“Nothing for it, seemingly,” she said. “We’re going to have to give her a go. Quick as you can, mind . . . no, wait . . . try holding your hand out flat with the cloth on it and laying her down on that—not letting go with your other hand, mind, till we’re ready, and seeing what happens. . . .”
Forcing herself into calmness, Tilja rolled up her sleeve and untied the ancient spoon. Through her fingertips she could feel the difference from the other one, the sense of life still there in the grained wood. Holding Axtrig firmly in her right hand, she slid her left hand under the cloth, only to discover that its underside was now swarming with ants, mercifully not the biting kind. She gave the cloth a good shake and then used her teeth to arrange it over her open palm so that she could balance Axtrig there, still keeping her right hand in contact with the wood.
“Ready,” she said.
“Sure? Then I’ll count again. One. Two. Three.”
Tilja let go of Axtrig, keeping her hand poised close above her, watching her, not Meena. For a moment nothing happened. Three or four baffled ants continued to scuttle around on the cloth. Then, all in an instant, they froze into stillness. This time it was different. The world remained the same and the spoon twitched round. Tilja actually saw it move. At once she closed her right hand down on it. As her palm touched the wood the ants resumed their scuttling. Down the hill, she heard Calico neighing in panic. She looked up.
Meena was bent over her cane, steadying herself from falling. She let out a long breath and straightened.
“Could’ve been worse,” she muttered. “Could’ve been a lot worse. Anything come of it, then?”
“Yes, Axtrig moved. And she’s still pointing the way we’re going.”
“Well, that’s something. Let’s get out of here, now. I don’t know if one of those Watchers or anyone would’ve picked it up but there’s no point hanging around to find out. Just listen to that stupid horse. If she felt it, there’ll be others. I’ll be starting off while you get yourself sorted out.”
Trembling now with the relief that it was over, Tilja strapped Axtrig back against her arm, rolled the sleeve down and put the cloth away. All round her the woods seemed empty and silent. The other party of travelers, further along the hillside, seemed to have stopped their chatter, but as Tilja ran down the slope to catch up with Meena they started again. In their voices there was a note of alarm.
Day after day they traveled on, unhindered and unquestioned. Since they were on their way to Goloroth nothing else needed to be known about them until they reached the city and gave their names to the officials at the entrance, who would then fill in certificates for Tilja and Tahl to take home, showing that their grandparents had indeed passed through those last gates. Not that they actually had any intention of going that far. All that concerned them was to travel south for as long as Axtrig told them. When at last the old spoon began to point in a new direction, then they would turn aside and start to bribe their way with the money that Ellion had given them. Meanwhile, for convenience, they continued to wear the uniforms of fourteenth graders, but used their own names if anyone asked.
The Grand Trunk Road swarmed with travelers, merchants, messengers, officials with their retinues, troops of soldiers, drivers of loaded oxcarts, gangs of slaves being taken to market or to some big task of building or destruction, people of all ages and accents and manners, but always more going south than north. Old and young, pair by pair, made the long journey to the City of Death, but only the young came back.
A section of every way station was set aside for those making that journey. Here free meals were provided, but plain stuff, so that the food stalls still did good business. The atmosphere inside these enclosures was strangely cheerful. Almost all the old people seemed completely to accept what was happening and to face the end of their lives with dignity and not with fear. Tahl, typically, got into talk with some of them and asked bluntly how they felt about what they were doing.
“Much the best way of it,” one old woman told him. “Easy for me, mind. I started to get the shakes, which runs in the family, so I knew how long I’d got, and there was time to make all the arrangements and set up a nice funeral party and be gone, and I’m really making the most of it, seeing all these places and meeting all these people, when all my life I’ve never been more than nine miles from my own front door.”
Not everyone felt like this. Some were already in the grip of their last illness, some made the journey with dread, and some with fierce resentment, but most seemed to be going south almost gaily, and these helped to keep the doubters from gloom. When they had collected their evening meals they would settle in groups of twenty or more—people who had been strangers until only a few days earlier—and gossip and sing far into the night, songs of all kinds from all over the Empire, silly or sentimental or stirring, but not often sad.
“Makes me feel a right fraud,” Meena said, “seeing them all so cheerful when what’s happening to them isn’t going to happen to me, ever, not once I’m home.”
There was one thing, though, that cast a shadow over everyone. Sometimes in the early mornings a wail would go up from somewhere in the enclosure, announcing that one old traveler had failed to complete the journey and was dead, and the child with them would then be led away by the guards to be sold, while the body would be taken to a side gate to be collected and carried on to Goloroth by specialist carters who had no other trade. At times like that all grieved.
Every few days as they rested for their midday meal, Meena and Tilja would find somewhere hidden from the road and once again put their question to Axtrig. Each time the answer was the same. South.
Now that they knew it worked, the process became less alarming. But it was still a risk. Even damped down by Tilja’s two hands, one poised above the old spoon, the other only just below her on the other side of the cloth, the whisper of Faheel’s name produced the fierce pulse of magic. Meena needed to find somewhere to steady herself, or a boulder to sit on, while it lasted, and Alnor and Tahl, some distance away and out of sight, also felt the shock of it, and every time Calico neighed with alarm and tried to bolt.
“It’s like when you stand up suddenly and bang your head on something,” said Tahl. “Except that it doesn’t hurt. But everything goes dark for a moment and you don’t know where you are.”
But nothing else happened. Nobody came to investigate, or questioned them all afternoon as they plodded on to the next way station. The only change as the days went by was that the pause between Meena’s whisper and the spoon’s reaction seemed to grow longer. It was as if Axtrig, too, was becoming used to the process.
Tilja, strangely, came to welcome these times. Or rather, she welcomed the feelings she had when they were over. The sense of immense, strange power controlled and leashed by her hands and then laid to sleep once more against her arm was something like the feeling she had after a good day on the farm, work that had gone well, in fine clear weather, with larks invisibly high above the fields, pouring out their song. On such evenings she would be tired, of course, but happy, cleansed, with even the mild aches and stiffnesses of toil somehow pleasurable.
On their twenty-second night out of Talagh Tilja woke suddenly out of deep sleep. Something was wrong. There were stars overhead, but no moon. A few lanterns shone here and there around the way station, but otherwise it was almost pitch dark. And still. That was what was wrong. Silence. No noise at all, apart from the whisper of her own breath. Not a murmur or rustle from any of the several hundred travelers in the way station.
Alnor wasn’t snoring. Nor was Meena, nor anybody else.
Alnor always snored, gently, steadily, all night. Meena snuffled and snorted. A dozen other old people lying nearby should have been joining in, or muttering in their sleep, or turning over, or getting up to relieve themselves. But no one in the whole enclosure was moving a muscle. Were they even breathing? Were they alive?