“Do you know if anyone else is looking for us?” she said.
“I cannot say,” said Silena wearily. “But the Trunk Road lies in the sector that it was my task to watch. I could tell whenever you used the thing that you carry. It shone in my mind like a meteor each time. I could not come before—we watch each other constantly—but this evening I took my chance. None of the others would have had cause to be watching so steadily this way. But tomorrow they will find my tower empty, and their interest will be aroused. That is all I can tell you.”
“What about the magician outside the walls—the one whose monster you and Dorn drove away? I think he really wanted . . . the thing I’m carrying.”
“You know all this, child?”
“I was there, hiding in one of the towers. You almost found me.”
“Ah . . . no, we know nothing of this other man. We searched all the Empire, but he hides himself too well. He has great power. You should be wary of him still, I think.”
“Thank you,” said Tilja. She felt no fear or hatred of Silena now, this tired old woman who still had her dignity when everything else was gone.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It was not all your doing, child,” said Silena, and moved away into the darkness.
Immediately the whole enclosure was in an uproar. Calico woke with a squeal, answered by a chorus of squeals from around the courtyard. Knowing her nature, Tilja had tethered her securely, but at least two of the other horses broke loose and went charging around in the darkness.
Tahl had woken with a shout, Meena was muttering incoherently, and Alnor rose groaning to his feet and started to stumble away through the dark. Tilja ran and grabbed his arm, but he shook her off, and then blundered into a stranger who came rushing in panic toward him and knocked him aside. Tilja managed to catch him and stop him falling, and then he let her lead him back to the others. By the time she had him settled down Meena and Tahl seemed to be coming to their senses. All three had had much the same nightmare about being hurtled to and fro inside a dark swirling cloud full of explosions of light and faces with monstrous gaping mouths and screaming shapes that swirled by in the storm. (“Only it was and it wasn’t a dream,” Tahl explained. “It was something else, too.”)
From the snatches of talk she could hear around them Tilja could tell that it was the same with everyone else in the enclosure, but they were still all too taken up with their own nightmares to eavesdrop on their neighbors.
“I know what happened,” she said in a low voice. “Silena was here. And her beast. They’d come to look for Axtrig. She’s gone now.”
She told them what she’d seen and done. By the time she’d finished all her fear and excitement were gone. There was nothing left but utter exhaustion.
“A donkey?” said Tahl. “It was still light when they closed the gates, and there wasn’t a donkey anywhere around then.”
“It was a donkey,” said Tilja, yawning and scrabbling for her rug. “Nothing else makes a noise like that. We used to have one at Woodbourne.”
She found the rug, wrapped it around her, lay down and was asleep before he’d finished asking his next question.
Usually the first light woke her, but she slept late that morning, and by the time she sat up and looked around most of the other travelers were already getting ready to leave. She couldn’t see a donkey anywhere in the enclosure, but it might already have gone.
She was still tired as they traveled on, tired all through, but it was an odd sort of tiredness. What had happened in the enclosure had been extremely frightening and dangerous, and she wasn’t at all sure that Silena mightn’t have broken through her defenses if the donkey hadn’t brayed at exactly the right time. Would she be able to do it again if the need arose? Do what? She didn’t even know that. She had broken Silena’s power, yes. She had chosen to do it rather than just have it happen to her, but she couldn’t describe, even to herself, how. Suppose she were to wake at the next way station and see, say, Dorn, or the unknown magician, stalking toward her through the sleeping wayfarers, she knew she would be just as terrified, just as deep in the nightmare, as she’d been when Silena came.
But that didn’t alter the fact that she’d done it, alone and without help, and done it by discovering something totally new about herself. That discovery filled her with a sort of peaceful exhilaration. She didn’t want to sing, or dance, or talk to the others about it, only to walk in silence, relishing the feel of it. It was like the new-risen sun on night-chilled limbs, like the smell of rain on parched earth, like the morning, years ago, when she’d gone out before breakfast to look at the little patch of garden that she’d hoed and raked and planted all on her own, and seen that the first bean seedlings had come through in the night, shouldering the crumbs of earth aside and spreading their first two leaves to catch the sun. Hers.
The mood lasted all day. But that night at the way station, at the exact hour that Silena had come (she could tell by the stars), she woke with her heart slamming, her body locked rigid with dread and her palms chill with sweat. And the same next night, and the next, and the next. Usually at least one of the others would be awake at the same time, and they would whisper to each other for a little, and Tilja could hear quiet mutters of reassurance from elsewhere in the enclosure, which told her that they were not the only ones to have woken at that particular time. It was as though Silena had somehow set a clock in all their minds that triggered a danger signal at the hour of her coming. The effect didn’t start to fade until the moon had waned completely and waxed again almost to its full, and midnight was no longer dark. But no more Watchers came stealing into the enclosure, with whatever beast or demon they had chosen as their companion, to search for Axtrig.
Those night wakings were the only alarms in all their seemingly endless journey. Steadily the days became warmer, both with the coming summer and the more southern climate. Soon mornings and evenings seemed as hot as noon had been north of Talagh. The landscape changed, and changed again, and yet again, flat miles of fields, green wooded hills, dry and broken ground where immense flocks of sheep and goats were herded, ancient forests full of strange calls and odors, cities, villages, fortresses, grand houses ringed by rich estates.
Only the road did not change. Broad as a fair-sized river, well paved from side to side, it headed on south. Despite the Emperor’s decrees it was thronged from dawn to dusk with travelers, all of whom must have proved they had good reason for their journey. The wind swung round to the east and for three long days rain fell, warm and dense, from sagging low clouds. The road became truly a river, ankle deep in places, but then shedding its load into the drowned fields on either side. Through the downpour everyone plodded on. The way stations were cleared each morning, to make room for the next night’s travelers, so there was nothing else for it but to endure the drenching. It was the Emperor’s will.
After what Silena had said about how she had traced them, Meena and Tilja were even more careful about using Axtrig to point the way they should go. They knew that by now there would be a new Watcher in Silena’s tower, who might notice the quick flicker of potent magic, moving further south each time. And perhaps more dangerous still, there was the unknown magician who had sent the great creature to attack the walls of Talagh. He was hiding now, Silena had said, but he had put forth that enormous power for the sake of the old spoon, and he would do so again, if he got the chance. But they had to take the risk, or the time might come when they actually plodded on past the point where they should have turned aside.
So sometimes, though at longer intervals than before, the two of them would slip away from the road during the midday rest, and Tilja would bring Axtrig out from under her sleeve, and Meena would stand well apart and whisper the name of Faheel, and the old spoon would wake and move.