“What’s that for?” said Tahl.
“It is His Lordship’s pleasure,” said the messenger. “That is reason enough.”
He led them down to the entrance, where a groom came and took Calico. Then he showed them into a pleasant room with cushions strewn around and fruit and drinks on small tables for those waiting to see the Lord Kzuva or his officials. They could hear the river whispering below them, and feel its coolness through the stone floor.
There were a dozen other people already there, but they had hardly settled before the messenger came back and beckoned them out. This time he led them through several grand apartments and up a noble flight of stairs to another, larger room. Here a whole crowd of people were waiting to do their business. The messenger whispered to the official sitting by the doorway, nodded a haughty good-bye, and left.
Tilja assumed that this time they’d have to take their turn, but the official glanced at them, checked a list, glanced up frowning, shrugged bafflement, rose and led them not to the handsome doorway opposite the entrance but to a little door in the side wall, where he showed them into a much smaller room and told them to wait. They stood around uneasily until the hangings on the far wall stirred and two women slipped quietly in.
For a moment Tilja didn’t recognize either of them. Then she saw that the shorter one was Lananeth, and from that made the leap to seeing that the other was Zara, the Lord Kzuva’s magician. But the change in them both was shocking. There was that unnatural stillness and smoothness about them which all powerful magicians seemed to have—that look of a statue brought to life. Zara had already had something of it when they had met her in her warded room in Talagh, but then there had still been something human about her. Now even their smiles of greeting were stone smiles. The change was far greater in Lananeth.
“Our Lord Kzuva bids you welcome,” said Zara.
“How did you know we were coming?” asked Tahl.
“The forest told us. It has no language, but we could sense it struggling to master someone who was draining its power away, and guessed that could only be Tilja. But we were not expecting . . . you two are Alnor and Meena?”
“That’s us,” said Meena. “Fa . . . I think it’s all right to say his name now—anyway Lananeth knows it—Faheel gave us a bunch of grapes to eat to make us like this, so we could travel home with the other two and nobody’d ask any questions. And very nice too, it’s been.”
Exactly together, as if moving in time to unheard music, Zara and Lananeth stepped forward and each raised a hand and held it close beside Meena’s cheek, then Alnor’s, and after a moment or two, still exactly together, lowered their hands and backed away.
“We do not know how this is done,” said Zara. “You are in our warded room, where we are at our strongest, and still we cannot feel that you are not just what you seem.”
“We are, too,” said Meena. “Tilja touching us doesn’t make any difference, either.”
“He has changed time, not you. Somehow he has brought you out of your past and put you into this time.”
“Like Asarta undoing her years in the story, you mean?” said Tahl. “After she’d given the ring to Reyel and Dirna to take to Faheel?”
The magicians lost their smiles. Tilja gulped with sudden tension. She’d never imagined that the existence of the ring might slip into a conversation like this, and anyway she couldn’t have warned the others about it without telling them more than she dared. Tahl was staring at her, frowning. She shook her head in warning. He nodded and looked away.
“Ring?” said Zara softly. “Indeed, there was once a ring, but Asarta took it . . . or so it is said. Perhaps you should tell us the story. And your own.”
The four from the Valley looked at each other. Tilja could sense that the other three were feeling her unease by now. Alnor took charge.
“I think you’d better tell us something first,” he said aggressively. “How do we know you’re the people we met before? You’ve changed. You’re doing everything exactly together. Lananeth has not said a word. And you keep talking about ‘we’ as if Lananeth had not got a mind of her own. Is she in your power? Or are you both in someone else’s?”
The two smiles returned, but now Tilja was certain she didn’t believe them.
“We are one, joined,” said Zara. “It became necessary when His Lordship asked us to wake the forest. This was a very big undertaking, far too great for either one of us alone. Joined, it was just within our powers, but the effort itself changed us, wove us into each other’s mind, so now, though our bodies have separate existences, our thoughts are one thought.”
“And what’s happened to your feelings, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Meena. “Or haven’t you got any, anymore? All the thoughts you’ll ever think, they aren’t any good without feelings.”
Still with the same stony smiles the two women gently shook their heads. Tilja had been unhappily watching Lananeth while the magician spoke, looking for some hint of the strong and friendly human who had welcomed them to Ellion’s house. For a moment that Lananeth seemed to be there, a sad and desperate glimmer in the depths of the calm brown eyes. Yes, she was sure. Quite deliberately Tilja took a pace forward, put an arm round Lananeth’s shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.
The numbness exploded through her. Lananeth juddered and went rigid. Zara too, standing beside her. Zara became a sort of thick mist, which became taller and thinner, then solidified, and now where Zara had been, a man was standing, tall and skinny, dressed all in black. His eyes had no pupils. They were the color of ice. They blazed fury, but he too, for the moment, was locked rigid. Before he could break the spell Tilja reached out and took him by the wrist.
He was strong, far stronger than Dorn. Though she had taken him by surprise, he fought her with his fury, gathering it together, building it into a focused power.
She took Lananeth’s wrist in her other hand and with a huge effort closed her mind, shutting out the man, the fury, and searching into her own depths to find her central, secret lake among the mountains. Now the three of them stood on its shore. But its surface was torn by a mountain storm. Unheard winds shrieked between the snow peaks. The whole slope opposite was covered by the menacing dark shadow of the man, with Lananeth’s and Tilja’s shadows small beside it. The shadows were not thrown by any sun. There was none. Never again. No sun.
Still grasping both wrists, Tilja stepped into the raging water. There was no bottom. She sank, dragging the other two with her. Down they went, and down. The man melted into the water, dwindling away. She looked up and in the dim, watery light saw it was Zara and Lananeth she was dragging behind her. She could live in this water as long as she chose, but they would drown. She let go of their wrists, put an arm round each of them, and simply by choosing to do so rose to the surface, pulled them out and laid them on the grass. The storm was gone. Sunlight glittered off the glaciers, reflected in the barely rippled surface of the lake. Reluctantly she turned away and came back into the outer world.
She was in the warded room in Lord Kzuva’s castle, holding Lananeth and Zara by the wrists. A black-clad body lay at their feet. Tilja could see the back of the head, an old, bald cranium, yellow and blotched and shiny. When she let go of the two magicians they both crumpled to the floor.
All this in an instant. Meena, Tahl and Alnor were still picking themselves up after being buffeted aside, as if by an explosion in the middle of the room, when, from somewhere outside, came a tremendous series of crashes, dwindling away amid the yells of human voices.
Tilja barely heard them. Shuddering with exhaustion and relief, she too collapsed and buried her face in her hands, gasping for air.