“I believe so, sir,” said Striclan. “They will be aboard their largest vessel, the All-Conqueror. Admiral-General Pashgahr is the Fleet Commander. Supreme General Olbog, who is in charge of the whole operation against the Empire, will almost certainly be there to make sure the Syndics are impressed by a successful operation against Larg.”
“That’ll do. Show up. Stop it in its tracks. Impress them that way. Right, Benayu?”
Benayu started to shake his head and looked away.
“We’re talking about Larg,” said Saranja. “I know you’ve done what you came to do and destroyed the Watchers, and now you want to go back to shepherding. But we’ve got friends in Larg. You’re a Freeman of the city.”
“Someone else can do it. I’m tired.”
“There’s no time to find anyone else,” said Ribek. “It’s already started.”
“Chanad…,” said Benayu.
“Tired too,” said the Ropemaker. “Take the both of you, anyway.”
Benayu turned to Maja, biting his lip.
“And you’re going to tell me the same, I suppose,” he said.
“Zara gave you something at Larg. It’s inside you, part of you now.”
He stared at her, startled.
“Please,” she said aloud.
“You’ll enjoy it,” whispered Ribek. “Impress them, he said. You can do a lot of fancy conjuring tricks. Just your sort of thing.”
Benayu managed to laugh and sigh at the same time.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “But then we’re going home. I’ll help you seal your Valley off, if that’s what you want, but then that’s absolutely and definitely it.”
“Want to talk to you about that,” said the Ropemaker. “You’re right, lad. Too young to take it all on yet. You go back to shepherding and a bit of hedge magic. Let the Free Magicians have a go at it for a while. It’ll come for you one day, mind, like it did for me. Bound to. But…No, listen to me, lad. And you three too.
“Like it or not, things have changed. We’ve done that between us, you and me. Destroyed the ring, right. Suppose we’d not done that, whole thing would’ve started all over again, Valley sealed off, Watchers gone, demons all over the place, magic running loose, new lot of magicians getting together to sort it all out, getting more and more power, changing their nature…
“See where I’m going? Round and round, round and round, trapped in a time loop, same as I was in the other universe. Told you, didn’t I? Ring does that. Like a rock in a river. Makes a whirlpool. Show you.”
He stopped and sat nodding gently, a tired old man, lost in a dream. Then he pulled himself together and raised his forearm, let his wrist go limp and slowly rotated his hand around it several times, apparently hypnotized by the movement. Maja found herself standing on a bridge over a broad stream, immediately below a weir. Upstream the water flowed smoothly toward the drop. From twigs and leaves carried on its surface she could see where the main current ran between the slacker patches along the banks. Downstream all she could see was unreadable hummocked foam vanishing into a fog bank. She had no need to be told that she was seeing an image of the past changing into the future. The weir was the instant of change. Now.
Close above the weir a boulder jutted up out of the water. Immediately below it, almost on the edge of the drop, a large eddy had formed. On its wrinkled surface circled a feather. It might have been the selfsame feather she had seen on the pool in the oyster-beds at Barda. Round and round, round and round, round and round…
The scene vanished, and she was back on Angel Isle.
The Ropemaker shook his head, sighed, and went on slowly, effortfully, with long pauses every few words.
“Bit of a strain. Even showing you that…Well, rock’s gone now. New times coming. You’re in at the start of it. Not famous, not rich, nothing like that. But you’re here. Planting a seed. What you do, next few days. How you plant it. That’s going to shape the tree. These Pirates. They’re part of it too. Not going away. Right, mister?”
“Certainly their past history would suggest otherwise,” said Striclan. “Even if Benayu were to destroy their whole battle fleet at Larg, they would try again, and with greater forces, elsewhere.”
Another rock in the stream, thought Maja. Another eddy. Round and round, round and round.
“New times coming, I told you,” said the Ropemaker. “Now’s your chance. Change all that. Won’t come again. Good luck.”
In an abrupt gesture of closure he started to brush the crumbs off his robe. Maja stared at him, bewildered. He couldn’t leave them like this, right in the middle of what he was saying. And he hadn’t even…
He looked up, saw her expression and grinned.
“Trouble, Maja?”
“Er…Ribek,” she muttered. “He’s…Can you…?”
“Better repay him, eh? Don’t want you haunting me. Wherever I’m going. Me, I can spare a year or two now. Still got to catch up with Zara. Pay him a bit of interest, maybe.”
Maja heard the last six words inside her head. He laid a bony finger against his nose and winked at her. He had put his last burden aside, and now, as time raced by him, scouring wrinkles and blotches into his skin, rheuming and reddening his eyes, he seemed to be returning almost to his childhood, boyishly cheerful at the prospect of his own going. She smiled understanding and glanced at Ribek, but he didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Owe Ribek a year or two, right?” he said. “Better do that. While I’ve got any. After that, you five hang around. Get your friend better. Going to need him. Knows what’s what with the Pirates. Speaks their lingo. Make a bit of a plan. I’ll send Chanad over. President-elect of Council. I’ll give her my ring to prove it. Don’t go till we’re both gone. Zara and me. Dusk, that’ll be. Like to have you there. Ready, Ribek? Help me up, someone.”
Saranja steadied him as he creakily rose. Maja did the same for Ribek. They faced each other, stooped and weary, Ribek now looking only barely the older man. Saranja made as if to stand clear but the Ropemaker put his hand on her forearm and stopped her. He took Ribek by both hands, drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. Time spooled between them.
Maja could actually watch the process of change as the once tall figure opposite her bowed and shrank into itself, and the flesh wasted beneath the mottled and sagging skin. At the same time, with her arm still round Ribek’s shoulders, she felt him straighten, felt the wiry muscles reclothing the bones, and the slower, firmer breathing, as the whole joy of being active, healthy flesh returned to the shriveled carcass.
It seemed an astonishingly short time before the Ropemaker let go of Ribek’s hands.
“Back to where you were?” he mumbled.
“I feel fine,” said Ribek cheerfully. “Ten years younger than that, if you want to know.”
The thin, purple lips of the old man smiled. Maja grinned and winked at him, but she wasn’t sure the bleared eyes could any longer see that far.
“Say good-bye to you now,” he said. “Won’t be up to it when the time comes. Good thing someone came looking for me. Lucky for me it was you. Soft spot for Valley folk. Ever since Tilja’s time. Very fond of her. Helped me a lot.
“Benayu, lad. Twice the magician I was, your age. Five times wiser. Your friend Fodaro—did well by you. Zara can’t speak. Says to renew her blessings.”
Maja couldn’t speak either, for tears, but she ran and hugged the old man. Saranja, surprisingly, was also weeping-dumb, but when she had helped the Ropemaker back to where Zara lay and eased him down beside her, she knelt and kissed him, then rose and came blindly back. Nobody wanted to talk, so they sat for a long while in silence. Chanad came across without a word and joined them.
At length Ribek gave a deep sigh.
“Well, I suppose we’d better do as he said and start thinking about what happens next,” he said. “How are you feeling, Striclan? You’re going to have to do a lot of the talking, telling us how the Pirates operate, all that.”