“No. It was cleaned out six months ago.”
“What’s in them?” Boyd pointed to the massive black jars that stood against the far wall.
“Nothing — they’re empty.” As he spoke, Niall’s heart contracted with foreboding. The jar in which he had placed the two pendants was broken, so that one fragment was lying on the floor, together with the stone plug that had sealed the neck. Boyd caught the gold-colored glint in the lamplight.
“Look, there’s something in this one.” He started to bend forward.
Niall said sharply: “Don’t touch!”
Boyd straightened up obediently. Niall took the lamp from him, and knelt on one knee. The jar had been cracked into three pieces, as if struck with a sledgehammer. Two pieces remained upright; the third had fallen down.
His first thought was that the jar had been accidentally broken by a servant — perhaps someone had removed the stone plug, found it unexpectedly heavy, and dropped it back into the neck, splitting the jar. Then he realized that this was improbable. No one knew that he had put the pendants into the jar, so no one had any reason to look into it.
Niall studied the pendants, holding the lamp close to them, then reached out cautiously and touched them. They were completely inert. He picked them up and held them at arm’s length.
Boyd said: “There was one of those back in the hospital. What are they?”
“They are worn by the servants of the magician. Do you know about the magician?”
Boyd nodded. “Uncle Simeon’s been telling us.”
“Then you know they can be dangerous.”
As he was speaking, Niall was trying to untangle the chains of the pendants; it was impossible; they had been virtually knotted together. Yet he could clearly remember dropping them from the glass into the jar, and noticing that they were separate. It should have been impossible for them to become entangled. He finally gave a hard tug that snapped one of the chains, and was able to pull them apart. Boyd asked: “Why are you doing that?”
“Because when they are separated they have less power.”
If he had been alone, Niall would have taken the pendants to the white tower. Instead, he dropped them separately into two stone jars, deliberately choosing the two that were furthest apart, and carefully resealing them with the stone plugs.
As they were returning up the stairs, Boyd asked: “But who broke the jar?”
“The magician.”
Boyd gazed at him with astonishment. “He’s been here?”
“No. But the pendants are here, and that is enough. That is why they are so dangerous.”
Boyd was full of questions, but Niall answered them in a state of abstraction. He was still wondering about the broken jar, and about the effect of the two pendants. It probably meant that the magician was aware of everything that had happened in the palace in the past two days. Niall cursed himself for his carelessness, and vowed to take them to the white tower at the first opportunity.
His room was empty; Jarita, like many other women in the palace, was inclined to take a siesta in the afternoon. He laid the box containing the lakeweed on the table, and removed the metal circlet from his pocket and placed it beside it. Now he became aware of the pressure of some object against his thigh; it was the green figurine. Before Boyd could ask what it was, Niall said: “Tell me about the Gullstrand apparatus.”
“Shall I go and fetch the textbook?”
“No. just tell me what you can remember.”
Boyd wrinkled his brow. “Well, let’s see. . . It’s something about nerve pathways in the brain. They carry different impulses. . .” He stopped, drew a deep breath, and began again. “They discovered that if someone has damage to some particular area of the brain — let’s say he falls out of a tree and can’t use his left hand — he’d often recover without any help — especially if he kept trying to use the hand. And that wasn’t because the damaged area in the brain had healed up. It was because he’d developed new nerve pathways around the damaged area. I think that’s correct, anyway.”
Niall nodded. “It sounds right.”
“So this man Gullstrand thought they must be discovering the new pathways by trial and error. So he invented this thing to make it easier. It keeps on stimulating different nerve pathways at random. It’s a bit like sending a lot of people off down dark lanes, carrying torches. Sooner or later, one finds a way.”
Niall nodded slowly. He was beginning to understand some of the strange sensations he had experienced when he left the hospital. New nerve pathways would explain the sensation of freshness and newness, as if seeing things for the first time. Yet he still failed to understand that other sensation: as if his brain was on a swing, swooping backwards and forwards, so that objects seemed to come closer, then recede. Even thinking about it seemed to revive it, bringing a momentary feeling of dizziness.
He asked Boyd: “Can you describe how you felt when you tried it?”
“There was a strange sort of flash — as if somebody had hit me on the head. Then I felt sick. Then I began to get a strange sort of feeling as though everything was alive. . .”
“Alive?”
“That’s right. And as if I was being watched. It began to get better after that — a sort of excited feeling.”
Niall picked up the circlet. “I’m going to try it on this girl. . .”
“Can I come?”
“Of course.”
In the corridor he almost bumped into Dona, who was carrying an armful of children’s clothes. When she saw Niall, she flushed with pleasure. “Hello. I haven’t seen you for a long time.”
“No. I’ve been very busy.” Her smile made him feel guilty. There was a time when he had intended to marry Dona. And although nothing had ever been said, he knew that she was aware of it. The duties of kingship had made him push the idea to the back of his mind. Yet he still experienced the same curious feeling of gladness every time he saw her, a glow of affection that made him want to take her in his arms.
Boyd was staring at her with obvious curiosity. Niall hastened to introduce them. “This is Boyd, Simeon’s nephew. This is my cousin Dona.”
They exchanged smiles, and Boyd made the odd little half-bow that was the standard formal greeting between males in the city of the bombardier beetles.
There was a moment of embarrassed silence, then Dona looked down at the circlet in Niall’s hand. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s a. . .” Niall would have preferred to leave it unexplained, but Boyd broke in eagerly: “It’s called a Gullstrand apparatus, and we’re going to try it on this girl who’s been bitten by a spider.”
“Which girl?” It was obvious that Dona knew nothing about it.
Niall said: “Come and see.” He spoke reluctantly, feeling that Boyd had obliged him to issue the invitation. For some reason, he experienced deep inner resistance to allowing his womenfolk to see the unconscious girl.
But Dona immediately placed her pile of washing on the floor outside the door. “Yes, I’d like to.”
The girl was lying there, exactly as Niall had left her that morning, with the blanket drawn up to her chin. The tangled bundle of web that Simeon had cut from her body still lay on the floor. Her breathing was scarcely perceptible. The face with its closed eyes looked as peaceful as a sleeping child.
Dona said: “She’s beautiful.”
For some odd reason, Niall felt embarrassed by the remark. Without further delay he took the gold circlet and slipped it onto her head, with the two ends behind her ears.
For a moment nothing happened. Then the girl’s head jerked on the pillow and Niall knew that the flash of light had penetrated her sleeping brain. As they all watched intently, the girl’s eyelids began to twitch. Boyd said: “It’s working.”
As he spoke, her eyes opened and she stared at Niall. Her hands moved convulsively under the blanket, as if she was trying to free herself. Then, with a suddenness that startled them all, she sat up, as if impelled by a spring. Her eyes stared directly into Niall’s, and she seemed to be on the point of asking him who he was. Then the eyes seemed to change. She continued to look at Niall, but it was as if she had ceased to be aware of him, or as if she had become blind. A moment later she fell backward on to the pillow, and lay there as before, her face turned to the ceiling. The only difference was that her breathing had become faster. But after a few moments, even this subsided, and she seemed to relapse into deep unconsciousness. Niall pulled the blanket — which had fallen down — over her breasts; he noticed that Boyd blushed and looked away.