He glanced around and pointed a finger at her. Her own egg fell apart, a tremor ran through the hitherto insensate body of the doll, and without even feeling the change apart from that she was back in her own true shape, too dazed with weariness to open her eyes. Only someone’s arm around her shoulders held her from falling.
“Maja!” said Ribek’s voice in her ear. “Thank heavens! And you found him too! Nick of time, by the look of it. Massive stuff going on here. Benayu’s just about holding them. What about you? Can you stand it?”
“I’m all right. He shielded me. What’s happening?”
Before he could answer Saranja shouted a warning. An instant later the ground juddered beneath her. She felt Ribek stagger as he rode the shock-wave and held her upright. By the time he’d recovered their balance she seemed to be standing ankle deep in a rushing stream. With an effort she heaved her eyes open.
The beautiful garden was a ruin. The trees were leaning awry. The perfect turf looked as if it had been rootled through by a gigantic hog. The inner surface of the egg flared and glimmered as it had seemed to do from the outside. The wall of the pool had split apart and its water was sluicing over her feet. The horses, over to her right, were deep in Benayu’s magical coma but still with instinct enough to have spread their legs apart to ride the quaking ground. Saranja waited beside them, tense and ready, watching the Ropemaker strolling long-legged toward Benayu…
Benayu?
The figure was wearing Benayu’s clothes and Sponge was there beside him, teeth bared, hackles raised, poised ready for the word to spring to the attack against whatever came. But the face was no longer that of Benayu, or of any particular human. It was a moon-pale mask like the one Zara had worn on the hillside when she had returned from the destruction of the demon Azarod.
He stood perfectly still, seeming to be floating a little above the ground, so that he didn’t even stir as another shock-wave ground across the arena. Nor did the Ropemaker falter in his stride, but reached him, moved behind him and placed a large, bony hand on either of his shoulders. Benayu crossed his arms over his chest so that his palms covered the Ropemaker’s knuckles. There was a moment of stillness and everything changed.
Or rather, it both did and didn’t. The garish lights in the eggshell died away as the fabric rapidly repaired itself, but otherwise nothing much happened that Maja could actually see. The trees didn’t magically right themselves, the water didn’t flow back into the pool, the turf didn’t return to its perfect smoothness, but at the same time it was all different. What must have happened, Maja realized, what she would have known for sure if the Ropemaker hadn’t mercifully numbed her extra sense (though she wouldn’t have survived the experience) was that the turmoil of magical energies that had been throbbing through the egg had now moved outside it, leaving a bubble of sanity and peace within.
Ribek breathed out a long sigh of relief.
“That’s a bit better,” he said. “Couldn’t have stood much more of that. At least it gives me some idea of what you have to put up with. How’ve you got on? Let’s have a look at you, then.”
He took her by the shoulders, turned her round and held her at arm’s length. The smile of welcome vanished from his face.
“Oh, my…dear! What have we done to you?”
“I’m all right. I’m just tired.”
“You are not all right! Look!”
He let go of her shoulder and almost snatched at her wrist as he lifted her hand and arm for her to see.
They weren’t hers. They were…they were Zara’s hand and arm, lying on the counterpane of her bed in the stone cell behind the Council Chamber in Larg. There seemed to be no flesh at all between the sagging ivory skin and the bird-thin bone. With an effort, though it should have weighed nothing at all, she raised her arm further and spread her fingers against the light. Yes, she could see the shadowy shapes of the finger bones through the translucent membrane.
“I’m just tired, so tired,” she muttered, and allowed herself to collapse.
Ribek caught her on the way down, effortlessly scooped her up and cradled her in his arms. She had never seen him looking so grim. She didn’t like it.
“And I’m hungry,” she whispered. “Is there any oyster pie left?”
He managed a smile—for her sake, she guessed—and started to carry her over to the pool. Saranja met them on the way.
“What’s happened to…Oh, Maja!”
Even Benayu must have heard the horror in her voice, for he turned his head to look. His face was his own now, but it too changed, as Ribek’s and Saranja’s had, the moment he saw her.
And the Ropemaker was looking at her. She stared back at the narrow, long-chinned face framed by the extraordinary turban—bristling fire-red eyebrows, pale eyes set close together beside the bony nose, all strangely out of place with the wide and mobile mouth. He didn’t seem to have aged at all over the centuries, certainly not the way Zara had.
“We’ve got to get her out of here,” said Benayu. “She can’t stand any more of this, however she’s shielded.”
“Sooner the better,” said the Ropemaker. “Not much we can do here. One more jolt, Maja. Put you to sleep first, eh?”
“I’ll be all right. I want to see.” And to be here, knowing I’m in Ribek’s arms, awake and aware, and with him if anything goes wrong and this is the end.
“Tough as they come, these Urlasdaughters. Right. Anything you want to take?”
“We’re all packed and ready,” said Saranja.
“Fine. You three take the horses. I’ll shift for myself. Line ’em up by the touching point. Moment you hear my voice, go.”
“Where’s Jex?” whispered Maja, as Ribek carried her over toward the horses.
“There was more going on than he could cope with, so he turned himself into stone again and I put him in the saddlebag.”
“Oh, look! The Ropemaker’s going to turn himself into a lion. That’s what he did in the story!”
Craning past Ribek’s shoulder, she watched with growing excitement as the Ropemaker raised a hand, twitched out a loose end of his turban and with a flick of the wrist sent the intricately woven structure floating into coil after coil of cloth around himself. She never saw what happened to it after that because almost at once it was hidden beneath an immense mane of flame-gold hair, reaching almost to the ground, but then gathering itself back upward, revealing first four vast animal pads covered in flame-gold fur, then the muscular legs and the solid mass of the body and the skinny tail with a tuft of darker fur at the end. Within two or three heartbeats it had become the bushy mane of an enormous winged lion, big as a barn.
It waited, motionless except for the to-and-fro flicker of its tail-tip. Its huge yellow eyes watched while Benayu woke the horses. Saranja held Maja while Ribek mounted Levanter, then passed her up to him and swung herself into Rocky’s saddle. Benayu was already up.
“Ready?” he said, and led the way across the crumpled turf and the fallen cypresses. They lined up with the horses’ noses almost touching the eggshell. Benayu raised an arm.
“I want to watch what he does,” whispered Maja, and Ribek adjusted his hold to let her see past his shoulder.
The lion swung ponderously away from them and paced toward the further side of the egg. Halfway there it halted and stared slowly around as if it could see through the barrier and was studying something beyond it. It raised its head and roared.
The sound was all there was, filling the universe. The eggshell blazed with light and melted inward. A few more moments and it would shrink to nothing. But the horses were already airborne and driving into the vague dark opening that led from universe to universe. Now there was only a glimmer from behind, a glimmer that vanished as the body of the lion filled the narrowing gap and burst through.