So, slowly, with Faheel leaning heavily on Tilja’s shoulder, with his hand firmly against the bare skin of her neck, they made their way past the motionless lines waiting for entry to the city, and under the archway. Again she felt the force of the wards that guarded the city, powerful still in the instant into which time was locked, but it was very different from when she had first come through. There was no numbness, but an intense, strange feeling, as if the hand that enclosed the ring box had been a wine glass round whose rim somebody was rubbing a moistened fingertip, setting up a note that in a moment would shatter the glass.
No, she told it, and raised her fist in defiance. The finger withdrew and the note stilled.
“Well done,” murmured Faheel as she led him into the crowded street beyond the archway.
Remembering what that had been like when she had first come to Talagh, Tilja was worried about how she was going to pick a path through the scrum without waking anybody into life. Fortunately some great lord had been just about to leave the city when time had stopped, and his servants had already cleared a way for him to the gate. She came to the lord himself a little way up the street, riding a beautiful spirited horse which must have been frightened by the tumult and was shying aside, with its rider fighting to control it, when the instant had come, fastening them into the same unchanging, impossible pose. As she edged past, Tilja was tempted to lay her hand on the glossy flank and wake the horse into life, just to see what happened. With a shock she realized that she was experiencing something she had never imagined, a sense of absolute power. All these people, even a great lord of the Empire, even the Emperor himself, were under her control. They could move, or not, as she chose. The thought was oddly frightening. If you had that power you wanted to use it. This must be what magicians were like, all the time. This was why some of them had tried so hard to get hold of Axtrig.
They passed the ball of contortionists, poised on one foot, the woman smothered in motionless scorpions, jugglers with arcs of flaming torches or daggers hanging in stillness above them, barkers and stallholders with their mouths gaping in the shout they had started and never finished, sneak thieves with purses half cut, the smoke from roasting grills fixed in the windless air, all the bustle and frenzy of Talagh halted, as if forever.
It was slow going, but Faheel could not have gone much faster if the avenue had been empty. Three times he needed to rest, and each time he rose his face seemed grimmer and grayer, like Meena’s when the weather changed and her hip was hurting her worse than usual.
“Are you all right?” said Tilja, anxiously.
“I will manage because I must,” he said. “It is the last chance. Foolishly I thought too much of the magical effort I must make, and forgot the ordinary physical cost of walking from one place to another.”
“Couldn’t we have got the roc to take us the whole way?”
“Perhaps, but it is a powerful center of magic in itself. It will wake with everything else when you take the ring out of the box and hold it in your hand, and there will then be more than enough magical forces around us for me to contend with.”
At last the slope became steeper as the avenue rose to the palace gate. On either side the fantastic building stretched away, walls of white and pink marble carved with the wars and triumphs of forgotten Emperors; balconies and arcades dangling with huge-flowered vines; pinnacles and towers, banners and emblems; all the work of generations of master craftsmen toiling to please rulers who expected a fancy dreamed up over supper to have become fact by breakfast time.
The gate appeared to have been carved from one immense block of jade. It was guarded by two bronze dragons, each six times the size of a horse. They looked like real dragons, but Tilja couldn’t be sure. They might have been statues. The living sentries beneath the archway stood just as motionless.
The wall and the buildings behind it were just an outer shell. Inside that stood another palace, even more ornate. From it rose the soaring towers of the Watchers. It was too dazzling to look at long, like a jeweled crown for a giant king, a giant the size of a mountain. Its roofs were lapis lazuli and gold, all set with precious stones. Around it lay a scented garden, with fountains flinging jets of different-colored water far into the air. Directly in front of it was a large open space. It was here the soldiers were paraded.
At first Tilja could only glimpse them between the motionless spectators who ringed the parade ground, but Faheel looked around and then led the way to a door of a tower beside the gateway they had just come through. An enormous soldier with a fierce mustache blocked the entrance.
“Take his hand in yours,” murmured Faheel.
At Tilja’s touch the man came to life. For a moment he stared at her in furious astonishment, then looked up at Faheel. An odd, blank look came into his eyes and he backed slowly into the room behind him. “You can let go now,” said Faheel.
Tilja did so, and the man froze. They walked on past him, and found three soldiers squatting on the floor, gambling. One of them had just thrown the dice, which hung suspended beneath his hand.
Tilja felt an extraordinary impulse to interfere. What possible harm would it have done to leave Faheel for a moment, step across the room, pluck the dice out of the air—her touch moving them into the flow of time—and lay them down as triple sixes on the floor for the men to find when they were woken? Only the urgency of what they were doing stopped her.
There was a winding stair in the corner of the room, too narrow for Tilja to climb beside Faheel so that he could lean his weight on her. He had to go up it on hands and knees, resting every few steps, while Tilja followed, gripping his ankle so as not to lose contact.
At the top they found a small room, richly furnished, where several women stood by a pierced screen that looked out over the heads of the spectators. There were dice on a low table, with cushions around it. Some of the women must have been gambling, like the soldiers below. One had a purse in her hands and was paying another. She’d dropped a gold coin, which hung halfway to the floor. Tilja had never seen such clothes, glorious silks and velvets, brooches, necklaces and earrings. What any one of them was wearing looked as if it might be worth half the wealth of the Valley. On Faheel’s instructions she moved along the line of them, touching their hands, waking them for a few moments before he murmured a word to them. One by one they sank to the floor in a different kind of sleep.
“What would have happened if I’d changed that man’s dice throw?” she asked while he rested again.
“Who knows? Nothing. The whole world. Suppose one man loses a bet he would have won. He needs money to pay. He steals and is found out. He is punished and loses promotion. So he does not become the Emperor’s favorite, does not get to rule and ruin a province, but another man governs it well—why, then, you have changed the happiness of many hundreds of thousands of people. Or the other way round. Time, I tell you, is a great rope. Wearing the ring, I have stood outside it and seen how its strands weave into other strands, back and forth, far beyond the instant in which we all live.
“Now, come, and we will see what we can see.”
The whole parade that Tilja had seen in Faheel’s table was now visible through the screen, rank beyond rank of soldiers, all in glistening armor, with banners and standards and pennoned spears. They had their backs toward Tilja, so she could see nothing of their faces. Beneath their spiked helmets they wore head scarves, something like the women of the Empire wore, different colors for the different companies. Almost all of them must already have been standing still when time had stopped for them, but to one side and toward the front Tilja could see an officer with his head thrown back and mouth open, in the act of shouting a command, and on the opposite side of the parade there was a group of people who must have been on the move when they were halted. A double line of soldiers, bearing drawn scimitars across their shoulders, had just rounded the end of the rank. They were picked men, a bodyguard, fierce and bearded like the ones below in the tower, and a head taller than the men on parade. Whoever they were guarding was still out of sight beyond the rank, but Tilja could see an ornate canopy, followed by the helmeted heads of further guards.