“Take me down,” he whispered. “Come back and fetch the things on the shelf.”
Tahl ran Tilja’s long head scarf under Faheel’s arms so that she could take some of his weight from above while he took most of it on his shoulders, and they eased Faheel down the ladder and made him comfortable on a pile of cushions. Tilja went back upstairs to find what he’d left on the shelf—the ring box and the bunch of grapes she’d brought in from the garden. The ring box had a cord attached, which she slid over her head, and then tucked the box down inside her blouse. She took the grapes and climbed down the ladder. This time, when she stepped off the last rung, the whole thing vanished, and the trapdoor too, leaving nothing but a plain, bare ceiling.
“It is over,” said Faheel, still speaking with effort. “Now we must go. First . . . First I must ask you to help me down to the shore. Once there, I will explain to you what you will need to do to return to your Valley.”
With Tilja and Tahl on each side of him carrying the two baskets of stores, and his arms around their shoulders, he led them slowly toward the western cliffs and down a series of steps to a sandy beach. Meena hobbled along behind, leaning on Alnor’s arm. In his other hand he carried the roses. The raft on which the four travelers had come from Goloroth floated in the shallows, and beside it a strange boat that seemed to be made out of seashell, with a broad stern and a high, curving prow. Faheel asked them to help him sit, and they lowered him onto the sand.
“Now,” he said, “listen carefully. I have given back all my powers . . . given them back to those who first loaned them to me, and should any enemy come I could not defend us. . . . But I still have friends, some of whom will tow me out westward into the current of the Great River, so that I may make my last journey by the common way, like my parents before me. . . . Others will take you back to the southern shore of the Empire. Once there . . . Tilja, you have the grapes from the shelf?”
“They’re in the basket.”
He nodded and straightened his back. Tilja sensed him gathering his last energies for what he now had to say.
“Set them apart and do not touch them until you are safely ashore tomorrow. Then Meena and Alnor must eat them, one at a time, turn and turn about. Eat nothing else until they are gone. But keep the stem carefully and take it with you. When you are safely home you must build a fire and burn it, to undo the magic the grapes did for you. This is most important. Fail to do it and your whole journey fails. Now we must go. Will you help me stand?”
“Is that all?” Meena burst in. “I’m sorry, sir, seeing how tired you are, but I can’t help asking. I mean, isn’t there anything else we’ve got to do? Here we’ve been sowing our barley field all these years, and trudging out winter after winter and singing to the cedars, and Alnor’s lot have been doing the same sort of thing up at Northbeck . . . and I’ve brought a loaf I baked from my field, and Alnor’s got a flask of water from his stream. . . .”
“Ah, yes,” murmured Faheel, smiling and shaking his head, as if he’d forgotten all about it. “Of course. Show me.”
With trembling fingers he broke a few crumbs from the loaf and ate them, and sipped from the flask.
“Honest bread,” he whispered. “Sweet mountain water. I bless them both, but that is all I can do. Asarta’s powers are still there, my friends. Somewhere on your journey you will find another to wake them. Or rather, he will find you—it would be dangerous for you to seek him out. . . .”
His voice trailed away in weakness. He closed his eyes, as if he were about to die where he lay. Meena clicked her tongue in frustration. Alnor was frowning and shaking his head. Part of Tilja felt like laughing aloud. The cunning old man, waiting till now, pretending he’d forgotten, making it seem a little thing. But even as she suppressed her smile it struck her that this was the start of something very uncomfortable. From now on, day after day after day, she would be keeping the secret of the ring from her friends. So far, they had all trusted each other, absolutely. But from now on, day after day after day, she was going to be lying to them.
Faheel’s lips moved.
“Now, if you will help me onto the raft . . . ,” he whispered.
“You’re not going in the boat?” said Meena in astonishment.
“That is for you. It is safe from Tilja’s touch. I go the common way.”
They lifted him to his feet and he raised his head and spoke rather more loudly, apparently calling to the empty sea.
“Friends, we are ready.”
By now the sun had touched the horizon, and the water stretched its reflected light into a rippling golden highway across a great reach of fiery ocean. Out of that brightness, just beyond the raft and the boat, rose two dark figures, man-shaped as far as Tilja, screwing up her eyes, could see, but twice the size of any human. They called a deep-voiced greeting to Faheel and then, in a flurry of foam, started to wrestle with something just below the surface. Having so often needed to back the unwilling Calico between the shafts of a cart, Tilja recognized at once what they were up to, and soon she could see at times the gleaming dark backs of the creatures they were struggling to harness to the boat and the raft.
When they were ready they backed off and waited with only their heads above the surface. Tahl and Tilja helped Faheel onto the raft, where he lay down.
“My roses,” he whispered.
All four of them stood round the raft with the wavelets lapping up to their knees and strewed the roses around him. He smiled and closed his eyes. He looked so peaceful that Tilja found herself weeping, though still not with sadness.
He beckoned, and she bent to catch his words.
“. . . the Ropemaker’s name . . . I broke his inner wards to call to him . . . Ramdatta . . .”
Ramdatta
14
A Bunch of Grapes
Faheel’s raft was a small dark shape dwindling toward the sunset. By the time the last sliver of the sun slid below the horizon it was no more than a dot, which disappeared in the brief dusk, and then there was night, with innumerable stars. None of them spoke for a long while as their seashell boat skimmed away north from the island, towed by the unseen team beneath the surface.
“Well, so we’re going home,” said Alnor at last.
“And somewhere along the way we’re going to find a magician who’ll tell us what to do about the Valley,” said Meena. “Fat lot of sense it makes to me, I must say.”
“Nothing’s going to make much sense unless Til tells us what’s been going on while we’ve been asleep,” said Tahl. “It’s bad enough missing it all, but not even knowing . . .”
“I’m starving,” said Meena. “May as well eat while she’s telling us.”
All Tilja wanted to think about was the beauty and sadness of Faheel’s going, so she started reluctantly, but then found it somehow comforting to relive the day and a night and less than a day more that she had spent in his company. By the time she had finished, the moon had moved halfway across the sky, and she lay down to sleep still full of the peacefulness of the island.
When they rose and looked around them in the morning the island was out of sight astern and the dark shore of the Empire lay ahead. Alnor woke in a bad mood and sat hunched and sullen, but gave no sign of what was troubling him. Tahl on the other hand was full of chat, still thrilled and fascinated by everything Tilja had told them the night before, especially what might happen to the machinery of the Empire with the Watchers gone from their towers and the Emperor himself dead.
“You may not even need way-leaves,” he said as they breakfasted. “Perhaps the whole system’s broken down. If it hasn’t, we’re in trouble. You two can’t go anywhere without them, except back to Goloroth.”