Again Saranja was silent for a while.
“Well, that’s all over,” she said at last. “I suppose I can stop hating her now.”
The Valley flowed backward beneath them. Maja had never been so far from Woodbourne and had no idea of the names of any of the farms and villages she could see, but Ribek knew the Valley well and told them old scandals and new gossip about the people who lived there, though Maja had to strain to hear through the wind-whistle and wing-thunder. After a while he got hard biscuity bread out of his satchel and passed it forward.
“How come you showed up so pat at Woodbourne, Ribek?” said Saranja. “Or were you just running away?”
“At first I was. Slinking back to Northbeck and hoping for the best—it’s pretty out of the way up there—but, well, I’d known we were for it when the Ice-dragon didn’t show up last winter. My grandfather saw him once, but mostly you don’t. You just know he’s there. I came down to Woodbourne and tried to ask your mother if anything was happening to the cedar magic. She didn’t answer. Her mouth was a slit. She just shook her head and shut the door in my face. So that was that. Nothing for it but to stand and fight and hope for a miracle. It didn’t happen.
“I headed for the river with a bunch of others who’d been in the fight, but the horsemen caught up with us just as we got there. Some of us tried to hold them off while the rest got onto a couple of rafts. That’s when I got hurt, but someone hauled me onto a raft and off we floated. Down river, of course. South. That’s how I finished up less than half a day from Woodbourne. I thought after all I’d better come and see if your mother had changed her mind about talking to me—I’d never have thought well of myself again if I hadn’t. Pretty sure nothing would come of it, but, well, it didn’t turn out like that and here we are.
“Know what we’re talking about, Maja?”
“Me?” said Maja, again startled to be asked. “Er…er…Yes, of course. It’s in the story. There’s always one boy born at Northbeck who can hear what the stream is saying and when he’s old enough he has to climb up into the mountains and sing to the snows every year so that the Ice-dragon comes and blocks the passes with fresh snow and the horsemen can’t get through; and there’s always a girl born at Woodbourne who can hear what the cedars are saying, and when she’s old enough she has to go into the forest to sing to the cedars and feed the unicorns so that they bring the sickness that stops the Emperor’s armies coming through because they’re supposed to be defending us but they’re just as bad as the horsemen.”
“And that’s what I ran away from,” muttered Saranja. “All that rubbish about being bound to those stupid unicorns and cedars.”
Maja’s words, when they’d come, had come with a rush and now she was gasping for breath. She’d had to crane round Saranja’s body so that Ribek could hear her through the wing-thunder. He laughed.
“So you know the story,” he said.
“Do you want me to go on? It’s rather complicated.”
“Let’s get ourselves somewhere a bit more comfortable, so we can talk without having to shout. Your ancestor Tilja and my ancestor Tahl will have seen things differently, and there’s twenty generations of storytelling since then, so the stories themselves may be pretty different by now.”
“All right.”
Time passed, and more time. Gradually Maja became aware of a strange, throbbing sensation running through her—through all of her, body, mind and soul. She had no words for it. She had never felt anything like it before…Yes, she had! Those sudden, fierce thrills when Saranja was conjuring Rocky’s harness up out of nowhere—this was the same kind of thing, but very different, as different as a howling tempest from a breeze so faint that you can’t feel it, and can only tell it’s there by the drift of thistledown it’s carrying along. It came from Rocky.
This was the feel of magic, she realized. When it was strong magic, suddenly happening, when Saranja had whispered the Ropemaker’s real name—Maja knew from the story that must be what she had said—it was like a thunderclap straight overhead, stunning the senses. Things like giving Rocky his wings and harness were thunder not far off, startling in its suddenness, thrilling in its power. But what came from Rocky now was like continuous thunder rolling along distant hills, almost beyond hearing, vaguely menacing but at the same time comforting.
Rocky was magical all the time because the two gold feathers Saranja had found in the ashes of Woodbourne were roc’s feathers, and a roc is a magical animal. Twenty generations ago the magic that protected the Valley started to fail, and four people, Tilja and her grandmother Meena from Woodbourne, and Tahl and his grandfather Alnor from Northbeck, had set out into the Empire to look for the man who had put the magic there in the first place, a magician called Faheel. He had been very old and tired, and had sent them on to look for a magician who called himself the Ropemaker. But while they were on Faheel’s island Tilja had picked up a couple of roc feathers. Then, when they’d found the Ropemaker and he’d done what they asked him, he’d used the feathers to give Meena’s bad-tempered old mare a pair of wings so that Tahl and Alnor could fly safely over the forest, without being killed by the magical forest sickness that was only fatal to men and was now back in place to protect the Valley from the Emperor’s armies.
The story, as Maja had said, was a lot more complicated than that, so she started sorting the rest of it out in her mind for when the time came to tell Ribek the Woodbourne version.
By the time she’d done that they were flying up a prodigious valley carved into the northern mountains. Soon Rocky curved to the right and, still flying strongly, climbed steadily to cross a snow-covered ridge and glide smoothly down into the next valley.
“By all the waters!” said Ribek. “I know where we are! Our mill’s in the next valley! Think we’re far enough in front to spend the night? If we haven’t lost them completely.”
“We’re going to have to stop somewhere,” said Saranja. “Anything to eat at your mill? For him, I mean. He’ll need more than grass after that effort. Assuming we can get him over that.”
She pointed toward the mountain spur now facing them, almost half again as high as the one they’d crossed.
“There’s a good pass a dozen miles south,” said Ribek. “And it’s a mill, you know. Been a rotten year for custom, with all the fighting, so the barn’s full of last year’s grain. We do a line in crimped grain for horse-feed.”
It was drawing toward evening by the time Rocky had beaten his way up through the thinner air to the top of the pass and started the long glide down.
“He’s getting tired,” said Saranja. “No wonder—any ordinary horse would be dead, what he’s done. What are they going to make of him at your mill?”
“If it’s there. If they’re there. Depends whether the horse people came raiding up this far. But if they’re there they’ll be all right. We’re Ortahlsons, remember—my grandad saw the Ice-dragon. But listen. I’ve been thinking. Those fellows who’re after us—they knew we were there. I’d heard an odd noise just as I was getting to Woodbourne, but then you started putting Rocky’s wings on and it stopped, and I decided it didn’t matter. They must’ve been trying to sneak up on us.”
“Yes. My fault. I heard it too, but I was too busy dealing with Rocky to think about it, and I know what engines sound like. You’re right. They’d turned them off and started to drift toward us. The bird-kites are quicker, so they got them out as soon as they were close enough. They’ve got a magician on board. Anything magical the way Rocky is sends out a bit of a signal, and if he’s good enough the magician can pick it up until we can land somewhere and I can take his wings off him, supposing I can. I don’t know anything about flying horses.”