“Much better,” he said over his shoulder. “Thank you, and let us hope it is not too late.”
“We would have known by now, wouldn’t we?” said the boy, obviously as anxious as the man.
“Probably,” said the man with a sigh, and rose to his feet.
“I must apologize for the informality of your reception,” he said, pulling himself together. “I am Fodaro, and this is my nephew Benayu. That’s his dog, Sponge. And this on the rock here is Jex. The name you spoke must have affected him even more powerfully than it did us, but he seems to have done his best to protect us before that happened. Evidently he has not yet recovered from the effort. The food is to your taste?”
Maja stared at the lizard, bewildered. She’d assumed it must be some kind of pet, but it didn’t sound like that. She couldn’t feel anything like the magical vibrations coming from it that she’d felt from Rocky when he had his wings on, though there was a sort of silent humming from both the man and the boy. They were still really scared of something too—something, she guessed, that might have noticed the explosion of magic when Saranja had spoken the Ropemaker’s name, and Jex had been trying to protect them from that happening. Yes, and they’d have known by now if it had done so….
Ribek glanced down at her. His face seemed unusually drawn. She realized that his leg must be hurting more than he let on, but he caught her expression, laughed, shrugged and spread his hands. He was as bewildered as she was.
“The food?” he said, turning back to Fodaro. “Just what we needed. Thank you very much. I’m Ribek Ortahlson, and my friends are Saranja and Maja Urlasdaughter. They’re cousins, but I’m not related to them. In fact we barely know each other.”
“Those are your true names?”
“What on earth is the point of a false name?” said Saranja. “That’s who I am.”
“Hm. And you appear not to be yourselves magicians?”
“Not as far as we know,” said Ribek. “There’s very little magic where we come from.”
“But the horse…?”
“Rocky’s different,” said Saranja. “He doesn’t belong there. At least his wings don’t. I put them on for him, but I’m not a magician. The feathers told me what to do. It’s a long story. Thank you for the fodder, by the way.”
“My pleasure,” said the boy.
She turned and stared at him.
“You too?” she said, as if this were the last straw.
“The talent runs in the family,” said Fodaro, “though his is in some ways different from mine. He takes more after his father, my brother-in-law.”
“And, um, Jex?” said Ribek.
“Jex is something else,” said Fodaro.
Ribek waited for him to explain, but he changed the subject.
“May we please look at your feathers?”
Without hesitation Saranja drew them out of her belt-pouch and offered them to him, but he held up both hands in a gesture of refusal and simply studied them as she held them, his nephew coming to his side to do so too. Their breathing slowed as they stared, while Saranja twisted them to and fro to let them see every aspect.
“Astonishing,” whispered Fodaro. “Can you tell us what they are?”
“Ask Ribek. I’m still trying not to believe it.”
“I’m not,” said Ribek. “After all, I believe in the Ice-dragon. They are roc feathers, according to the story we tell in the Valley, which so far has proved a pretty good guide, judging by what’s happened to us in the last few days.”
“Roc feathers. I have never seen one. But yes, of course. And the hair that binds them? That is something of another order.”
“It belonged to…to the Ropemaker—the fellow whose name Saranja said just now, but mostly he’s called the Ropemaker in the story we tell in the Valley.”
Fodaro didn’t respond, didn’t even move. It seemed as if he had stopped breathing. Benayu stared at him frowning.
“You know the Ropemaker’s true name?” he whispered at last, speaking the words even more slowly than before. “You carry a hair of his head? But you know nothing of magic? What brought you to this place? How do you come by a horse with the wings of a roc? Are you, at last, who I think you are?”
“Rocky brought us here,” said Saranja. “We were just running away from the Sheep-faces, but he seemed to know where to go. Until I found the roc feathers he was just an old nag who insisted on following me, but then everything changed and Ribek showed up and I knew what to do because of the story. Then the Sheep-faces came looking for us, but Rocky was faster than they were so we got away, and after that we just came where he took us.”
“Come to that,” said Ribek, “I think we’re entitled to ask who you are and what you are doing here.”
Fodaro relaxed enough to manage a smile.
“We are in much the same boat,” he said. “We too are running away, or rather hiding. Until you came we believed we were here to take advantage of certain magical aspects of this place to conceal ourselves from our enemy, and to develop Benayu’s powers with the help of Jex. I cannot tell you more about Jex because we have promised not to, but I’m extremely worried about him, both for his sake and ours. We need him well.”
He turned to Saranja.
“Will you try something for me?” he said. “I’ve never seen him like this before. He should have started pulling himself together by now, but if anything he’s getting worse. This may not work, but it’s the best I can think of. Kneel beside him, and when you are settled untie the quills, lay them close in front of him on the boulder, without the hair—don’t let that touch him. Leave them there only an instant. Don’t even whisper the name—just think it, and then pick them up and retie them at once. I’m sorry to have to ask you. I wouldn’t if I thought it was safe for anyone else to do this.”
Saranja actually grinned at him, if a bit sourly.
“If it works, it works,” she said. “I just don’t have to pretend to like it.”
With deft, careful movements she did as he’d told her. The feathers rested on the rock for little more than a heartbeat, but for that splinter of time the hillside again seemed to twang with tension. The lizard gave a convulsion that almost toppled it from its boulder. And then Saranja was rewinding the long gold hair round the quills, and the hillside was at peace, and the lizard was no longer shuddering but crouched in the sunlight with its eyes closed and the slow come-and-go of its breath gently stirring the ruffles of its neck.
Saranja slid the feathers into her pouch and rose. Fodaro held his spread hands above the lizard, as if warming them over a fire.
“Well, he’s here, at least,” he said. “But not yet as fully here as we need him to be.”
“Would that work on Ribek’s leg?” asked Saranja, obviously impatient with such abstractions. “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it, Ribek, by the look of you?”
“Not too good, but it can wait. Depends how urgent everything else is.”
“Not that urgent, I hope,” said Fodaro. “But Jex and the roc from which your feathers came are of a different order of being from ourselves,” he said. “A human hurt requires human healing, whether physical or magical. Benayu will see to it…. No, better not for the moment. I’m sorry.”
“I’d rather let Saranja take a look at it first, in any case,” said Ribek wearily. “I’m sorry, Benayu. I don’t distrust what you do the way she does, but I’m not used to it, and I prefer to stick with what I know. And there’s always a price, if you’ll excuse my saying so. Where Saranja’s been these last six years the men did precious little besides fighting each other, so she knows about wounds. Mine wasn’t too good when she dealt with it this morning, but your mountain water is clear and clean. I’ll ask it to help. They’ve all got a bit of deep-earth healing in them, water sources, until we start poisoning them lower down.”