“It’s got a ward on the inside too!”
Chanad looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“Indeed it has,” she said. “But I’m surprised you’re aware of it. A ward that betrays its existence is as useless as no ward at all.”
“I’m not,” said Maja. “I mean I can’t feel the ward itself. But I can just feel all that stuff going on outside it, so I guessed it was there. It was like that coming. Everything’s got a bit of magic in it, rocks, trees, animals, streams—it’s so gentle you don’t notice it, but I noticed when it wasn’t there, so I knew there had to be something.”
Chanad stared at her.
“I have heard of such people,” she said. “Magicians, of course, can sense the presence of magic, but they need to create the means by which they do it, and then to learn how to use it. A few people are born with your ability, as a natural gift, but they very seldom survive infancy. The magic around them—the magic in everyday things, and simple hedge magic—is too strong for them to endure at that age.”
“There wasn’t any magic where I was born,” said Maja. “I never felt it till just a few days ago, when I watched Saranja putting Rocky’s wings on. That really shook me. I’m getting used to it, I think, but just coming across your bridge—I couldn’t have done it without Saranja.”
“You will meet far stronger than that where you are going, if you are who I think you may be. If I am right, I will provide you with what help I can. I am the last of the group that called ourselves the Andarit, the Free Great Magicians. I knew Fodaro, and grieve for him. A good man to the last—a very good man. Too good to be a good magician. Benayu’s mother and father were my colleagues. When we made our move against the Watchers we knew that we might not succeed, and I was chosen to survive until another chance should come. Ancient tradition told us that if it came at all it would be from the north.
“So between us we devised this tower, where I am able to ward myself from the corroding power of my own magic, which, with nothing else to practice upon, would otherwise have eaten me away over the years. I have an unwarded workroom at the top of the tower, but I perform no magic anywhere else within these walls, and do not even step onto my bridge if I can help it. We made all the area around into a magical blank space, as seen from elsewhere in the Empire, large enough to absorb and dissipate any magic I might perform from this center. If the Watchers in Talak were to concentrate their attention on the area they would find me, but they rely on their Seeing Tower, which is not designed to respond to an absence of magic.
“From here I watch the roads leading east and south out of Mord, and bring toward my tower any travelers who interest me. Almost all I return to their road fairly soon, taking from them any memory of where they have been.
“You were unusual, in that one of you—Benayu, I now know—became a bird and began to explore in this direction, so I laid a path for him to find, and you followed it. Later, to my surprise, you seemed to become aware of what was happening. When Benayu tried to take bird form again I stopped him, but nevertheless you came on. Finally I put a barrier of terror in your path, to see how you would react before I let you through. You not only overcame the barrier but came directly to my place of hiding. Only when Saranja told me your names did I understand who you are and why you are here, and know that my time of waiting is at an end. So welcome again.
“First, you can tell me your story while we’re eating. Easiest, perhaps, if we all fetch our own food and carry it through. Since I knew you were coming I’ve had time to prepare something. I like to cook, and I seldom get the chance to do it for anyone more than myself.”
They helped themselves to a pungent-smelling stew, hunks of coarse fresh bread, and green beans. There was sharp pale cider or water to drink, and a creamy mix of honey and brandy and soured goat’s milk and spices for dessert.
“I think you take more pride in your cooking than you do in your magic,” said Ribek.
“I suppose I do,” she said. “It is one of my ways of staying human. Now, tell me what brought you here. Perhaps you’d better start with what you know about our ancestor Tilja Urlasdaughter. Everything begins with her.”
They took it in turn, first the story from the Valley, then what had happened since they had all met, and then their own plans. She stopped them only once, to ask them, just as Fodaro had done, about Faheel’s time-controlling ring, of which she too had never heard.
“Yes,” she said when they had finished. “All that fits in with what I already know. It is astonishing how remembered truth comes down through time. As I said, the only major exception is Faheel’s ring, on which your story hinges. You tell me it stopped the movement of the sun across the sky, the march of the waves across the sea, the breath in the mouths of all the living creatures in the world, for the length of time it took for the roc to fly Tilja and himself from his island in the southern ocean all the way to Talagh. And yet when Tilja, with her gift of annulling magic, closed her hand around it, in that instant the sun and the waves moved on and the creatures of the world went about their business, unaware that there had been any interval between one breath and the next.
“That must be an object of prodigious power. I have never heard of anything remotely like it. I wonder if the Ropemaker ever used it again, after that first time. It sounds as if he may have been a bit afraid of it.”
“That’s what Fodaro thought,” said Benayu. “He’d never heard of it either. And he was a scholar of magic, he used to say. He knew it all, but he couldn’t do it all. Do you think the Watchers know about it?”
“If they do, and if they can find it, then there is no hope,” said Chanad. “That brings me to the chief thing that I have to tell you, which is that the nature of the Watchers has changed from that in your story. Those had been set up by Faheel to police the use of magic throughout the Empire, but they failed in their task because as time went by they became savagely competing powers. Such is the corrosive effect of strong magic. Even among the Andarit I could see this beginning to happen. I could feel it in myself.
“Very few of us are free from it. Faheel had known it in his youth, but had put it aside, and in the end was forced to destroy his own creation because he could not control it in others.
“The Ropemaker was different. He was never interested in power. His passion was knowledge. He would far rather have remained a free agent, wandering the Empire at his own will, seeing and hearing. Until you told me your story I had not known how he was forced to take control, and begin to sort out the chaos that followed the fall of those earlier Watchers—other magicians warring for power, in their ignorance and frenzy releasing forces they could not control, demons roving the land unchecked, sand dunes threatening to engulf whole cities for ransom, and so on. He could not do this without helpers, so he chose those who came to hand and whom he thought he could trust.
“To begin with they worked as an informal group, but when the first urgent tasks were done some decided to leave, while most agreed to stay and help to maintain the order they had achieved, each with their own responsibilities in a more formal structure, though they did not then call themselves the Watchers.
“Knowing how the original Watchers had become corrupted, he persuaded them to bind themselves into a magical covenant to cooperate for the general good of all the peoples of the Empire. This worked well enough, thanks—I now realize—to his mitigating presence in the covenant, since they did not feel him to be in competition with any of them. Then, some two hundred years ago, he told them that he would be away for a while. He gave them no explanation other than that there was something he must do, and do alone. Months went by, and seasons, and years, but still there was no word from him. They searched by all the means at their disposal, but he seemed deliberately to have left no trace.