old groom riding one and leading the other. He was wearing a heavy oiled cloak and a wide-brimmed hat tied under the chin. His vast white moustache was pretty well all she could see of his face.
“Right you are, sir,” he said. “Wild weather already, and it’ll be worse up the hill. Hoist the little lady up behind me and we’ll be off.”
“There’s a problem,” said Ribek, holding his arm across his body as if he’d hurt it. “I’m not much of a horseman, and I’ve only got one hand I can use.”
“That’s all right, sir. I’ll take the reins and you can hang on to her mane. There’s a mounting block over there.”
Before they could move the Gate Sergeant returned with the pass-box and a couple more oiled cloaks like the groom’s. Maja’s was hugely too large for her, of course.
“Smallest I could find in the store,” he said, as he parceled her up in it and belted it round her. “It’s going to be wet up there on that hill.”
He lifted her up and she put her arms round the old groom. He smelled of stables. It was strange not to be riding with Ribek, but it wouldn’t have made sense. They moved to the block to let Ribek mount, and then on toward the outer archway.
“Good luck,” said the Gate Sergeant. “See you in the morning, supposing any of us are alive still.”
“Good luck to you, and thank you,” said Ribek.
The gale seemed to be blowing from the north, so for a little while they were still in the lee of the city wall, but the moment they were off the bridge it slammed into their backs, hissing and shrieking. Even a winter storm at Woodbourne had been nothing like this. If it had been from any other direction it would have blasted them off the road or forced them back. As it was, it seemed to be driving them on up the hill.
Despite that, the horses at once half shied. The groom cursed them and wrenched at the reins and drove them on. The riders bent themselves low over their necks to lessen the pressure on both themselves and the horses. Maja laid her right cheek against the groom’s greasy cloak and peered out to sea.
Night was coming early under the heavy clouds, but there was no need of moon or stars. Bolt after bolt of lightning slammed down into the waves, adding their thunder to the roar of the wind. Their glare marked the center of the storm, whirling the gale around it as it marched toward the land. It wasn’t as large as she’d have expected for so huge a storm, but a concentrated swirl of utter blackness in the mottled dark of the hurling clouds. The lightning dazzled down from its fringes. Its come-and-go brilliance blinded her vision and made the dark yet darker until it flashed again, but behind and beyond that center there seemed to be a different kind of darkness, a huge, squat column rising from the sea. She couldn’t be sure.
Rain came, sudden and dense, driven horizontal on the wind, rattling against their cloaks, sending the horses skittering sideways with the shock of it. Again the groom mastered them, coaxing and cursing. They started to climb. Now we’re for it, thought Maja.
But no. If anything the wind seemed to ease slightly. It was coming more from the left, too, or perhaps the road had turned that way, making it seem so. They plodded on, and yes, though the road began to twist to and fro to lessen the incline as the hill became steeper, checking her bearings with what she could see of the city below, and the sea and headland on her left, she thought she was right. Of course. The wind was only part of the colossal swirl that circled that dark center out to sea, and the line of the road was taking them more and more across the curve of it.
It was still a mighty gale, wherever it blew, but its power continued to lessen, and she felt that they were climbing not only out across it but also up out of it. And now when she looked out to sea, she was seeing slantwise to its course, so that the dark column she thought she had glimpsed was no longer directly behind the storm center and its blinding lightning, but a little to one side.
Yes, there was something there, something solid, not a plain column but a vast, vaguely human shape with a great, snouted, neckless head and something like arms. Between its hands, or paws, it held a long black rod which it brandished toward the storm. A lash of lightning sprang from its tip, shot out above the surface of the sea, curled around the storm center and whipped it round, as a child might do with a whipping-top, faster yet and faster, and at the same time drove it toward Larg.
The churning waves around the center began to shape themselves into a line of swirling waterspouts, taller than the tallest trees, which separated from the steady, implacable march of the main storm and charged toward the shore, all seeming to aim for the point where the two banks of the debouching river funneled in and became the outer harbor.
They never reached it. Through the weakened ward she sensed an invisible wave of a different order of magic sweep out from the city to meet the waterspouts near the center of their line and break it apart, and send the ones on either side crashing into their neighbors, and those into the ones beyond, and so on all the way down the line, until they had all collapsed into a tremendous flurry of foam, a white wave which spread outside sideways, lost direction and spent itself uselessly against headland and marsh.
Maja heard Ribek’s shout behind her.
“Holding her own against the little ’uns. Big one’s something else. We’re not going to make it. Horses go any faster?”
“Doing their best already, sir.”
“Let me down.”
Maja twisted her head to see him slip neatly from his saddle, wriggle out of his waterproof and start to run up the hill, awkwardly, with his arm clenched to his midriff and leaning sideways into the buffeting gale.
He vanished into the darkness ahead. The horses plodded on. The storm marched forward, seemed to falter, gathered itself, and came on. Faltered, and came on. Faltered longer, but still came on. It was now desperately near.
“Something happening up ahead,” yelled the groom. “That where we’re heading for, missy?”
She had already sensed the change, urgent and powerful, despite the barrier. With an effort she leaned sideways to peer past him. A pale light glowed up ahead, but everything round it was darkness. A blink of lightning showed her a twisted tree by the roadside. That was where Ribek had turned back, testing what happened to him beyond the barrier. The appalling pressure increased…the cactus…Jex and her amulet…they couldn’t be far…
“Let me down! Let me down!” she yelled.
Without waiting for him to stop she flung herself off the horse’s back, sprawled, scrambled up, gathered the heavy folds of her waterproof up around her and staggered on up the road, driving her feeble legs on and up…another step…another…A hand gripped her arm, helping her on.
“Almost there, missy,” grunted the groom. “Look at that, now!”
The light was moving. Against its glow the cactus stood for a moment, a black, gesturing shape which vanished as the light passed on.