Something was puzzling her, something she’d seen only just before, but for a moment couldn’t quite lay her mind on. Frowning, she glanced back at the officer giving the command, young, slight, beardless . . . a blink, and the thing became obvious . . . all of them! The head scarves, their smallness compared to the men, the very way they stood and carried themselves . . . a whole regiment of them!
With a flash of intuition she realized what they were for.
“They’re women!” she gasped. “They can go through the forest! The Emperor’s going to use them to retake the Valley!”
“Yes,” he said quietly, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.
“Can’t you do something?”
“Later, perhaps. Look now. Over there beyond them. By the gateway, on the right.”
Unwillingly Tilja did as she was told. On either side of the doors of the central palace there was a raised terrace, from which groups of people, fantastically garbed, were watching the parade. Some had great plumed headdresses, or steeple hats with floating veils. Some wore jeweled masks, or the skins of exotic beasts with their fanged heads snarling above their own. Others had robes so voluminous, so weighted with jewels, that it took several slave children to carry their hems.
The group directly opposite Tilja were stranger than any. Several of them looked hardly human at all, though they wore clothes and stood like people. One woman—was it a woman?— seemed to have six arms. Another had no face at all, only a pale, smooth blank beneath a plain black velvet cap. Tilja knew who these creatures were before Faheel spoke.
“Fifteen Watchers,” he muttered. “Four still on watch in their towers. Dorn is dead. When the Emperor has finished his inspection of the regiment, a new Watcher will be installed. Do you see your Ropemaker? My table showed us that he is in or near this courtyard.”
The wonder and excitement of the last few hours had driven Tilja’s worries about the Ropemaker from her mind. Now, at this last instant, they came rushing back
“The Ro-Ropemaker?” she stammered. “But . . . I . . . I meant to ask you . . . if . . . if he was the unicorn, then he almost killed Ma!”
Faheel nodded.
“We all make mistakes,” he said sadly. “The more powerful we are, the worse they will be. I have no time now to explain. I must ask you to trust me when I tell you that this was a mistake in innocence. But once your Ropemaker accepts the powers of a Watcher he will be lost beyond recovery. Some of those who stand there now were once honorable magicians. Dorn had been my own pupil.”
He waited. Tilja realized he was allowing her, even now, to decide to refuse to help him. That itself decided her. She nodded and turned to the screen.
“Do not stare at them,” he muttered. “They may sense your attention. Look for the Ropemaker.”
Tilja searched along the terrace. Could she have missed that extraordinary headdress among all the other fantastic costumes? No, not on the right-hand side. Wait. Under the little door, close to the inner end . . . The top half of the figure was in deep shadow, but she could see a trousered leg, as far up as the hip, the leg of a tall man with a curiously gawky stance, both awkward and powerful. . . .
“There,” she whispered. “He was just coming out of that door.”
“Good,” said Faheel. “Then we are ready. I will tell you what I am trying to do. My object is to prevent your friend being installed as a Watcher, and perhaps, if all goes well, to destroy the whole system of the Watchers. In passing I may be able to do what you ask for your Valley.
“These woman warriors are not here by choice. They have been snatched from their homes at their Emperor’s will, and trained to recapture your Valley. That is not their only purpose. The Emperor has peculiar tastes. He is delighted by women dressed in uniform, so he holds these parades often, and takes any that catch his eye for his own use. The women are furious about this, and long to return to their homes, but they are afraid. The punishments for desertion and mutiny are unspeakable. Now I propose to make use of both his lust and their anger.
“But I dare not use more strength than I must. Whatever I do will wake the Watchers, and I shall need to hold them off for at least a little time, or we will both be destroyed and all will be lost.
“So, when I tell you, you will take the ring out of the box and clasp it in your hand. The world will move on its course once more. After a little while I shall work a very ordinary bit of village magic, a love charm, as it were, beneath the notice of the Watchers. When this has had its effect I shall wake the anger of the soldier women. What then happens should be enough to distract the Watchers on the terrace, and I will use what strength I have left to hold off those in the towers until events have taken their course, and then I will tell you to put the ring back in its box, and time will stop, and we will go as we came.
“And if I should fail . . .”
He paused, and she looked up, waiting. More strongly than ever now she could feel his immense age, his frailty, his weariness. His voice became little more than a whisper.
“If I should fail, you must put the ring back in the box and go by yourself. The roc will wake at your presence and carry you to my island. As you pass between shore and shore, take the ring and throw it into the sea. In the time that would have been a day and a night for you, had the sun still moved through the sky, the effect will cease and your friends will wake. You will be safe enough on my island.”
He straightened and spoke more strongly.
“Now we begin. Take the ring out of the box.”
Fail? With the whole of the next age poised in the balance? Now, as soon as I take hold of the ring?
Tilja almost froze at the thought, but then a quite different thought steadied her, ordinary, everyday, but as important to her as the balance of the whole next age.
I promised Da I’d get back to Woodbourne.
Her hands didn’t shake as she opened the box and closed her fingers round the ring. At once she felt the strange deep humming that she had felt when she had held the ring in her hand in Faheel’s room, the long unchanging tremor that seemed to be vibrating through all creation, apart from her own body. The women on the floor of the room didn’t stir from the enchanted sleep into which Faheel had thrown them, but the gold coin finished its fall and went rolling across the floor. Beyond the screen the parade flowed smoothly into movement. Drums and gongs, pipes and trumpets thundered, blared and whistled as the soldiers came marching round the end of the rank, followed by two resplendent court officials, and then the leading pair of slaves who carried the portable throne beneath the canopy, and then the throne itself, more bearers, dignitaries and soldiers.
Tilja got a clear look at the man on the throne as it turned the corner. He was wearing a small crown with three golden feathers at the front. Beneath that his face was pale as a mushroom, fleshy, with a snub nose and pale lips showing through a weedy little beard. He didn’t look any older than the young men Tilja had watched kick-fighting at the Gathering, but his body was so fat that she wondered whether he could have walked even a few steps without help. Where had she seen that shape before? Yes! The inflated goatskin floats on the raft that had brought them down the river! Despite the glittering surcoat that enveloped it, the gross shape looked more like one of those than anything human.