Round and round, round and round, round and round as she thought it out. She found that she’d unconsciously started to time her circlings so that she was facing the egg each time the light crossed its surface. Round and round, round and round, round and round. She couldn’t stop. She wasn’t doing it. The light was doing it to her. Round and round…
It was like…like…
Something horrible. Some old nightmare, just beginning…
No, not a nightmare. Real.
She and Ribek, Saranja and Benayu, all walking in step along the Highway north of Larg, because the demon was forcing them to do it.
But the light wasn’t horrible. It was trapped too in the egg, going round and round and round because it had to, making her do the same not because it wanted to but just because it was there.
The Ropemaker, trapped, helpless, in his own egg.
She didn’t need to think what to do next. She drew a deep breath of the strange seven-dimensional air into her lungs, raised her muzzle, and bayed.
“RRAGHnng! dhAGH! dtAGH!”
If she’d been expecting anything it was that the eggshell would shatter, but instead the light began to spin faster and faster round its surface and the comet-tail remained behind it for longer and longer, covering the surface in a net of lines that joined together into an intricate dense mesh. A moment or two and the last gaps closed and she was staring at a shell of glowing light…
The egg hung there, bright enough to cast dense, wrong-shaped shadows over the landscape of non-things as far as her dim dog-eyes could see. And at the same time the compelled rhythm of her own circlings was broken and she could swing round to the far side of the egg and watch the trail she had followed streaming into it, with all its immense power.
Gone.
Once more she circled the egg, watching and waiting.
Relief flooded through her as a voice spoke in her head, quiet but slightly gravelly, and jerky with suppressed energy.
“Thanks. Been waiting for that. Didn’t even know I was waiting. Knew it was a risk, of course. You found my bit of rope, I take it.”
“Yes. In the oyster-beds.”
“And you’ll be one of the Urlasdaughter lot?”
“I’m Maja. But I’ve got my cousin Saranja with us—she can hear the cedars—and Ribek Ortahlson.”
“You can’t have got here on your own, though. All three from the Valley. No magic there.”
“Benayu did all the magic. He made the eggs.”
“Let’s have a look…Hm. Nice bit of work. Eggs, you said?”
“There’s two of them, this one and a big one. It’s near the touching point on Angel Isle. It’s too big to move around because he had to bring all four of us and the horses to get us away from the Watchers. They were trying to get through the touching point when I left.”
“Can’t have that. Better get back. Tell me the rest on the way. You’re inside that egg, but you’re in control of the dog, right? Did the same sort of thing myself. Used one of the local life-forms. Must’ve got tired of waiting and pushed off. Dog pick this egg up in his mouth, d’you think, if I give him something to get hold of? Doesn’t weigh anything. Tell me the rest on the way. Now…”
A small area right at the top of the globe sprouted into a mass of bright threads that immediately started to plait themselves together as they rose and became a glowing rope about as thick as her forefinger. When it was a foot or so long it stopped growing, looped itself over and wove its tip neatly into itself about halfway down to make a carrying handle.
“Try that, then.”
She stopped circling, swooped in, snatched up the loop in her jaws and swung away with the Ropemaker’s egg dangling in front of the one that doll-Maja was in.
Where now? This time there was no trail to follow through this meaningless, no-thing world.
“Home, boy. Find Benayu.”
Good old Sponge, she thought, as the strong, confident wingbeats hurtled them though the meaningless maze.
“This Benayu fellow. How old? Since my time, but could still be getting on a bit.”
“No, he’s only fourteen or fifteen.”
“Hm! Would’ve been way beyond me when I was that age. Tricky business, dimensions.”
“His uncle Fodaro—he’s dead now—the Watchers killed him—he worked out the equations. Benayu says he still doesn’t understand them, but he knows how to use them.”
“Ah. Thought there’d got to be something like that. Did it trial and error, myself. Not much room for error, mind you. Right. I’ve got it about the Watchers. Anything else going on?”
“Well, there’s the Pirates, I suppose.”
“Always been pirates. What’s new about this lot?”
She was describing the attack on Tarshu when the first blast hit her. One moment she was back in imagination on that bleak hillside, watching the monstrous airboat hovering over the burning city while the lightning played around it, and the next she was tumbling helpless through darkness.
Something caught her, held her, shielded her round, beat her wings for her while she gathered herself together. She was aware of a close presence, inside Sponge’s body now, sharing it with her, looking out through the same eyes, seeing the whole muddled scene ahead lit by pulsing and flaring light, brighter even than the glare over Tarshu.
“Sorry. Strong magic does that to me unless I’m shielded. I wasn’t, because I had to follow the trail to find you.”
“Right. Better see to that for you. Lot of stuff going to be happening in a minute or two. You take over now?”
“All right. Do you think they’ve broken through?”
“Looks like it. Should be there in time. Speeded him up a bit. Nice dog.”
The presence withdrew. As before she let Sponge’s own instincts and perception pick their way. He was indeed now flying at unbelievable speed, banking almost vertical as he swung and curved his way through the backward-racing non-things, with wingbeats so rapid that they became a blur, like those of a flying insect. And now they were lit not only by the nearing glare of the landscape ahead but by a steadily brightening glow that could only come from the Ropemaker’s egg, dangling below her head.
“Up now. Get above them.”
Obediently she climbed into the magical glare, and now from this height she could see Benayu’s egg, flaming like a furnace, with all the strange vague colors that had swirled through it and gone at the Watchers’ earlier assaults. Around it, circling it completely, lay the body of an immense dark dragon. As Maja watched, it raised its head, and breathed out a single blast of oily orange fire, overwhelming the egg’s pale flames and totally engulfing it.
“Down. Straight through. While they’re busy.”
Three powerful beats of her wings drove her into the dive, and then she folded them and plunged like a stooping hawk into the heart of the inferno. It had barely begun to singe her fur before she was through and frantically buffeting the air to brake their onrush.
They hit the turf with a thump. The egg she had been carrying in her mouth detached itself, rolled across the turf to where the little rope manikin stood against the rim of the pool, and exploded into human form.
She felt she had known him all her life, though she had seen him only once before, and only in a dream, and then just as a shadowy shape beyond a magical doorway—tall, oddly gawky, with what at first glance seemed to be an unnaturally enormous head but she knew from the story to be an elaborately folded turban.