All round her the Jexes, those who could still move of their own will and not the demon’s, were doing the same. She caught a glimpse of Benayu standing in the middle of them, with his staff erect in the turf in front of him. Half blinded with her own sweat, she couldn’t see quite what he was doing, but he seemed not to be even looking at the demon but at an invisible ball that he was holding cupped between his two hands close above the top of the staff.
She didn’t have time to think about it, to wonder what he was up to, or whether there was anything he could do to save them. All that mattered was to drag Ribek further away.
Another wild neigh from Rocky. Different. Terror? Rocky?
She looked up and saw that the demon had moved at last, effortlessly bursting several coils of the fiery binding to raise an arm and beckon.
Rocky was responding, swinging in toward the terrible darkness under the hood, while Saranja, protected by the demon-binder, fought to turn his head and force him back onto his course.
Useless. He was almost there. Another heartbeat and they would all three be gone.
It never happened. Before Maja’s heart could thud once more, it stood still. A gulp of air stayed in her windpipe. She could no more look to left or right than she’d been able to do when she was a rag doll. Rocky and his riders remained poised in front of the darkness. The racing storm clouds stayed in their places. Even sound was stilled. Not a mutter from the waves, not a whisper from the wind, broke the silence.
Something moved in that stillness. A small black object floated up at the edge of Maja’s vision, surrounded by…
By what? Nothing visible, but…Nothing, visible because it was less than nothing? Negative zero…?
Something below it now, grayer than gray…the top of Benayu’s staff, with the black thing floating above it like the dot on an i. Benayu’s hand gripping the staff, his other hand just below it, his arms, Benayu himself, floating up and forward into view, locked into total stillness like herself and Rocky and the demon and all the rest of the universe, his face set to stone as he poured all the powers in himself and the staff into keeping that single impossible sphere whole and balanced above the staff.
So in time outside time, he drifted up and forward, past where Rocky and his riders hung timebound, to the very edge of the darkness.
At that point time resumed. Benayu thrust staff and sphere forward with a twist of his wrists. The staff was still in his hands as he plummeted earthward, but the sphere was gone, engulfed by the darkness. Maja’s delayed heartbeat thudded within her rib-cage. The gulped air poured into her lungs. With a triumphant neigh Rocky swung clear. And the demon…
The demon ate itself. The darkness under the hood became an inward-whirling vortex, dragging hood and robes and the whole huge ivory figure into its emptiness, and then was gone. All of it gone into the sphere of nothingness that Benayu had somehow formed and kept in existence in the world of things by creating a space between two instants of time in either of which it would have been an impossibility. All that was left of the Watchers was a patch of dead turf.
CHAPTER
22
Still gasping and shuddering with effort, Maja got to her feet, heaved Ribek onto his back and felt for his pulse. Nothing. Nothing. Yes—was it?—yes, desperately faint, but there. She looked up for somebody to tell. Benayu was picking himself up from the turf close beside her.
“He’s alive!”
He stared at her, dazedly shaking his head, stunned either by the fall or what he’d done.
With a boom of wings Rocky landed beside them. For the first time Maja noticed that Striclan hadn’t been riding pillion, with his arms round Saranja’s waist, but in front of her, as if he’d been a child who needed to be held in place. Saranja slid down, deftly caught him as he collapsed sideways, and helped him sit. His face was almost the same horrible pale yellow as the poisoned grass.
“Here’s your banbane,” she told him. “No, don’t try and say anything—you’re still not making sense. Just keep on breathing it in. It’s working. Look, it’s changing color. That’s right.”
She turned to Maja.
“Are you all right?” she said. “I thought we were all done for when Zald wasn’t strong enough. What’s happened to Ribek? Where’s the Ropemaker?”
“He was getting old too fast. Ribek lent him some of his own life so that he’d be strong enough to deal with the Watchers. Then he summoned them, and they came. They knew the Ropemaker’s name. They almost got him, but Benayu managed to hide him somewhere. And Zara and Chanad. They were here too. Then the Watchers turned themselves into a demon—the one you tried to bind. It poisoned the Jexes….”
“Them too? So’s Striclan. He’s pretty bad. A demon breathed on him just as I got there. I’d spotted some bog oaks on the way there so I looked coming back and found him some banbane.”
“Banbane?” said Maja.
“It grows on rotting bog oaks. It’s a bracket fungus. You can use it for snakebite and things.”
“Have you got any more?” said Maja. “It might help with the Jexes.”
“Not enough for all of them,” said Saranja, fishing in one of the saddlebags and bringing out a fawn-colored object about the size and shape of a cowpat.
“I suppose you could try it on Jex,” she said, breaking a piece off. “If it works I could take Rocky and look for more. Break a bit off and put the broken side under his nose so that he breathes the fumes in. If it’s working it’ll start to go orange.”
“Can you look at Ribek while I’m doing that? I can only just feel his pulse. He was fighting to get to the demon and I was fighting to stop him. Then he collapsed, but he kept on trying to go forward.”
“He is asleep,” said Benayu in a dazed voice, as if he were half asleep himself. He shook his head, squared his shoulders and gave the ghost of a smile.
“He’s dreaming about—”
“You mustn’t look! It isn’t fair!”
Benayu wasn’t good at looking ashamed, but at least Maja’s snarl had woken him up.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought…Anyway, it was just an ordinary kind of dream. I don’t think he’s poisoned, just tired.”
“All right,” Maja muttered. “I suppose you had to. Thanks.”
Still unfairly furious, she took a piece of the fungus and settled down beside Ribek with her back, deliberately, to Benayu.
“Jex. Jex. Can you hear me? How are you?”
“Not well, but not as sick as many of my friends. Some of us are dying.”
“I’ve got some banbane. Saranja says it might work. But you’ve got to breathe it.”
“Take me out and put me on the grass.”
She still had him in her grasp when he changed his form. His eyes were glazed and the clear blue and yellow of his scales muddy and dull. The taut and muscular body was as floppy as dead meat. The broken edge of the banbane was oozing with opaque pale droplets and reeked of rotting timber. Carefully she arranged it close to Jex’s nostril-slits, propping it in place with her sandal. His neck ruffles rose and fell in time with his deep-drawn breaths.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, that appears beneficial. Ah, Benayu is fetching some more. Leave me to breathe this piece, while you take pieces to my friends. Some of us are unaffected. They will show you who is most in need.”
“Striclan’s looking better already,” said Saranja. “He kept trying to tell me something urgent he’s got to tell Benayu, but he wasn’t making much sense. Ah. His bit’s started to change color. It forms a crust, Maja. When it’s bright orange you can crumble that off and start again…No, love. Keep breathing. Benayu’s busy. There’s a lot of stuff going on, but it looks as if he’s done for the Watchers. Cedars and snows! Where did you find all that?”