Still, somehow, and with increasing effort, she seemed to be holding it back. No. It wasn’t the forest itself that she was holding, but something else, some kind of made magic that was using the power of the forest to try to crush her. It was the same thing that had controlled the fungus that had almost trapped Calico. Again she concentrated, and again the thing seemed to yield.
But this time there had been nothing for her to lay her hand against and shrivel, and after a brief respite the pressure returned, closing in on her like a gradually tightening fist. The others were feeling it too. Alnor and Tahl, who had at first walked easily beside her, now had their shoulders pressed against Calico’s flanks, and the fingers that grasped Tilja’s ankles felt like iron shackles. Meena had her arms around her, hugging her so close that it was hard to breathe. Calico had shortened her stride and was moving as if she were leaning against a horse collar, with a full load behind her.
Faheel, Tilja thought dimly, had known powers like this. He had made them his friends. She remembered waiting below through a timeless afternoon while those powers had gathered to say farewell to him, calling to him as they had come. Perhaps this forest had been one of them.
With an effort she straightened her back and called aloud.
“Faheel sent us. He is our friend. We are doing his work.”
The dead silence absorbed her voice. Nothing happened. The pressure grew and grew.
“This won’t do,” Meena croaked in her ear. “I’ll try and tell ’em. Maybe they’ll listen to me. They’re trees, aren’t they?”
She drew a deep, gasping breath and, faintly, creakingly, started to sing.
The song was at first wordless, no more than a humming in the throat, slow and wavering, but after a little while Meena began to repeat the name of Faheel, drawing it out into a dozen floating notes.
Her voice grew stronger. Little by little the pressure began to ease. Steadily Tilja concentrated her will against the thing, whatever it was, that she had felt using the forest’s power. There was a sudden moment of change, of breakthrough, a rush of release. Tahl moved away from Calico’s side and looked around, interested. Alnor let go of Tilja’s hand and took Meena’s. The fog became palely golden and a little while later they were walking along a track with the sun already westering ahead of them so that it lit the tree trunks on their right almost as far as the ground. Meena stopped singing.
“Done it!” she said, triumphantly. “It wasn’t the forest’s fault, mind you—there’s no real malice in trees. Something was making it act that way, but it didn’t really like it. But that’s better, isn’t it?”
The silence was silence still, but they weren’t afraid any longer to speak. They knew that the forest had fully withdrawn its menace when Calico stopped in her tracks to sample a patch of grass growing beside the road.
The sun was full in their faces by the time they came to the end of the pass. Only on the long descent to Songisu did it cross Tilja’s mind that the Ropemaker, after all, hadn’t been waiting for them in the hills. She felt strangely unworried about this. Of course there was still time. Though she hadn’t known it, he had been with them on their way south, in the shape of one animal or another, all the way across these northern plains, ever since they had landed from their raft. He would be waiting for them here.
The stars were out before they reached the way station at Songisu. To their surprise this was manned, and running, much as it had been on the outward journey.
There was a guard dozing at the entrance, wearing what Tilja recognized as Lord Kzuva’s livery. They might have slipped in unnoticed, as usual, if Tahl hadn’t spoken to him.
The guard looked up, blinking.
“Where you from, then?” he asked, yawning.
“We are on our way back from Goloroth,” said Alnor.
The guard frowned and sat up.
“Try another one,” he said. “Forest’s not letting anyone through no longer. Lord Kzuva, he got his magicians to see to it.”
“We told the forest what we were doing and it let us through,” said Alnor.
“Did it, now?” said the guard, impressed. “All right, then, make yourselves at home. You’re the only ones here. You’re lucky to find us still going—we’ll be closing right down any day now. Stalls are closed already, but we’ll find you a bite.”
He and his wife joined them as they ate and questioned them eagerly about what was happening in the Empire, so Tahl and Meena joyfully fed them their fill of wonders and horrors.
“Well, you’ll be finding things easier, now on,” he told them when they’d finished. “The magicians have got things pretty well under control up here. It’s only a couple of women, mind you, but they’re making a real go of it, I give them that.”
It was strange to be back in something like the old Empire. Strange to find it a relief, order instead of chaos, the grip of strong rule instead of the whirling free-for-all of loose magic and lawlessness. Soon, perhaps, they would have found this as oppressive as they had on the journey south, but now it simply meant that they could relax their guard and hurry on.
The traffic increased, though the way stations were less busy than they’d been on the outward journey. The wardens asked no more than the fee and the official bribe. The talk in the evenings was cheerful and ordinary.
But every mile they walked Tilja became more and more oppressed and withdrawn. A new and terrible fear had begun to obsess her. What if Moonfist had already found and destroyed the Ropemaker? Then, when at last she took out the hair tie and laid the ring beside it, only Moonfist would come. No, she told herself, I won’t believe it. There’s still time. He’ll be here, somewhere, waiting for us.
Just after they had left the way station on the third morning after the Pirrim Hills she stopped to watch a golden cockerel scratching in the dust by the road. It was almost the right color, but not gawky enough, she decided, and was about to move on when a man came up and spoke to her. He was wearing the Lord Kzuva’s livery, and she had half noticed him studying the groups of travelers as they came through the gateway.
He looked at her for a moment and nodded.
“Yes,” he said pompously. “You were with them. Five months back you came with”—he studied a clay tablet—“Qualif and his wife to the Lord Kzuva’s house in Talagh.”
Tilja recognized him now.
“That’s right,” she said. “You let us in.”
“Where is your friend?”
“They’re just there.”
The other three had seen what was happening. Tahl came hurrying back.
“Three?” said the man. “Yes, this boy, and the horse, but . . . there was a blind man and a lame old woman. You were taking them to Goloroth, I was told. Who are these others?”
“They’re our cousins,” said Tahl. “They went south before we did.”
“I’ve no instructions about them,” said the messenger.
“What do you want?” asked Tahl. “We’re in a hurry. We’ve got an urgent message for the Lady Lananeth.”
“She’s the one sent for you. She’s at the Lord Kzuva’s house. Your cousins can carry on home.”
“She’ll want to see them too,” said Tahl calmly. “They’re the ones with the message.”
The messenger hemmed and hawed, for the sake of it, but then, to Tilja’s relief, nodded.
The side road along which the messenger eventually led them dipped into a wooded valley with a sluggish river winding through. They came round a bend and there was the Lord Kzuva’s house. They stopped in their tracks and stared.
“My, that’s something!” Meena gasped.
Tilja thought it was the most beautiful building she had ever seen, not a house but a small palace, intricately varied and ornate, built on a series of massive bridges across the river. Workmen were busy adding another story to a structure of bamboo scaffolding that already rose well above the tallest pinnacle. Others at the center of the network seemed to be building some kind of column.