“That’s the best we can do,” he said, rising. “Nothing’s going to wake her till she’s ready, and that won’t be for a day or two yet, at a guess.”
He took Saranja’s shoulders and Maja her feet and between them they dragged her into the nearest hut, laid her on sheepskins on one of the rough bunks and covered her with a blanket. When they came out Benayu picked up the jewel, walked a couple of paces down the slope and laid it at his feet. Maja watched him stretch out and turn slowly, taut with concentration, pointing in succession at three boulders spread across the slope, then at the forest edge around and behind the huts, and back to the first hut. A barely visible flicker of light followed his movement and she could feel the rich, humming vibrations of magic as it leaped from mark to mark. Satisfied, he settled down and crouched over Zald-im-Zald, but then glanced up at her.
“That’s enough of a screen, I hope,” he said. “Anyway, it’s as much as I can manage. They’re bound to be looking this way. There’s too much hedge magic going on for them to have noticed what I was doing to Zald just now, but dealing with the whole thing’s going to be bigger stuff. Why don’t you go out beyond the screen, Maja, and give me a shout if any of it gets through? Sponge can go with you in case of trouble. Just call him. That’s all right, boy. Go and keep an eye on her.”
Maja couldn’t feel the screen at all until she reached it. Then there was a slight extra tingle as she passed through it. She could feel it stretching from point to point like dew-beaded spiderwebs slung between bushes on an autumn morning. Beyond it nothing.
Without Sponge beside her it would have been scary out there on the edge of the strange, deep-shadowed woods. She tangled her fingers into his fur and waved to Benayu that she was ready. He crouched over the jewel again. Ribek had raised himself onto his elbow to watch him.
For some while he didn’t seem to be doing anything except staring at the jewel. At one point his body tensed, but then he relaxed and continued his inspection. After about five minutes he raised his right hand, extended his forefinger, and with the fingertip held slightly above them started to trace the pattern of jewels, working from the outer edges inward. In the gathering dusk each stone glimmered or twinkled with its natural light as the finger passed above it, and even at this distance she could see the glow of it flicker off Ribek’s face, as though a fiery spark were running from jewel to jewel. Faintly she could feel the web of Benayu’s screen flex and quiver as it responded to the passing shocks of magic. At last he rose and waved to her to return. When she reached him, he was trembling slightly, and there were beads of sweat on his upper lip.
“I think it was all right,” she said. “I could feel something happening, but only just. I wouldn’t have if I’d been further away.”
“Trickier than I thought,” he said. “There was one nasty moment. I knew it was probably booby-trapped, because Fodaro had warned me about that. When we took the sheep to market in Mord he used to look the stalls over for amulets and charms, and buy anything he thought might be useful. Sometimes the dealers had no idea what they were for, and when we got home we’d find out and sell them on or give them to the other shepherds. Anyway, I was just starting to disarm the trap when I realized it was a bit simple for a thing like Zald-im-Zald, and I found the trap itself was booby-trapped. That was a tricky one.
“You know, it’s a really amazing object. I don’t think we should break it up completely—I don’t know if we could, safely. Most of the little stones round the outside are just ornaments, and we could take a few of those, perhaps, and get somebody to replace them later. But look. This is the one that kept Saranja going. These two are healers, for burns and wounds. We can try the wound one on your leg in a moment, Ribek. This one is something very strange, very old. I don’t dare meddle with it in case it’s something I can’t screen. These two are finders—you give one to the person you want to keep track of, or hide it on them if you don’t want them to know, and you can always find them. This one drives out fear. This will stop you getting fever. And so on. I don’t think this one’s got any powers of its own, but kings and heroes have been killed for it again and again, and that cranks up the power of all the others. And these are locks. They’re to guard the amber in the middle and keep the power in it sleeping. I don’t dare touch that either, but it must be something really big, fifth-level, at least—sixth, even. You can do all sorts of things with amber. It comes from the far north, from the top of the world. They do a different kind of magic there.
“Now let’s see what we can do about Ribek’s wound. You want to try, Maja? This one here. Middle finger of your left hand, three turns to the left and three to the right to activate it, and the same to put it to rest. They all open pretty much the same way, these basic charms.”
“You don’t need Saranja’s own hand?” said Ribek.
“You would for most of them. She’s been wearing Zald long enough for it to have attached itself specifically to her, but that wouldn’t make sense with a woundsain. It draws its healing power from the person who’s holding it, so you can’t use it on yourself. Trouble, Maja?”
Maja had reached unsuspecting toward Zald-im-Zald. The stone he’d shown her seemed not much different from any of the others, a clear, pinkish gold about the size of her fingernail. She could sense the sleeping power of the whole great object, but it didn’t trouble her. Then, just before her finger touched the surface, something had seemed to leap across the gap, and instinctively she’d snatched her hand away.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It was just a surprise. It didn’t hurt.”
This time she managed not to flinch, though the buzzy sensation continued as she circled her fingertip over the surface of the jewel, and ceased only when she picked it out of its setting and cradled it in her palm. Now all she could feel was the quiet flow of something passing from her to it.
She waited while Ribek unwound the bloodstained cloths from his leg, carefully cutting them free with his knife-point where they had stuck to the flesh. The wound, when he reached it, looked perhaps marginally better than it had when Saranja had dressed it a few hours back, but was still oozing blood and pus.
“Do I just touch the place with it, and it’s well again?” said Maja. “It feels…oh…gentler than that.”
Benayu didn’t answer, so she looked up and saw that he was no longer watching, but leaning back against the wall of the hut and gazing out over the darkened distances.
“Start with an easy bit and see what happens,” suggested Ribek.
She experimented, and saw the edges of a minor laceration gradually close together as she stroked the stone along it until the exposed flesh was covered with soft, pinkish, new-healed skin.
Behind her Benayu gave a deep and lonely sigh and shuddered himself back into the world.
“We’ll have to go through Mord,” he said. “It’s the only road south. And there’s a woman in the market there who mostly deals in charms and stuff, but she does jewels as a sideline. We can sell something out of Zald to her. I really don’t want to sell any more of the flock than I have to. It depends how long I’m away, and whether I’ve got any money when I come back. If I haven’t, and I’m gone for months and months, he’ll have to keep the lot, and I’ll start again the way Fodaro did, curing the shepherds’ flocks and making amulets and charms that actually work.
“I really love shepherding. They’re a separate tribe, you know, the shepherds all along these mountains, with their own language and their own customs. They won’t let anyone else join them or use their pastures. They’re very proud and fierce, the women as well as the men. When Fodaro first brought me here—I was only two then—they had an infectious gum rot spreading through their flocks along the whole range, and he cured it for them and spent all one summer cleaning the snails that carried it out of their pastures, so they let him stay and gave him some sheep to get started with. They don’t live in one place. They move to and fro in a pattern that allows the grass to recover, so we did that too, some of the time, as a way of not drawing attention to what Fodaro found back at our pasture. The great thing about them is that they know who they are and where they belong and what their purpose is. I really love that. I love the life. It hasn’t been at all like what Saranja was saying. I’ve never felt I was carrying a terrible burden. I don’t now. I know who I am, and what I’m for. I’m going to destroy the Watchers, and then I’m going to go back to shepherding.”