“I am certainly well enough now for that.”
“All right,” said Ribek. “Let’s go back to what you were trying to tell the Ropemaker. Why Larg, when there isn’t any magic in Larg?”
“For that precise reason. I think I told you that the Southern Federation was originally an alliance of warring tribes. As time went by these developed into a number of competing interests. There is the Manufacturing Interest, and the Farming and Forestry Interest, and the Military Interest, and so on. However, they have retained the original tribal method of settling disputes. This they call the Constitution.
“Once every six years all the members of each Interest elect a number of Syndics to represent them in the Syndicary, and make the laws and decide what taxes to raise and where the money is to be spent. It was they who decided on the invasion of the Empire, to force it to open its borders to world trade. The invasion was sponsored by the Marine Interest and the Military Interest, for obvious reasons, and the Manufacturing Interest, who foresaw vastly increased expenditure in weapons, which they would make, and so on.
“Other Interests were strongly against the war, but the idea was sold to the public at large with the promise of an easy victory against a backward and superstitious nation. But popular support is rapidly weakening in the light of the fatalities around Tarshu, the full extent of which has yet to be revealed. An influential committee of the Syndicary has been sent to investigate and report.
“The military have been aware for some time of the lack of magic in Larg, but have regarded a possible occupation of the city as an unnecessary diversion of resources. Now, though, they see it as a welcome opportunity to demonstrate to the Syndics that the resistance at Tarshu is the exception, and that large parts of the Empire will fall very much more easily into their hands. If all goes well Larg will offer no resistance at all, thus demonstrating to the tender consciences back home that heavy loss of life among civilians is not a necessary corollary of an invasion. Meanwhile the Syndics will have been able to witness a large operation carried out with military efficiency and complete success.”
“And they’ll go home no wiser than they came. Less, if anything,” said Ribek. “Presumably they’re the ones we need to talk to.”
“They will be a mixed bunch,” said Striclan. “Some will be vociferous supporters of the war, either on ideological grounds or because they are actually in the confidence of the military and have their own hands in the till. Others in the Marine and Business Interests will have lost their original enthusiasm, and are now more doubtful in view of the unexpected cost. Others, in particular the powerful Homemakers’ Interest, will have been against the invasion from the start.
“I gather that we are going to travel magically to the All-Conqueror and either persuade them to call off the assault or to prevent it by magical means. Our first problem will be to get any kind of a hearing. For a start, we will need both to claim and seem to be much more influential than we in fact are. I assume Benayu can alter our dress and appearance….”
“I’d better be a grown-up,” said Maja.
“Perhaps the first thing is for Benayu to go and take a look on this airboat,” said Ribek. “What did you say it was called?”
“The All-Conqueror. She is the sister ship of the one you saw destroyed at Tarshu.”
“That’s a bit of a risk, isn’t it?” said Saranja. “I mean, if it happened once it could happen again, and with these Syndic people aboard…”
“The official version is that that was a freak natural storm, a once-in-a-thousand-years catastrophe,” said Striclan. “There will be hired magicians aboard the All-Conqueror, Benayu, as well as elaborate defenses against magical intrusion.”
“I’ll be careful. Come along, Sponge,” said Benayu.
The two of them vanished.
“I suppose I shall become accustomed to this,” said Striclan.
“I haven’t,” said Saranja. “Even when I’m using Zald I keep thinking, This isn’t really me. You’d better have a rest, Strick. You’re still looking utterly washed out.”
“Striclan’s not the only one,” said Ribek. “Yesterday was hard as they come on all of us, specially Maja, and then how much sleep did we get? Three hours? Four, maybe. We’d all be dying on our feet if this weren’t Angel Isle.”
Sleep came early and deep. Maja dreamed of a ruined city. She thought it was Larg, but there wasn’t anything she recognized, and the river was much too small. Whatever had destroyed it (enemy attack? Earthquake? Or simply the unimaginable touch of time?) had happened years before. It was utterly deserted—nobody in the smashed streets, no birds nesting in crannies, no lizards scuttling among the fallen masonry. She wasn’t even there herself—she was just seeing it from some other place and time. Now something moved, a white horse, Pogo, disconsolately wandering around that emptiness, looking for his wings so that he could find fields and woods and streams, and horses to be friends with. He came to a tall, featureless wall, for some reason still standing. Once there had been a picture on it. A lot of it had flaked away but Maja could still make out some of what Pogo had been looking for, a green slope, two horses grazing beside a lake. Pogo stepped into the picture and joined them. He was a unicorn now, but Maja couldn’t see the top half of his horn, because the paint was missing from that bit of the tree.
She stirred in her sleep, distantly heard voices—Benayu’s was one of them, so he must be back—and went to sleep again. That dream meant something, she told herself as she slid back into oblivion, but she had no idea what.
A faint voice spoke in her head, familiar but changed.
“Maja.”
Jex, but not in his live form, nor that of the little granite pendant. Something softer. Lichen didn’t have ears. She answered in her head.
“Jex! What’s wrong? I thought you were better.”
“I am indeed better, but I am resting, as you are. In my live form I continue to experience bouts of nausea, which of its nature lichen does not experience. How are you, Maja?”
“All right, except terribly tired. What about your friends?”
“They vary. Three of us have, alas, perished, and eight more will take a long while to recover their full health, if they ever do.”
“I thought you didn’t die.”
“Not from natural causes, and very rarely from others. It is equally rare for one of us to come into existence, so this has been a great loss and a great grief. I do not know when there was last such mortality among us.”
“I’m very sorry. I suppose it was all our fault for wanting to find the Ropemaker.”
“If it was anybody’s fault it was mine, for revealing my existence to Fodaro. But I think that when we come to discuss the matter my friends will accept that the increasing power and knowledge of the Watchers was already a serious threat to our way of existence, and would eventually have had to be countered. We could not have done this on our own, so some kind of alliance with one or more human magicians was essential. My choice of Fodaro and Benayu was accidental, but despite these deaths it has turned out to be fortunate.
“Be that as it may, I think we will certainly decide that all future contact with humans, indeed anything that might make them aware of our existence, is to be avoided. I must ask you and your friends, including the magician Chanad, never to speak of our existence, even among yourselves, and as far as possible to forget about us altogether.”